So maybe the better question is, what’s the best setup for PMS if your PC is in one room and your TV and internet modem are on the other side of the house? And you want to watch 4k movies and play modern PC games on your UHD TV and you can get the best devices available, how would you set it up? and What devices would you use. Considering Gaming PC, Nvidia Shield, High end router such as netgear Nighthawk x10, high end transcoding NAS such as netgear NASReady. any help is appreciated.
whats the best setup for PMS if your PC is in one room and your TV and internet modem are in another
I think you are fixated on the X10, as you asked a similar question about it in another post…
Any decent router can handle what you want to do. I have an Asus RT-AC66U as my main router, and a second one wired to the first as an AP. My NAS (an Asustor AS-7004T) is my PMS machine and is wired to the second RT-AC66U. This NAS handles transcoding or Direct Play very nicely. I’ve had up to 7 streams going at one time, with 2 of those transcoding and the NAS handled it all very well. And the routers handled it equally as well.
Wire you PMS machine to your router. Then either wired or WiFi your TV or games console or other play device to the router and you should be good.
4K content is going to add a layer of difficulty that you may not want to go down, at least right away. To keep the storage limited, you probably want to use H265 video codecs, but there really aren’t a lot of devices that support that codec as of yet. And those that do are rather expensive, still. So this means you are probably going to need transcoding H265 to H264 and then you are going to lose some color depth, as well as a few other things In the transcode. Transcoding this is going to take a fairly hefty CPU. Since 4K is actually a screen 4x larger than a 1080p display, (It’s a 2160p display) that means the bitrates are going to be at least 4x greater than most 1080p bitrates. This can seriously choke out some WiFi networks unless you set it up on clear channels with no interference. And transcoding is going to increase CPU requirements significantly.
The X10 can only add media to it’s libraries if that media is connected via the built in USB3.0 connections. Based on the FAQ for this router located here: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/230934267-Netgear-Nighthawk-X10-Router it can handle transcoding only 1 stream at a time, but no specs are given for the bitrates for that stream. This transcoded stream is limited to 480p, so forget about doing 1080p or 4K transcodes on this router. We can infer from that the bitrates are fairly low.
It also seems from the FAQ that the router can’t run any Pass versions, so any of the newer Pass features aren’t going to be available. Not only that, but you can only update to Public Releases vetted by Netgear, so you could be waiting a long time between updates.
Bottom line? Use a GOOD Prosumer router. (There are way too many to list here, but I KNOW the Asus RT-N66U and RT-AC66U and their bigger brothers work VERY well from personal experience.) Use a fairly new PC with a lot of USB3.0 ports or a lot of drive slots open to add HDD’s to. (High end Off-The-Shelf NASes with at least an i3 CPU can work for you, too.) Something with 5K passmarks to 10,000 or 12,000 pasmarks is going to be more than sufficient for most people.
The advantage to an Off-The-Shelf NAS is, as you fill up a drive you can always add external drives to it, and still have a nice system running for less power consumption than some PC’s out there. I have over 30TB of drives on a 4 internal bay NAS. You can make your own and do it cheaper, and have better specs. It all depends on how you want to go about it.
At least now you have some food for thought…
First off, The ReadyNas isn’t a ‘high end’ unit when compared to other more commonly used NAS’s in here. If you want a truly ‘high end’ NAS, capable of transcoding, you’re going to need hardware-transcoding or an i5-class or better processor level of performance. The RNxxx series are ARMv7 and no ARMv7 is going to provide that for you with or without hardware-transcoding. Yes, I’m going to get flamed about this statement but I don’t know your parameters. I am presuming you will want to keep one copy of your media, most likely in 4K (50+ Mbps), on your NAS, and have it transcode on-the-fly for whatever the target device is. This could mean you transcode 4K @ 58 Mbps down to 720p @ 4 Mbps. This is where my statement is rooted.
Synology makes an i3-class machine, QNAP has some powerful unit’s in their ‘Pro’ line. Short of building your own i7/Xeon-class (go big or go home), these are your best options.
As for networking, that’s a lot simpler. If you’re using wifi, use both bands. Put your low priority stuff on 2.4 Ghz. Keep your high priority / high bandwidth on 5 Ghz. Also, use QoS for your television to put it at the top of the priority list. This presumes you aren’t running shielded CAT 6a SFTP ethernet cable from the router to the television over 100 Mbps/gigabit (which is the better choice).
The Nighthawk can move the data. If your walls aren’t too thick and too much signal isn’t lost, you can probably get adequate signal to the TV.
