Parents aren't very tech savvy: struggling with Plex + Chromecast. Is Roku more user friendly?

Plex Players Streaming Devices
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A little air movement wouldn’t be a bad thing, but if it doesn’t get too hot it might be OK.

The thing will generate some heat - 'cause it’s guts are doing things you want.

Be cautious, but you know what to do.

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Did you check if the TV was connected at 100 Mbps? It might have somehow got set to 10 Mbps. That TV is a bit old, but it should still be able to handle YouTube videos.

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The TV was connected at 100 Mbps for sure, and actually handles 4K 30 fps YouTube videos fine. It was just with 4K 60 fps YouTube videos where it started going wrong and the Chromecast Ultra didn’t break a sweat.

So it’s not so much that they’ll be watching 60 fps YouTube content as I just wanted to go with whatever was the more capable hardware. It’s not so much YouTube performance that I’m worried about as how it will fare with 4K content direct playing through Plex.

I went with the Chromecast Ultra originally as I figured it would deal with a potential processing bottleneck that might be an issue if we relied on the 5-year old hardware in the TV itself.

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Ok. If you are going to be using high quality videos, then yeah that TV is too old. Even newer TVs could have issues with things like 4k 60 fps. I’m surprised the Chromecast Ultra handled that well.

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I obsessively tested it until I found a situation where I could differentiate the TV’s performance from the Chromecast Ultra’s:

  • TV with WiFi
  • TV with Ethernet
  • Chromecast Ultra with WiFi
  • Chromecast Ultra with Ethernet

It wasn’t a huge surprise that a device with a five-year advantage performed better than the TV but I was originally considering returning the Chromecast Ultra if the TV could handle everything we threw at it just as well lol.

It was a good starting point and lead us closer to what I think will be a good long-term solution in the Roku Ultra.

You’ll probably see that Chromecast floating around on Craigslist in the near future. :joy:

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The CC Ultra will work well with YouTube since all of those videos use very similar codecs and bitrates. Using Plex with your own mix of files will be the true test. The CC Ultra has it’s own limitations so Plex’s native Android app might fair better than the CC Ultra for some files.

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Yeah. There’s going to be some more obsessive testing of things the next time I’m in Vancouver!

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