I’m an IT Systems Admin and I don’t have any of those perks… lucky you 
About your Android based household, you could try switching the clients to Kodi (I recommend the latest SPMC for the ShieldTV instead) with the plex addon, it works pretty well.
This EXACTLY sums up the issues with PMS on Shield.
I FULLY agree with everything raditokyo wrote here…
My collection is a little bit smaller, but i don’t even have to fully add it to run in MAJOR issues during media scanning and metadata fetching.
This needs to change.
btw. just installed 7.0.2 the latest nvidia crapxperience update…
shield takes around 10-15 seconds until it responds to a keypress on wireless controller…
looks like pms is still using all of shields resources…
It was unresponsive for me as well after the update, but I waited a bit, restarted and it got even better than before this update.
I have now moved my Plex server to a dedicated PC and although it is early days I can report as follows…
Server Specification:
Seagate 1000GB SSHD Hybrid Drive
AMD Radeon R7 260X 2048MB Graphics Card
I have been using a Shield pro 2017 and 2015 for a total of over 2 years .
I will say not as my main server .
But connected to NAS with 40,000 tv episodes, 4000 movies , 40,000k songs, 100,000 pictures and 10,000 music videos both handle the job. Serving 2 or 3 locally and several remotely.
No one has mentioned their media format.
Your media size and formatting is equally as important as the size of your CPU
I say if the shield is not doing the job look at what it is serving up!!
I have now moved my Plex server to a dedicated PC and although it is early days I can report as follows…
Spikemixture…When you say not as your main server… then what is your main server…
I have no doubt that Shield can work as a Client but NO WAY has it the capability of (currently) working as a server… see full detailed explanation above… from various contributors…
I would love to know where I am going wrong and spending far more than I spent on the shield (£180) because my server cost £750
I am running a Big Qnap NAS that has an i7 as I want all my plex in one box.
But the 2 shields handle being servers when i have qnap PMS issues.
They get all the media from the Qnap (and previously from a Synology 1817+ )
I also use them both as clients and often at the same time.
What format and size and bitrate is your average movie/tv show?
I remux or convert ALL mine to mp4 with no movie bigger than 3gb and no TV-show bigger than 1gb
Bit rates are adjusted accordingly and I use subtitles almost all the time.
And the Shields handle it all.
The reason my Shield did not become my #1 server is I could not move a year or 2 watched media to the shield.
So my plex path was Synology, Drobo 5N, bigger Synology,(the shield would have been in here) i3 NUC , i7 Skull NUC, Qnap TVS-1282
I am not a kodi fan…
I cannot see how installing another application with a plugin can be more efficient the the plex player on the shield.
J M O
OK…
I guess the big difference is I want to keep everything as Originally Intended…Raw, Wave, 1080p in .moving because I watch and listen in an 8 seater cinema where MP4 is not invited.
I guess we all need to compromise sometimes in our lives but as far as quality is concerned compromise does not get a look in when sound and vision are concerned. So a meaty server is now a prerequisite. But your system sounds amazing. I did once convert my music to MP4 and reduced my videos sizes with handbrake. This added another task to my workflow when I load new stuff to my library which I can’t be bothered with. In this day and age I believe in keeping everything PURE… and why not?
Thanks…
If you want to go the mp4 path look at MCEbuddy.
Great program for automating the remux or conversion step.
And seriously I watch my mp4 on a 65" 4k Samsung TV, and quality is NOT an issue in 98% of the things I watch,
But then again I thought VHS was pretty good in the 80’s!
Unfortunately the Plex Client App for Android TV has a lot of problems… really, a lot of them.
I would prefer no to use another app as a client as well, but if I want a stable client, which selects direct play or transcoding correctly, then I cannot use the Plex client app for Android TV.
Just give SPMC a try and install the Plex Addon (official). It works amazingly well, the UI follows the Plex design principles as well.
Hi rbmaster7…
I have just experienced the Android TV client and it is a nightmare so I will do as you suggest and try SPMC. Thanks for the advice. Never heard of this implementation of Kodi! Hope it is an improvement over vanilla Kodi.
It was forked and developed by an ex-member of the Kodi team, responsible for the android branch. He focused heavily on the Shield TV for the SPMC fork.
It is no longer being developed since he left for MrMC (mrmc.tv), but the latest version of SPMC works really well, the performance is great and I had 0 issues with it so far.
You can get SPMC here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.semperpax.spmc16&hl=pt_PT
I just bought a couple Shield TV devices - only to “upgrade” the Smart TV ability on my TVs at home.
