Greetings! I’m in the process of putting together a new home entertainment system, and I’m exploring all options for bringing content to a new 4K tv.
I’m hosting my Plex Media Server from a 4th gen Core i7…so I have lots of processing power on the back end. Ideally for my new 4K tv, I would love to have a hardwired device that has a gigabit ethernet connection. I’ve looked at the Roku 4 Ultimate, but that is limited to 10/100 and for some of the 4K movies I have, the speed wouldn’t suffice. I’m leaning towards the Nvidia Shield to act as the media player (not server) since it has gigabit connectivity. But as of right now, I’m open to any ideas possible.
If the wonderful Plex community has any ideas, I would love to hear them!
I guess I don’t see the point of needing gig to the tv yet. 4k streams need about 25 mbit/sec from what I understand. I can see the need for gig to the media server in order to handle multiple streams out to the devices. But even at 100 mbit/sec, that could handle two 4k streams without any issue and your really only going to be watching just 1 at a time.
The most powerful playback device would probably be a HTPC with a GPU that supports HEVC and 4K. Most modern GPU will be able to handle 10 bit files as well. This is probably the most expensive option and would have the biggest footprint (both physically and electrically). Are your source files beyond 60GB? A Roku should be fine for your requirements.
I guess that’s where I’m stuck. I only have maybe 5 MKV’s that are over 60gb…the largest being 70gb. I do have an i7-6700 with 8GB RAM acting as a test Plex Media Player (for Windows), and the Windows Store Plex app. I guess the part I’m trying to figure out is that with a 60gb HEVC 10bit, that file isn’t directly transferred to the Plex Media Player is it? I thought that Plex Media Server used software transcoding since it can’t support hardware decoding for 10bit files.
@pbrigido said:
I guess the part I’m trying to figure out is that with a 60gb HEVC 10bit, that file isn’t directly transferred to the Plex Media Player is it?
If the client states that it will be able to Direct Play the file, the transcoding engine will not touch the file. It will essentially be a file copy.
@Achilles said:
Your best bet currently is the nVidia Shield to Direct Play a 4K HEVC HDR file.
Just to confirm, the shield can do 4k HEVC + HDR? what about HBR? I’ve about given up on stupid NUCs. They used to work great for 1080, but not so sure about 4k. mine can do 4k just fine, but the HBR issue plus no HDR in the embedded client makes it a no go.
@Achilles said:
Your best bet currently is the nVidia Shield to Direct Play a 4K HEVC HDR file.
Just to confirm, the shield can do 4k HEVC + HDR? what about HBR? I’ve about given up on stupid NUCs. They used to work great for 1080, but not so sure about 4k. mine can do 4k just fine, but the HBR issue plus no HDR in the embedded client makes it a no go.
Thanks in advance
The Nvidia Shield if you manually set the dynamic range in the global settings. HD audio passthrough works.
AppleTV 4K and Infuse can output 24Hz + 4K HEVC HDR dynamically. It decodes HD audio to PCM output. No Dolby Atmos or DTS:X.
