I can’t seem to get my head around this question, hopefully somebody here has an the answer, here’s the background:
I currently have a HTPC that I use as PLEX Media Server. I’m in the pre-planning stage of what to replace PMS with - The HTPC is getting old.
I’d really like to use my NAS (Synology 1817+) as the PMS as I never need transcoding.
I don’t plan on doing any of this until I get a new TV and I plan on it having eARC so I can feed my receiver hi-def audio.
My Synology NAS has eSATA, USB 3.0 and Ethernet connections. My question is this: How would I get the Media files from the NAS to the TV? My receiver is a Denon AVR-X6200W and not sure if I need to upgrade that too?
So, if I’m understanding this: my movies will stream to the television after going to plex’s servers first? If so will they do this without any transcoding? I ask this because the whole reason I keep my files on a NAS locally is because I like having lightly compressed video with lossless audio…will I still get that?
The files stream directly from your Plex server to your Plex client. Servers from Plex - the company - are not involved.
If you are running PMS on your Synology NAS and your TV has a Plex app. The files stream directly from the Synology to the TV.
You could run PMS on the Synology now, using the HTPC as a client. Nothing prevents you from running multiple Plex servers. PMP on your HTPC will see the second server and be able to stream from it. This would let you get PMS on Synology setup the way you want, make sure it is stable, etc before switching from PMS on the HTPC. There is no need to do a hard cutover.
Regarding eARC, both your TV and your receiver must support it. Check with Denon to see if your receiver can be upgraded to eARC (FYI, probably not, but you might get lucky).
Edit / Addition:
Regarding transcoding & lossless audio: It depends on the capabilities of the TV & the Plex client.
Video example: The current Plex client on LG WebOS TVs does not direct play PGS or VOBSUB subtitles. Enabling either results in a video transcode. SRT subtitles do direct play.
Audio example: If I’m reading the boards correctly, Samsung dropped dts support from their TVs. So, if you use the Plex client on a new Samsung TV and play a movie with dts audio, the audio will transcode, even though ARC can handle dts 5.1 audio.
Audio example 2: The Nvidia Shield, which runs Android TV, will bitstream TrueHD & dts-HD audio. An Amazon Fire TV device, which also runs Android TV, will not, due to restrictions put in place by Amazon.
The message is you’ll need to do your homework when picking a new TV. Just checking that it has eARC is not necessarily enough.