IF you can remove transcoding from the equation, your options increase tremendously. By this I mean you have taken the time to pre-process your media such that it is most likely to not require video transcoding (that’s the killer). Audio transcoding is a lot easier and most of the common NAS units can do the job well. The lower end (approx $300 USD range) can run into issues. High priced but low-end processor units can have the same problems so price is not the issue… CPU is what it’s all about.
I share this with folks who are trying to see what can be done with lower end units. This 2 minute clip is DTS 7.1 audio, 58 Mbps, 4K UHD over Wifi (Linksys) which is some 8 feet (other side of the wall) from the television. The NAS in use is the Synology DS1813+ (2.4 Ghz Atom D2700 CPU). It consumes some 30% of the processor just to send a perfectly prepared audio + video stream to the NAS at that data rate. This is what you’re up against.
I hope this is of help and hasn’t scared you.
Thanks mikeg6.5 and chuckpa for your comments. Unfortunately I did not understand half of what you all said. I am a noob in this realm. Let me state my needs more precisely. I am not wanting to sacrifice performance at all either through compression codecs or other software solutions. I want to play PC Games from my Asus PC (with nvidia GTX 970 video card) to a 4k UHD TV from my PC which is 30 feet away in another room, or maybe streamed from a device such as NVidia Shield which could be right next to the modem and tv. I also want to play 4k UHD movies both from a 4k disk player and streaming from internet (like Netflix) and plex, all in their best glory. I don’t care nearly as much about file size or money required as I do about the quality of the movie or game output. The Media storage would need to be at least 12TB and capable of 4k speeds. So to sum up: TV and modem in one room, pc in another one (too far for Ethernet) and I need 12TB storage minimum for media and games. And flawless smooth operation in 4k speeds. So what would you use specifically? Please don’t ask me to move tv or modem or router as that’s not practical
Well you have different use scenarios! So since today is a holiday in switzerland and I am in generous mood I am going to explain a lot of stuff now. If you aren’t sure about something, try googling it and if you don’t find an answer you can always ask.
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use scenario: Playing games:
You want to play your PC games on your UHD TV in the living room. You have an asus PC which is capable of recent games but isn’t connected by ethernet. A valid option would be to buy a Nvidia Shield TV and hook that one up to your TV, connected to your network preferably via ethernet. You should be able to stream games from your pc to the shield tv (check out the various youtube reviews about nvidia shield, especially the function called game stream). However the bottleneck could be the connection your pc has to your router. No one will be able to guarantee you that it will work flawlessly over wifi. That depends on to many factors (do you have a decent router with ac wifi, does your asus pc have ac wifi, does your asus pc have a good connection, are there many wifis from your neighbours around etc.) To sum it up: wifi is the inferior connection to ethernet and therefore less reliable. However it could work and I am not sure, if the shield allows 4k gamestreaming from your pc (probably not, besides your gtx970 isn’t powerful enough to run recent games in 4k resolution. Assuming your connection Pc->router is fast and reliable enough (which gigabit ethernet would guarantee) streaming in 1080p from your pc to nvidia shield should work. -
use scenario: streaming from netflix in 4k
Use your newly purchased nvidia shielt tv which is wired to your router to stream from netflix in 4k (assuming you have a fast enough internet connection (afaik netflix recommends at least 50Mbit download speed for 4k). -
scenario: storing media
Buy a NAS, it doesn’t have to be powerful but I would recommend a 4-bay or even more bay nas, if you want space for further expansion. Run it in Raid 5 to have at least a bit of protection from one drive failing. Make sure the Nas is connected via ethernet to your router. You can go choose basically any brand you want but I would suggest Synology if you have the extra buck to spare. -
scenario: Plex server
Now you have to decide what you want to be your plex server. If you can’t/don’t want to wire your Asus PC and/or want to share your media with friends while your gaming at your pc we can safely exlude that option.
If you buy an nvidia shield pro (500gb version) you could run your plex server from the shield itself and be able to use it to game, stream from netflix etc. while it is still able to serve your friends or other devices (check out the reviews of plex media server on nvidia shield tv on youtube, google around. There may be some limitations I am not aware of). Alternatively buy a NAS that is powerful enough for also running the plex media server while maintaining transcoding capabilities. Basically find an expensive NAS check out what kind of processor it runs (stay away from any arm, go for intel, the faster the better (i3, xeon etc.) and google the processor name + passmark. You should find a page that tells you the passmark score. A transcode of a 1080p file needs roughly speeking 2500 passmark scores. So decide for yourself. Also make sure to check out this list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MfYoJkiwSqCXg8cm5-Ac4oOLPRtCkgUxU0jdj3tmMPc/edit#gid=314388488
The reason the nvidia shield tv is able to transcode (similar to the wester digital my cloud pro (see list linked above) is that plex was specifically coded for that device to support hardware accelerated transcoding (basically using gpu power or intel quicksync in the case of the WD to transcode).
