I just got myself a LG OLED65B6V television and I would like to start playing back 4K/UHD/2160P on this puppy. What is the best client hardware for playing back 4K/UHD/2160P and also have support for 10-bit/HDR, H.265/HEVC etc…?
My current preferred client is the Apple TV (Gen.4), but obviously it does not support 4K/UHD/2160P at all. I’m hoping for a new Apple TV this year with 4K and HDR support, but I’m not holding my breath. I love the Apple TV as it has the best Plex UI of the bunch and it’s really fluid and offers a great user experience.
I also have the Plex-app in WebOS 3.0 on the TV and it’s horrible in comparison. It’s laggy, the UI doesn’t compare to the Apple TV one, not at all and it seems like the Ethernet on the TV is only 10/100mbit so it’s not really sufficient for 4K/UHD streaming.
What hardware is the best to go for if I would like to enjoy the absolute best and full 4K/HDR experience?
I’d wait for an Intel NUC with Kaby Lake. There are alternatives, such as the Shield and Odroid C2 - but they all have their drawbacks (though the Odroid is an excellent little device given the price).
I love the ShieldTV as a client. It does most recent codecs including HEVC, h264 lvl 5.1, HD audio streams, vc-1,etc without issues. Support casting to it. Supports hdmi-cec. Can plug in headphones in the remote.
For playback, it’s almost as good as a desktop solution like a NUC or Mac mini and a lot less hassle.
What would be the benefit of a Intel NUC compared to NVIDIA Shield? One benefit would be the capability to run Windows 10 (Tablet Mode) and Plex Media Player + SVP (Smooth Video Project) and get improved HFR/interpolation compared to what the TV is capable of on it’s own. But SVP is very demanding on the GPU, so I’m not convinced the Iris Pro SKU of Kaby Lake is capable of doing much in terms of SVP without dropping frames.
What I hate with running Intel NUC and Windows 10 is the fact that it’s horrendously bad optimised and simply not suited for use with a remote. Even though the NUC’s features IR-receivers so I can use my Harmony remote, the user interface and experience of Windows 10, even in Tablet mode is still severely lacking.
Could also go with Plex Media Player Embedded, but then I will lack various other things like YouTube, Vimeo, etc…
The problem with the LG OLED65B6V and it’s “Smart-TV” functionality is how slow it is. Using the Plex-app for LG WebOS is downright horrible compared to the user experience I get on my Apple TV (Gen.4). The User Interface looks and behaves worse, and navigating the menus is a real drag and can’t compare to using the Apple TV at all. The Apple TV is extremely fast and fluid, whereas navigating the Plex-app in LG’s WebOS is lagging like crazy.
It has nothing to do with the app itself. Even navigating the YouTube app is laggy. The user experience is simply horrible. Haven’t really tested how playback in the app works, I might try a 4K, HEVC MKV and see if it works or not. But I don’t really want to put up with the horrible user experience that the laggy performance in the menus provide.
When it comes to the price of Intel NUC’s it all depends on whatever hardware you go for. As all Kaby Lake NUC’s will feature HDMI2.0 and provide H.265/HEVC and VP9 capabilities even the cheapest Intel Core i3-model should be more than efficient enough for Plex Media Player.
Comparing it to the Xbox One S is somewhat pointless. From what I’ve gathered, the Plex-app on the Xbox One is under-performing considering it’s hardware. Looking at comparisons on YouTube it performance even slower than the Amazon Fire Stick in a lot of task like launch time, navigation, loading album arts etc… And from what I’ve read, the Xbox One app does not necessarily support H.265/HEVC or any upcoming HDR do to limitation on Microsoft’s part and their whole “UWP” platform.
It has nothing to do with the app itself. Even navigating the YouTube app is laggy. The user experience is simply horrible. Haven’t really tested how playback in the app works, I might try a 4K, HEVC MKV and see if it works or not. But I don’t really want to put up with the horrible user experience that the laggy performance in the menus provide.
That’s Odd, on my Samsung (not top of the line UN60KU630D) its not laggy at all, and it will play 4K, HEVC MKV files no problem… (Except the already reported DTS issue)
When it comes to the price of Intel NUC’s it all depends on whatever hardware you go for. As all Kaby Lake NUC’s will feature HDMI2.0 and provide H.265/HEVC and VP9 capabilities even the cheapest Intel Core i3-model should be more than efficient enough for Plex Media Player.