I was considering using one of the sheilds as a Plex server… not so sure I will after reading this thread.
Currently, my plex server is an i5 laptop with external HD (USB3). The laptop does a few things… it runs things like Sonarr and CouchPotato, SABNzb and recently added FFMPEG to it.
At first, the laptop was doing very well, although buffering on the videos started to get annoying. Adding FFMPEG to “groom” the files has been great - but very CPU intensive.
When I ordered the sheilds, I was thinking that perhaps I could leave the laptop as a downloader/groomer that places the groomed files on the external HDD (which would be attached to the shield running Plex Media Server)… this would separate the CPU intensive tasks from the PMS. But it sounds like that too may not be enough to keep PMS running smooth.
I might just get a computer to turn into a media PC. Perhaps a new Ryzen CPU that has many threads so it can do a FFMPEG job quickly, then copy the groomed file to the laptop (with the external HDD)… and keep the Sheilds as my “Smart TV” component.
What about your media? and your clients.
Without knowing that I still think a shield as your server and as a client will play most things…
I have run many many servers ( Synolgy NAS’s, I3,i5,i7 NUCs, 2015 Shield pro, 2017 Shield Pro, 2017 Shield 16gb, Qnap NAS plus several i3 and i7 desktop PC’s
and although a Shield is not my #1 server - 2 of them are my backups.
3 things make for a pleasant Plex experience - in no particular order -
Power of the server,
format of your media
The client box/player.
Any of these 3 can cause grief.
From 3 or 4 years of Plex experience these are my suggestions
- an i7 CPU in a NAS, PC or NUC
- Mp4 and e.g. movies under 3gb
- Shields or rokus
All I can add to this is that the Shield as a server does not work in a useable way if your media is ‘raw’ (xxxx.mkv, xxxx.flac, xxxx.raw) state.
I dont want to transcode 1,000 Blu Rays to MP4. I think you need a powerful high throughput processor with 16gb of memory and as you say use the Shield as a Smart TV only.
I don’t know what you people expect from a 200€ device… It does a decent job for smaller libraries and mainly plex optimised media, but is also able to (hw) transcode none-raw media which seperates it from the really low power devics. Surely it is nowhere comparable to a dedicated server at a much higher price, but you get what you pay for. I am pretty happy with it for that price tag.
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If you follow the thread you will see that this all started with a question about whether the Shield Box is capable of being a useable server.
Now if you look at the Shield website and on the SHield you will see that PLEX as a server is part of the Default install options.
So to avoid doing what I did - and accepted as read that the Shield was capable of working as a Server of sorts - dont bother installing Plex on a Shield.
Go try it… but dont expect to be able to use it in a seamless and responsive way. I have PLEX now installed as a service onan I5 system with 8gb of memory. The system also runs WMC (WIndows Media Centre) 24/7 and usually is recording at least 2 streams - and it works fine. So you dont have to lash out loads of dosh on this… just have to be selective on wat hardware you choose to install the server on.
An earlier responseI think mentions using an old propper Server (Ebay?)which seems a pretty sensible idea. Bottom line the populating of images (film and Music Libraries) when you scroll through your movies etc needs a bit of throughput and muscle.
If you do go down the SHield route… be prepared to do all kinds of ‘things’ to improve it’s performance. I lasted a week doing this and did not hesitate to get a Credit and returns label etc from Amazon who did not question my reasons.
So I guess the moral of the story is:
-
Buy a Nvidia Shield from Amazon
-
Buy 128gb fast USB 3 external storage USB Drive
3.After Installing Plex Server introduce all your media libraries to Plex…
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Now get out a few beers, a bottle of wine, some smoked pulled Pork, a bun and a bunch of salad and return in a days or twos time to check progress. If not read go to Step 4 until complete. Otherwise goto 5.
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Test the system thoroughly… remember to be patient… very patient…
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Reformat all your movies and music and see if things improve… If they do then be thankful you have only wasted three days at this. If not go to 7.
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Return your Shield to AMazon with an immediate credit to your account.
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Go to ebay and order … for example…https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-II-T110-Xeon-E3-1240-V2-3-40Ghz-4-Core-8GB-DDR3-SERVER-REF-E3/362388339595?hash=item5460073b8b:g:dlAAAOSwfQtbTff1
Wait a couple of days for delivery…
Get an old HDD you have sitting on one of your shelves (I have a few spare if anybody wants a 1gb drive or two) and install WIndows ‘n’ and then start at three above (3)
I will gladly offer a free HDD to anyone who doesn’t get it up (! PLEX!)and working like a dream!
