I have been using Plex on my Roku Ultra for a year or so now, and I just bought a new TCL TV with Roku built in ( I guess it is the same features as the Ultra, I don’t know) whiich I have been using for a month or so.
I have been thinking about switching to the Nvida Shield for Plex for some time now, but that was before I had it built into my TV. And Now the Shield is on Sale
What advanatages would I have with Plex, if I were to plug in a Nevida shield into my New TV?
The Shield is a very good streaming machine but it is overkill for 99% of people. Its advantages come in when you are using advanced features like 4K and it has some “interesting” drawbacks. The user interface on the Shield is, for a lot of folks, quite poor. Also it lacks “smoothness” and sometimes just jumps around instead of scrolling smoothly.
The Roku Ultra is just a much more polished user interface and it handles almost as many video formats.
I very much prefer the Ultra for 99% of my streaming.
But to add one more thing: I have found the built in “smarts” in TVs to be of generally lower performance than what is found in boxes. I would just hook your Roku Ultra up to your new TV and ignore the built in Roku functionality. That also means you do not have to set up your apps again and you can continue to use any customizations you have set up. Just because your new TV has something built in does not mean you have to use it.
Yea, I know, but the Roku Interface in the TV is the same is in the Ultra. So it’s like I got use the Roku to open a Roku, which in my stupid brain is extreamly Illogical. All attempts to find out if Roku TV is better than Roku Ultra pretty much says it is up to the TV’s Hardware, and I can’t seem to find specifics as to what the TV has inside of it.
I will say that I finally have a 4k TV, and have been adding alot of 4k REMUX to my Plex. I don’t seem to be getting many Transcoding issues, and if it is transcoding, I am not sure if that is logged somewhere. I guess I could play a Movie and then go to the server and see whats going on in real time. THe point is, is that the build-it Roku is function a bit better than the Ultra, especilly when loading and fastforwarding and rewinding.
