Welcome to the Plex forums.
A friendly reminder that using harsh language is a good way to get banned from this forum. The moderators have no qualms about doing so.
Regarding your question about the Shield, one reason for ownership is the ability to bitstream the TrueHD + Atmos and dts/-HD/:X audio formats.
There are two forms of Atmos for home theaters: “Streaming Atmos,” used by Netflix, et al, which is Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 + Atmos; and “Blu-ray Atmos,” the version found on Blu-ray discs, which is TrueHD 7.1 + Atmos.
Due to LG restrictions, no app, Plex included, can pass TrueHD, including TrueHD + Atmos, audio to attached audio equipment, even when HDMI-eARC is in use. Based on posts in this and other forums, the restriction appears to be due to a hardware limitation in the LG TV.
A second reason is for support of dts and dts-HD audio. LG recently dropped support for dts audio from their TVs. Because of this, Plex now transcodes dts audio when it is played via the Plex app.
For older LG TVs that support dts audio, the lossy dts 5.1 core can be passed via HDMI-ARC/eARC. However, dts-HD/dts:X audio faces the same restrictions as TrueHD audio. In this case, the Plex app passes the lossy dts core, discarding the lossless portions of the stream.
The number of devices that can bitstream (passthrough) both types of Atmos and dts-HD/:X audio is very limited. Adding 4K HDR video into the mix restricts the list even further, even if you put DV aside and just focus on HDR10.
At the end of the day, the only viable off the shelf device is the Nvidia Shield Pro. It is not without its own limitations, and many things, Dolby Vision included, are still a work in progress.
Hopefully this answers some of your questions as to why some Plex users prefer the Shield to other clients.
The thread linked below has additional information you may find useful.
Again, welcome to the forum. Participate as much or as little as you like. Just watch the salty language.
