With the advent of the new Mac app I was wondering something…
I have a MacMini and a Synology 1815+ and a current AppleTV. Is there a benefit to watching PLEX through the new Mac app vs the AppleTV? By that I mean, does the AppleTV do anything to the incoming file like compress it or anything vs just watching through the Mac app or is the AppleTV just a passthrough device?
All of my movies were copied with MakeMKV and are 1:1 full copies of the original BluRay. I suppose I could spend time doing A --> B comparisons but it seems it would be much easier to just ask if anyone knows what is going on behind the scenes and if one or the other device is giving me the full unaltered audio and video of the .mkv file…
I can’t give you a like for like comparison as I’m not a Mac person.
However I have used many Plex clients and to me despite some of its audio restrictions, picture quality is far better on my AppleTV 4K then anything else I have used over the years.
The Mac app will output Multichannel PCM right now. It cannot passthrough audio. (You will need to change the default audio device in your Macs system settings.)
Video may be the same if you enable the enhanced player on Apple TV, it is actually the same mpv player. I have an Apple TV (not the 4k) but I don’t ever use it since I don’t like the remote. Haven’t compared the two.
I’m not sure how you are planning to use the app but the MacOS app is a desktop app so you probably won’t be happy with it if you mean to connect to a TV and control with a remote.
