Hi, I’ve been using Plex on the PS4 for a year now. The interface is great and its nice to see improvements are still being made!
However, video transcoding is getting really frustrating. I’m mostly using x264 1080p files in a .mkv container, DTS or AC-3 audio. Bit rates can vary between 2000 and 10,000, generally what’s around out there to download these days. My server is a MacBook Pro with a 2.4 GHz dual core CPU and it gets maxed out with pretty much every video I play on the PS4.
Playing the videos on the PS4 Media Player using my Mac as a Plex DLNA server uses hardly any processing power on the Mac. Failing that the Sony TV’s own Bravia Media Player played pretty much all videos with out a hiccup (even with DTS audio!), again using the Mac as a DLNA server.
Unfortunately, neither of these have a very good media browsing and discovery interface so I’m reticent to use them as replacements. The Holy Grail would be to leverage some of the PS4’s computing power and decode the videos locally. Making the PS4 an excellent media consumption hub. Is it likely to happen in the near future?
@Virtual Brown said:
Hi, I’ve been using Plex on the PS4 for a year now. The interface is great and its nice to see improvements are still being made!
However, video transcoding is getting really frustrating. I’m mostly using x264 1080p files in a .mkv container, DTS or AC-3 audio. Bit rates can vary between 2000 and 10,000, generally what’s around out there to download these days. My server is a MacBook Pro with a 2.4 GHz dual core CPU and it gets maxed out with pretty much every video I play on the PS4.
Playing the videos on the PS4 Media Player using my Mac as a Plex DLNA server uses hardly any processing power on the Mac. Failing that the Sony TV’s own Bravia Media Player played pretty much all videos with out a hiccup (even with DTS audio!), again using the Mac as a DLNA server.
Unfortunately, neither of these have a very good media browsing and discovery interface so I’m reticent to use them as replacements. The Holy Grail would be to leverage some of the PS4’s computing power and decode the videos locally. Making the PS4 an excellent media consumption hub. Is it likely to happen in the near future?
It is all up to Sony I’m afraid. If they allow Plex to use those features, then you can be sure that Plex will jump on that ship as fast as they can.
@Virtual Brown said:
Hi, I’ve been using Plex on the PS4 for a year now. The interface is great and its nice to see improvements are still being made!
However, video transcoding is getting really frustrating. I’m mostly using x264 1080p files in a .mkv container, DTS or AC-3 audio. Bit rates can vary between 2000 and 10,000, generally what’s around out there to download these days. My server is a MacBook Pro with a 2.4 GHz dual core CPU and it gets maxed out with pretty much every video I play on the PS4.
Playing the videos on the PS4 Media Player using my Mac as a Plex DLNA server uses hardly any processing power on the Mac. Failing that the Sony TV’s own Bravia Media Player played pretty much all videos with out a hiccup (even with DTS audio!), again using the Mac as a DLNA server.
Unfortunately, neither of these have a very good media browsing and discovery interface so I’m reticent to use them as replacements. The Holy Grail would be to leverage some of the PS4’s computing power and decode the videos locally. Making the PS4 an excellent media consumption hub. Is it likely to happen in the near future?
To complete what Atrus said, Sony doesn’t allow Plex and other app makers to use the same resources they have in their media player… Probably a royalties issues with codec providers. I’d be surprised to see Sony open it up more, but who knows.
@Virtual Brown said:
Hi, I’ve been using Plex on the PS4 for a year now. The interface is great and its nice to see improvements are still being made!
However, video transcoding is getting really frustrating. I’m mostly using x264 1080p files in a .mkv container, DTS or AC-3 audio. Bit rates can vary between 2000 and 10,000, generally what’s around out there to download these days. My server is a MacBook Pro with a 2.4 GHz dual core CPU and it gets maxed out with pretty much every video I play on the PS4.
Playing the videos on the PS4 Media Player using my Mac as a Plex DLNA server uses hardly any processing power on the Mac. Failing that the Sony TV’s own Bravia Media Player played pretty much all videos with out a hiccup (even with DTS audio!), again using the Mac as a DLNA server.
Unfortunately, neither of these have a very good media browsing and discovery interface so I’m reticent to use them as replacements. The Holy Grail would be to leverage some of the PS4’s computing power and decode the videos locally. Making the PS4 an excellent media consumption hub. Is it likely to happen in the near future?
To complete what Atrus said, Sony doesn’t allow Plex and other app makers to use the same resources they have in their media player… Probably a royalties issues with codec providers. I’d be surprised to see Sony open it up more, but who knows.
Microsoft has been more open to the idea of opening up more and more codecs. Hopefully that will mean that Sony feels the pressure to do the same thing.
