Hi all
I have not looked into this in a while and maybe nothing has changed but I wanted to check back in. Are there any Plex players out there that can offer lossless video, I guess meaning no transcoding, other than a PC? If the answer is no, does anyone have any resources you would go to for building a Plex HTPC for direct play?
Thanks much
Joshua
That’ll depend on your media. I’m using Plex on an Apple TV and haven’t seen any transcoding in months (using the current player). The same should be true on a sufficiently powerful Android TV (e.g. the Shield).
From what I’ve been reading, there might be issues on the Android TV when you’re going with 4K videos and specific combinations of audio / subtitle formats – that’s not much of a discussion on the Apple TV as it won’t directly play some of those audio formats (though audio transcoding isn’t as taxing as video transcoding).
Cool, thanks Tom. I’m using BD rips that result in .mkv files. Sometimes they rip as .m2ts files. I’m usually always watching them from an AppleTV 4K.
Just trying to understand how this relates to your first post… are you currently experiencing issues when playing that media on the Apple TV 4K?
Isn’t the Apple TV 4K decoder sufficiently powerful enough to support basically everything you could ever want to throw at it from Plex? I think it is basically as powerful as the Shield and I haven’t ran into a file yet that I couldn’t direct play on my Shield. Though I did discover a file on a Late 2020 iPad 8 that wouldn’t play for unknown reasons and it uses the same processor as the Apple TV 4K.
I’m not having any issues but I don’t want any degradation from the original BD. I’m assuming that some sort of transcoding is going on between Plex and the AppleTV that is “downgrading” the video. Is that not the case? It’s been a while since I’ve looked into this so maybe things have changed.
What makes you think so?
The Plex player is playing things just fine (as is, no transcoding, no burning in of PGS subtitles). If your Apple TV output connection allows it, the app / Apple TV will even submit the decoded LPCM stream from regular/classic DTS streams. DTS-MA or Dolby True HD audio will usually be transcoded to a format supported by the device.
Is there a way to see what is going on in realtime while Plex is serving a file to the AppleTV?
You can always track things using the Now Playing section of the server dashboard. The same will work with the Plex Dash app that’s available for Plex Pass members.
I am a lifetime Plex Pass member so I will check that app out. Cool thanks!
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