TL;DR; In 2023, you should be doing Plex Servers on a NUC.
To all SHIELD owners: Ditch your plex server, and invest yourself in a NUC 12/13 Pro, like I did a few months ago. Now I’m never looking back at SHIELD to host a plex server. I might just sell my SHIELD Pro 2019 for the tube version, since I bought the Pro just for the plex server functionality → now USELESS!
NUC 12/13 Pro models support GPU hardware-transcoding, multiple 4K streams at the same time, like 10-15 of them at a time! Intel’s Iris Xe Graphics make all the difference in the world!
Do yourself a favor and research on Reddit. You’ll be amazed. I bought NUC12WSKi5, installed ubuntu 22.04 LTS on it, installed plex in docker following TRASH’s guides (google it), plus a really cool banner when I SSH into the machine to give me stats, plus aliases for all my automated *arr apps.
Plus, you’ll save soooo many $$ by avoiding bulky servers, GPUs, save the extra noise and power expenses!
For those looking into virtualizing on esxi 8.0 (the only one supported on NUC 12/13 Pro’s at this moment), here are some very helpful blog posts on how to get started:
You might be right. I’ve ran into issues with streaming high bitrate videos on a tube before. At the time I thought it might be the plex server’s fault. However everywhere on the internet I read reviews about the “best android TV boxes in 2022/2023” and the Shield Pro is no.1 on all of them. It’s definitely not by chance. Also I believe the tube version has the 32-bit Android TV version instead of the Pro’s 64-bit version. That could also make a difference, not sure.
I did a search on eBay and that box will run over $700! You can buy a lot of hardware for $800 or more dollars. I am pretty sure my box with an old Ryzen 9 would top out well below that and it has 16 cores in it. I am not streaming a lot of 4K video streams but I am guessing it will handle more than a few. I would be interested in hearing the rationale. And it would run all the virtual machines anyone would care to run as well.
The Shield can be an OK server in some situations… But the lack of hardware accelerated tone mapping can be a killer. I do agree that an Intel box with Intel GPU, under Linux, with Plex Pass, is the best server option in general.
I would also offer the reverse advice: when it comes to clients, forget about Windows and the Plex HTPC client, and just use a Shield box. I spent so much time messing around with various Windows Nvidia graphics settings… Like HDMI range full or limited… and the Plex HTPC client would always forget my audio passthrough settings… And there was always an Nvidia driver update to do when I just wanted to watch a movie… But the Shield box “just works.” And I am even using a 2015 Shield!
The Plex client for Android does have its own problems but overall, I find I much prefer it to a Windows client.
The shield is a niche product and works pretty well for me and my family, no much transcoding required, not much 4K TV shows , anything else comes from Apple, Streaming etc. For USD 200 bucks (less in my case) got a server and a player that in most cases plays anything I throw at it not much fuss. I actually had a proper powerful windows server before the shield I do not miss it that much on most occasions.
