I own a 3 and it works awesome. I have specifically NOT gone to a 4 because of all the issues it has had at launch. I’d recommend picking up a 3 at a Brick & Mortar store (Target, Walmart, Best Buy, etc.) that has a usable return policy (namely: will take it back after it’s been opened if you hate it) and try it out for the 15 days or whatever the return policy is. and see how it jives with your personal usage and with your actual files, as codecs & encoding will make or break a specific device for people in these cases.
…and if the 3 works and you like it and want a handful more, they often have refurbs for dirt cheap on newegg
@michaeljtaylor said:
thanks for you suggestion/input… however I don’t see myself converting all my movies anytime soon… way too many and too busy ATM, and I think its easier to just keep the 2 systems up and running (plex and zapitti) and continue to maintain the 2 databases…
its a shame that there is no player that can do this (STB) many of my old media players can do this (decode DTS and other audio) dating back to 2009, they’re just not plex compatible.
The conversion process can be pretty simple using ffmepg, I wrote a Windows script to encode all my movies and it works great. Once you run the script there is no need to bother until it completes, so it doesn’t require any additional time from you. Now I will admit if you have a lot of media like myself the script will take time, but it doesn’t require any time commitment from me.
However instead of using other devices I opted to use the DLNA feature in Plex. I will agree that the FF and RW features leave a lot to be desired.
I use raspberry, fire tv stick, tablet, phone, MacBook. Raspberry is connected to avr receiver rest is direct used or connected to tv. No problem with dts here so why need a device that can decode dts? Usually the receiver decodes it. Raspberry also is fast and can handle nearly all files up to 1080p. Ah and raspberry 3 can handle pass trough true hd 7.1 without transcoding. Oh and a friend also use it on his lg tv. And never had problems with any files. But only if the server is powerful enough.
Boxee box hardware was outsourced to dlink and the software was Boxee. Horrendous experience with constant bugs and slow to fix them, CEO had a huge ego (They no longer around). Not good at all. Plex has no need to make hardware, they would never be able to keep up with the bigger companies with new versions. Plenty to choose from you just have to choose wisely. Nvidia shield is probably the best for all the features like HD audio,4k. Roku is just basic (roku 4 was major letdown overall considering the price). They are very reliable overall (bugs do occur and take a while to be fixed) but do not support a lot of formats, takes a lot to program for developer (custom UIs), developers do not care as much anymore about it (can you blame them when you have tvOS and AndroidTV available), no HD audio.