It probably is cheaper to buy an extra small pc which you run without a display (after initial setup) and connect to via remotedesktop to be your plex media server, if the nvidia shield isn’t up to your needs, instead of a really high end nas and just use a consumer nas for storage purposes. The same rules regarding passmark apply here. You probably want to get a small device with low idle power consumption that can sit next to your tv or anywhere else where it can be connected via ethernet to your router (maybe a Gigabyte Brix Pro, like BXi7-4770R which has around 9500 passmark score.
Thanks, that makes it much clearer. One question though, do you think it would be better to plug the storage nas into the router or the NVidia shield? Going to get the x10 Nighthawk router, so pretty high end AC & the new AD wifi. I’m thinking probably the router would be fastest but not sure.
Also I see that Plex has a native app on NVidia shield as well as on the Nighthawk router but I’m guessing it wont make much difference which one I use for the server? However I do remember that the router has a 10gb Ethernet connection. So maybe the router like you said?
Please don’t think a router can run PMS. It’s a router. Some routers have ‘easy sharing’ capabilities in their firmware which acts as a pure NAS (SMB protocol) for a USB device plugged into it. This is NOT a computation-capable machine. It’s a data shovel made for convenience.
Edit:
If you’re going to plug your media into anything, plug it directly into the machine which is the PMS server. Don’t clutter the network further or overload the router with unnecessary traffic. (this is my personal view)
The above having been said, Yes, it’s possible and supported to run PMS on the X10. I don’t know who’s done it and there are limitations.
I would follow this guide very carefully
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/230934267-Netgear-Nighthawk-X10-Router
Ok thanks, router not a good idea so what do you think about using the NVidia shield as the PMS. I know the best way according to all who responded is to use your computer as PMS but trying to not have a PC in my living room and that’s where the modem and router will be.
My personal opinion:
If you want 4K, wire up every device with ethernet.
Only use WiFi for smaller screens/mobile devices which are only used occasionally.
Once you have the ethernet wires in place, it is largely irrelevant where certain components are located. Put your server into the cellar if you must. 
It won’t matter, because your network is solid and has a guaranteed bandwidth. 
Don’t expect any embedded device being able to transcode 4K video any time soon.
Even full-blown PC devices will struggle with this currently.
I don’t think your goals are consistent with reality: “The Media storage would need to be at least 12TB and capable of 4k speeds. So to sum up: TV and modem in one room, pc in another one (too far for Ethernet) and I need 12TB storage minimum for media and games. And flawless smooth operation in 4k speeds.”
This implies you desire to use WiFi for the networking component on your PC, which would be streaming 4K content to a TV through that connection. Is this correct?
If so, the WiFi is going to be the biggest hurdle to over-come. As most 4K content is in the range of 45-60+Mbps it’s going to require a WiFi connection that has absolutely no interference, as well as a pristinely clean signal. Hard to do in this day and age where everyone and his brother is running a WiFI hotspot for their homes. (Or microwave ovens, or 2.4Ghz keyboards, mice, phones, etc.) And this doesn’t take into account the signal attenuation from it passing through walls, etc.
Regardless of how this is accomplished, you keep coming back to low end hardware to run PMS on. Or perhaps I should say hardware that isn’t capable of more than just a few streams at a time, and very few of them transcoded. Check out the limitations of the NVidia Shield here: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/221099648-Limitations-When-Running-Plex-Media-Server-on-NVIDIA-SHIELD
At best I would consider this a mediocre server to run PMS on, and that’s only if you have all of your media in the right codecs to start with. The odds are better than 50/50 you are going to try VC-1 or some other codec which isn’t supported by the device and then be upset it’s not working correctly, based on the discussions you have already raised about this and other topics…
Stop looking for shortcuts. If you want a truly capable PMS system you need to look at a serious CPU in the i5 to i7 range, with at least 5K or more passmarks. (Better off with 10K or 12K passmarks, for extra over-head.) Wire whatever device you get directly to your router, so it is has the most stable and consistent pipe to the network you can give it. If that means relocating equipment, then that’s what you should be looking to do. As you are concerned with 4K content almost to exclusion, I would also suggest looking at Link Aggregating 2 NICs on this machine for the best possible network it could have.
Both the X10 router and the NVidia Shield are marketing hype. (IMO) They get you looking at Plex and then when you find out the limitations of these devices, you buy another and with it a Plex Pass. For those running some truly large systems, the fact these came out before some of the glaring bugs or outstanding requests have been resolved can be seen as a slap in the face. It’s likely not going to be long before these 2 devices aren’t supported any longer, either through their manufacturer or through the Plex Team itself. Hardware like this tends to EoL rather quickly these days.
