What is the best Media Player/Client?

Thanks Guys, you have been providing some thought provoking options.

I just received a new Shield pro at the end of last week and I played with it over the weekend. I like part of the Plex interface, namely the vertical scrolling when browsing. However I find a large part of the interface clumsy and non-intuitive when compared with the Roku or the PI.

Also it lacks a number of apps that “should” be available like, MLS, Amazon Prime and several others but that is not directly related to Plex.

I will give it a good chance over the next week or two so as to find out if the clumsy feeling of the interface is just that I am not familiar with it but it seems that most actions require at least one or two extra key-presses to accomplish what I want over the Roku interface.

So far I “think” that may be that the Roku programmer(s) are simply a LOT better than those for the other platforms. But, again, we will see if the interface feels better after more time.

As far as direct playback goes that matters very little to me as my server is plenty powerful for any of my videos to be transcoded if needed. I have not even checked to see what is direct playing and what is not. That is just unimportant to me.

Right now, for me, the Roku 3 is the best client I own but I continue to evaluate others and I try to give each a good and fair chance. I enjoy trying out new and varied technology and, as I am retired and my relatives mostly live overseas and only visit occasionally, I have plenty of time to indulge myself.

@TurboJailer said:
NUC supports TrueHD and I have around $180 into mine.

I did some digging because when I bought my NUC one would be hard pressed to find the the enclosure for $180. Sure enough you can get a NUC5CPYH from amazon for ~$125, that a pretty amazing deal if you look at what comes already on board. At this point you would simply need a SSD and RAM, probably ~32GB SSD and 4GB RAM would set you up pretty nice. I wouldn’t think you would ever use more than ~2GB of the SSD though so if you can find a good deal on a smaller SSD I would jump on it. This is probably the way I would go If I were to replace my ChromeBox, over-all the specs are better and it has a built in IR-sensor. Again though no support for Netflix or Amazon Prime streaming.

@JT Marshall said:

@TurboJailer said:
NUC supports TrueHD and I have around $180 into mine.

I did some digging because when I bought my NUC one would be hard pressed to find the the enclosure for $180. Sure enough you can get a NUC5CPYH from amazon for ~$125, that a pretty amazing deal if you look at what comes already on board. At this point you would simply need a SSD and RAM, probably ~32GB SSD and 4GB RAM would set you up pretty nice. I wouldn’t think you would ever use more than ~2GB of the SSD though so if you can find a good deal on a smaller SSD I would jump on it. This is probably the way I would go If I were to replace my ChromeBox, over-all the specs are better and it has a built in IR-sensor. Again though no support for Netflix or Amazon Prime streaming.

You can also ditch the SSD and run PMP/OpenPHT off a USB thumb drive.

@hthighway said:

@JT Marshall said:

@TurboJailer said:
NUC supports TrueHD and I have around $180 into mine.

I did some digging because when I bought my NUC one would be hard pressed to find the the enclosure for $180. Sure enough you can get a NUC5CPYH from amazon for ~$125, that a pretty amazing deal if you look at what comes already on board. At this point you would simply need a SSD and RAM, probably ~32GB SSD and 4GB RAM would set you up pretty nice. I wouldn’t think you would ever use more than ~2GB of the SSD though so if you can find a good deal on a smaller SSD I would jump on it. This is probably the way I would go If I were to replace my ChromeBox, over-all the specs are better and it has a built in IR-sensor. Again though no support for Netflix or Amazon Prime streaming.

You can also ditch the SSD and run PMP/OpenPHT off a USB thumb drive.

This is a good point, in fact this device has a SD card reader and you can install the Embedded image and boot directly from that. Here is a nice little write up on the device. They are using Kodi and OpenELEC as the “free OS” but the concepts are the same with Plex.