Comparing it to the Xbox One S is somewhat pointless. From what I’ve gathered, the Plex-app on the Xbox One is under-performing considering it’s hardware. Looking at comparisons on YouTube it performance even slower than the Amazon Fire Stick in a lot of task like launch time, navigation, loading album arts etc… And from what I’ve read, the Xbox One app does not necessarily support H.265/HEVC or any upcoming HDR do to limitation on Microsoft’s part and their whole “UWP” platform.
interesting, you’d assume it’d work great for the “S” since it’s designed around 4K however, not around Plex. so…
Was going to look for the NVIDIA Shield TV on Cyber Monday sales, but it seems like it’s obsolete? There is barely any store in Norway that has it anymore. And the few who got some left are in remote places way out of reach.
Well, I suppose I have to live with the ones on the TV for now. There isn’t all that much 4K/UHD content as of yet so it’s no biggie. Hopefully Apple will come with a new Apple TV supporting 4K/UHD next year. I do find the Plex app on the Apple TV to be the best of the bunch in terms of speed, user interface/experience and everything.
I also have the LG OLED65B6. I’ve been using the Plex app for webOS 3. The UI is a bit slow on the B series but playback has been excellent for me, and that’s what I care about most.
But are you able to direct play / stream any 4K/UHD content? I’ve tried UHD with H.265/HEVC, I also tried UHD with VP9 and both are being transcoded. What’s even worse is that the transcoding seems to demand a lot of resources, so my Intel Xeon E2-1375v3 is degraded to “transcoding (throttled)” when handling just a single UHD VP9 stream to the LG WebOS Plex-app.
@RamGuy said:
But are you able to direct play / stream any 4K/UHD content? I’ve tried UHD with H.265/HEVC, I also tried UHD with VP9 and both are being transcoded. What’s even worse is that the transcoding seems to demand a lot of resources, so my Intel Xeon E2-1375v3 is degraded to “transcoding (throttled)” when handling just a single UHD VP9 stream to the LG WebOS Plex-app.
Throttled means your CPU caught up with the buffer you ask from it and doesn’t have to transcode with 100% CPU usage anymore, so your CPU is up to the task for that file.
@RamGuy said:
But are you able to direct play / stream any 4K/UHD content? I’ve tried UHD with H.265/HEVC, I also tried UHD with VP9 and both are being transcoded. What’s even worse is that the transcoding seems to demand a lot of resources, so my Intel Xeon E2-1375v3 is degraded to “transcoding (throttled)” when handling just a single UHD VP9 stream to the LG WebOS Plex-app.
For sure transcoding H.265/HEVC is going to be much more taxing than H.264. My PMS isn’t powerful enough to transcode HEVC, so I would need to Direct Play it to get smooth playback. The HTML5 app on webOS should prefer Direct Play if the TV hardware can support it. I know it can because I’ve tested forcing to Direct Play in a dev build. Smooth as butter on a machine that otherwise could not transcode it without lots of frequent buffering. I have already brought this up with the team and while its tricky, they are working on it. No guarantees, but hoping the next release will improve this.
@RamGuy said:
But are you able to direct play / stream any 4K/UHD content? I’ve tried UHD with H.265/HEVC, I also tried UHD with VP9 and both are being transcoded. What’s even worse is that the transcoding seems to demand a lot of resources, so my Intel Xeon E2-1375v3 is degraded to “transcoding (throttled)” when handling just a single UHD VP9 stream to the LG WebOS Plex-app.
Yes, I can Direct Play and Direct Stream easily…
Transcoding (throttled) is a good thing, means your server is more than powerful enough to handle the file.
But how come my app in WebOS 3.0 refuses to Direct Play any of my H.265/HEVC or VP9 4K/UHD content if it works for you two? I don’t mind transcoding per say, but I like to build around direct play instead of transcoding as the server is not dedicated to Plex Media Server only so having it crunching 4K/UHD streams is something I would hope to avoid.
I have a LG OLED65C6V and I’m using Plex Media Player on a Windows 7 PC directly plugged in the TV (HDMI). It works really well.
The only missing thing is the 10bits and HDR. Currently Plex supports 8bits only and is not able to pass HDR metadata: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/203810286-What-media-formats-are-supported-
I also understand that Windows is not able to handle HDR for now. At this step, it’s too technical for me, I don’t know if Plex team would be able to easily handle 10bits and HDR metadata.
In the meantime I use a workaround on the settings of the MPV player to handle HDR as much as possible:
Of course, if I play 4K HDR files from an USB drive directly on the TV, HDR is handle correctly by the TV.
@KarlDag said:
I love the ShieldTV as a client. It does most recent codecs including HEVC, h264 lvl 5.1, HD audio streams, vc-1,etc without issues. Support casting to it. Supports hdmi-cec. Can plug in headphones in the remote.
For playback, it’s almost as good as a desktop solution like a NUC or Mac mini and a lot less hassle.
Same,
I also have 3 Rokus, 2 Xbox Ones, PMP on NUCs and just prefer the ShieldTV for ease of use and speed. Hard to do better unless you have some very special needs.
