Server Version#: 1.26.2.5797 (via TrueNAS plugin)
Player Version#: PlexHTPC-1.18.0.3023
HTPC OS: Windows 10 Pro
I just installed Plex HTPC and I came across the setting “Video Playback Quality”.
The description is a bit ambiguous to me. I have my HTPC hooked up to a Yamaha Aventage Receiver which processes the Hi-Def audio (DTS-HD MA, Dolby TrueHD, Atmos, etc.) to my surround speakers and then forwards the video to my TV. Since the receiver does all the video processing, should I turn Video Playback Quality to “Low Quality (ANGLE Render)” or should I set it to “Ultra Quality/Make my GPU Hurt” regardless?
Depends on your GPU. This setting controls the amount of post processing the player performs. Most of the settings are in scaling the video up/down in resolution but there are a few others such as debanding. Higher settings will require more GPU load than lower settings.
To clarify, my question is considering that the AV receiver has dedicated hardware to do the video processing, wouldn’t it be redundant to enable software processing in the Plex player? What pros/cons would there be to turn it on/off in conjunction with the AV Receiver? Would double post processing be detrimental to the video output?
You need to ask what is the quality of the video processing you have in the hardware of your AVR? Most likely the only processing it can do is upscaling (my searches didn’t mention anything else for Aventage AVRs) and it is extremely rare for upscalers in hardware to be of any decent amount of quality. Too many just use bilinear which is worse than the absolute lowest quality setting in HTPC. There are some rare exceptions which actually use quality upscalers but I wouldn’t trust anything that doesn’t tell you exactly what is used.
I see. It’s surprising then that AVRs to not have much power in terms of video processing especially considering the price they command (I bought mine around ~$1.5k). The concern regarding over video processing came from Vincent Teoh of the HDTVTest Youtube channel. He mentions that turning on all video processing settings on TVs don’t always yield the best results. In fact, they can even make the resulting picture worse (ie. oversharpening, noise reduction, motion smoothing, etc.). My thought is that if there’s such a thing as over-processing for video on TVs, it can also be a thing on player software.
As I stated, most of the post processing is in terms of scaling such as playing a 720p file on a 4k display. Most hardware scalers use bilinear or a similar poor quality scaler (because it’s easy). This is the lowest quality scaler that HTPC uses but the default is spline36 which produces much better results. The best quality scalers are going to be similar to the external shaders used in the Make My GPU Hurt preset but that required a high-end GPU.
None of the presets turn on any sharpening, noise reduction, nor motion smoothing (the latter of which needs to be obliterated with extreme prejudice for how it ruins content). These options are available to you by adding directives in the mpv.conf if you really want them.
The only non-scaling option that is turned on in presets is debanding which reduces color bands in content which can result from the video compression being too agresive on the quantization of luma/chroma values.
Thank you very much for taking the time to answer back my questions. This has been very informative. I will try out “make my GPU hurt” and go from there.
when you say GTX 10x0 required is the emphasis on the GTX so really just a GTX 1050 or higher, or just 10x0 series - so a GT 1030 (let’s say a passively cooled one I already have) would work?
Just like when you are playing a game, you have to change quality settings to achieve the highest quality while maintaining the desired frame rate on your card. I have tested an RTX 2060 and it can deliver 60fps on these settings without issue. Others have reported similar with a high end GTX 10x0 card. As to whether your specific one can deliver a high enough frame rate, you’ll just have to try it and see.