My GrandPappy used to say “S__T or get off the pot.” You are dithering between fad tech and are looking for the easy answer. There isn’t one. You want a system to do what you want it to do? Spend the money to get it, wire it up correctly and then sit back and enjoy. Anything else is wasted energy.
@bchick3 said:
TV and modem in one room, pc in another one (too far for Ethernet)
This makes no sense. Gigabit Ethernet is specified for wire lengths of up to ~90 meters.
How big is your house? 
I read that as too far for him to run the wire. Either he doesn’t want to string it around the house, or isn’t aware you can use conduits and other means to hide it along floors and ceilings. Or he’s only got 4’-6’ Cat 6 cables and doesn’t know you can buy it in 1000’ rolls.
Thanks for all the advice and what you all are saying makes sense about direct wired everything. Guesss I just didn’t want to hire an electrician to route the wires though the house and walls aand each room. That’s why I was looking at a very good router. Plus the wireless router gives me the ability to share movies and games with guests and my tablet. Maybe I will just have to bite the bullet and run thee wires. I should ask that if I were to connect the media storage to the router, shield, or directly to the TV, would you still recommend running wires? The TV is the only device that would be capable of displaying 4k anyway. What do you think?
@bchick3 said:
I should ask that if I were to connect the media storage to the router, shield, or directly to the TV, would you still recommend running wires? The TV is the only device that would be capable of displaying 4k anyway. What do you think?
Home networks always have a tendency to grow.
Sooner or later you want to add more devices. Don’t forget that you want to add your router / WiFi access point. It also needs at least one wire.
So, to be on the safe side, wire it up anyway. You can DIY, there are no voltages over 40 volts involved so no regulations apply.
One more question. If I do direct wire everything, I should have the nas or storage device connected to my PC, correct? I guess I still don’t fully understand when/how transcoding takes place. Will it still be an issue if everything is direct wired?
Ok reading the answers again, I have one person saying plug storage into the router and another saying to plug it into whichever device I am running PMS. Since it sounds like I should not run PMS from the router or NVidia shield, it looks like I will need to run it from the PC. Sorry for the endless questions its just there are so many things to consider and they all interact with each other in some waay.
It depends what type of storage you’ll have.
Normal hard disks are best plugged into the Plex server directly.
If you’ll have a NAS device, you can place it anywhere and just connect it to your wired Ethernet home network. The central ‘hub’ which connects all the ethernet wired devices together, may be either your router or a stand-alone ‘ethernet switch’. They come in 4, 8, 24 or 48 port configurations.
(clarification: most routers have an integrated ethernet switch)
I suppose the question begs to be asked…
What are you running PMS on now? Does it fulfill your needs? Or did you buy a Plex Pass on the speculation that this is the route you want to go?
Buying the router you were looking at would run you $500 or more. And it’s going to take USB storage in any case. The Nvidia Shield? No clue what they are worth. Too much hype to even interest me in looking them up. An off-the-shelf NAS? To get one to do what you want, $1300+ before drives. $2000+ with a few drives in it.
Very few NASes out there can handle running PMS at the same time they are transcoding content. And there are only a couple that can handle transcoding 4K, and those are the proverbial arm and leg for cost. If you just intend to have a NAS to house the data and use a PC for PMS, then you want to ensure you have both set up with the fastest WIRED connection to each other you can get. Otherwise your movies could buffer simply because your network can’t support the traffic. This is especially a problem on WiFi with interference sources, or through walls.
You want to get something that works well for your layout? Go to WalMart, BestBuy or whatever big box store you have locally to you and buy a laptop with an i7 CPU in it. Install PMS on it. Hang an external drive on one of it’s USB 3.0 ports and put your movies on the external drive. Buy a Prosumer router that has good reviews from numerous sites. (I am partial to Asus, and can heartily recommend the RT-AC66U or 68U.) WIRE the laptop to the router. WIRE the TV to the router.
You can get your system up and running for under $1400 or so. Need more drive space later on? Throw another external drive onto another USB 3.0 port when the first one starts getting full. Simple, scalable and relatively cheap.
Not going to talk about running the wires yourself. There are entirely too many instructables on how to do this. Google is your friend.
Thanks mikeg6.5, Right now I have PMS and storage (internal HDD) on my Asus PC and use Asus RT AC dual band router to connect wirelessly to tv and tablet/phone. Works fine streaming Netflix and Plex up to 1080p (at least I haven’t had any issues yet). What started this whole discussion is that I want to upgrade my tv to 4k UHD and I want to have an easy way to play PC games on the TV. That’s why I was considering an NAS (for the massive storage) and NVidia shield for the plex/game/4k streaming hub. I’m probably making this harder than it has to be.
