Hi,
while I sit and faithfully wait for any major Plex Media Player development (for my main TV, via PC) I need to setup a second TV in my house. So, I was wondering which is the most preferrable platform to invest on. Which one is the most popular and/or sees the most efforts in development ? Roku, Shield, Chromecast… something else ?
Preferably a device able to pass 5.1 audio via HDMI and relies NOT on transcoding (which would kill my server), but I can eventually find it out on my own if you’re unsure.
Many Thanks
Well in my opinion the Roku is the best Plex player app as far as development. And he has to deal with Brightscript. We often joke that he does not sleeps. Roku users put up with the limitations and annoyances of the Roku, because of our Plex player app developer.
And there is a Plex Pass version of the Plex app for Roku, so you get any fixes quicker and do not have to wait for the Channel/App Store to approve them.
I agree with @shopgirl284, The Roku is my choice player almost all the time.
I own Rokus, Shield Pro TV (with the standard Plex app, Plex for Kodi and PlexKodiConnect), Fire TV, Rasberry PI (Using the Plex app), Android tablets that can cast to my Shield or my Chromecast and a couple of computers running everything from the standard Plex app to several 3rd party apps. I also have tried a few other devices. With all of that I use my Roku for almost everything Plex related.
The Shield is being used as a server and it is VERY good at that duty but its user interface is, for me, so bad that I cannot use it for more than one movie or TV show at a time.
The only real disadvantage to the Roku is that it supports a fairly limited codec set for direct play and therefore, unless you get everything in a Roku compatible format, there can be a fair amount of transcoding required by your server. This is not a problem for me as the Shield is pretty good about transcoding and the PC I had before (and keep available as a backup) is very good at transcoding as well.
The other advantage of a Roku for a lot of people is the numerous other things it does. It has apps for most major and many minor streaming services.
The Roku Ultra is the one, with Roku’s latest update, that will do most of what you need as will the Premier+. I slammed the Ultra pretty hard when it was first introduced but Roku has, finally, fixed most all the problems that plagued me and my last major complaint with it, the STUPID extra remote buttons and the horibly placed “voice search” button is easily fixed by popping the buttons “special” out and taking an Exacto knife to the “voice search” button.
BTW: The Raspberry PI is very close to being as good as the Roku for Plex except that all it does is Plex and sometimes the interface is a bit jerky.
I like the Roku for simplicity sake, but you have to be disciplined on the server side when it comes to data formats it supports. The Shield, on the other hand, can consume pretty much anything natively. The interface is certainly clunkier. It sort of depends on what your top priority is. If I were running a low-powered server and hadn’t been good about data formats, I’d choose the Shield. Otherwise, I’d choose the Roku.
thank you guys, great advices !
