So, I took advantage of the discount on Plex Lifetime yesterday… mainly for DVR usage w/my HDHomeRun Flex 4K. But, I’d love to use it for away-from-home transcoding as well. My movies/shows are on a Synology 1821+, which I understand can’t do s/w or h/w for UHD rips. But, if I buy a dedicated mini PC to run Plex server, thinking an Intel N100 or N150 w/Intel Quick Sync, would it be able to transcode a single stream of a high bitrate UHD rip w/Dolby Vision? Or would I need something more powerful? Thanks.
I think a lot of folks in your situation go for a NUC as an option. I’ve also seen many like using ThinkCenter M Tiny computers - particularly refurbished or used from business sell offs - as part of their homelab setup for similar situations. Either of those with a modern intel chipset will be able to provide solid hardware transcoding for Plex better than most of synology\qnap NAS options and most of the newer models of those handle things just fine (as comparison). My QNAP TS-664 has Celeron N5105 which is a pretty lightweight chip but does HDR transcoding of 4K without a hiccup and even does PGS\SSA burn-in subtitles on 1080p (which is very heavy load transcoding) without noticeable buffering so you’d probably be more than fine with almost any setup on a NUC or M-tiny.
You can use something like PassMark to help compare chip performance.
This Plex article has some more info as well about transcoding hardware. Might help.
An alternative, since you have the space on that NAS, might be converting titles ahead of time but I dunno how well that’d work for your DVR configuration. I do this with my 4k movies where I have a 4k version and also a 1080 or 720 lower bitrate file as well. Plex does a pretty good job of picking the right file to play in the right situation for the title I play; plays the 720p instead of trying to transcode the 4k. You might be able to setup ffmpeg or mkvtoolnix to convert files for you in the background so you don’t have to transcode on the fly. Just a thought to maybe avoid buying another device.
Thanks for your reply. I did see that Plex article you linked. Think NUC/mini-PC is the way to go for me… just trying to pick ‘best’ option. Don’t need something overpowered, but one that’s well suited to transcode a single UHD rip (HEVC w/DV) to a single user out of the home. I have a 1 gig fiber Internet connection (down & up) if that’s helpful to know.
Update: Ordered a N150 mini PC. Hope it was a good choice.
The N100 beats my Celeron N5105 by 25% and I assume the N150 will be even better (just not listed on the site yet). My chip can handle that transcoding and more just fine so you’ll likely be set.
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If running Linux, run Ubuntu 24.10 (or equivalent). 24.10 has the 6.11 kernel, which has support for the N150.
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Thanks guys.
