Plex - NVidia Shield - Kodi?


Robot

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Hi! I hope this is the right place to post this thread :)

I use unRAID for my job, but half a year ago I decided to start moving my blurays to a new share and installed an official Plex docker. This christmas we got a new TV (4K, HDR, blah blah) and ditched all my old hardware.

 

Now, I've been reading that the NVidia Shield is the best hardware there is for this purpose, but I've also read it has some problems with Plex? All threads I find are from ~2017, so I'm not sure what the current state is.

 

Any advice on this? Is the NVidia Shield (non pro) gonna be a good match for this?

Will I be forced to use Kodi instead? Or buy a different box?

Thank you!

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On 1/3/2020 at 7:31 PM, Xaero said:

What TV did you get? A lot of the SmartTVs on the market have Plex available for them natively now.

 

Hi! I got an LG C9, but the Plex app is... well, I'm not really a fan. After searching online I found that it's not one of the best clients and has potential problems with HDR and 4K, which is a bummer since that's what I intend to watch the most :/

 

Thanks!

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I'm reading this as a client for plex, whilst the shield can be a server, a new unraid build is far superior imo so I wouldn't throw more than the odd file locally.

 

Smart tvs are okay and can play reasonably well, I've got an older sony bravia that plays most things but the Shield is a beast.  You'll find it a lot more responsive, a lot less crashes/timeouts and it has awesome compatibility.    It can handle 4k HEVC, etc. and doesn't break a sweat.  If you have the budget, I'd strongly recommend the purchase of a Nvidia Shield.   I have the old model, there's a new one with a better remote.

 

The only 'problem' I have encountered is the Plex app doesn't have full compatibility with the Shields native audio codecs (afaik, this is a problem with Plex app), so sometimes it transcodes when it shouldn't.  For that reason I have kodi with the plex plugin, as kodi correctly sends audio codec support to the server.

Edited by spamalam
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I have 2 Nvidia Shields and love them. Actually recently went from Kodi to Plex as I have having issues with Kodi and so far happy going to Plex.

I am running a Plex docker on my unraid. The Nvidia shield can be a server if you don't want to run it on your unraid server. I like the ease of having a shared library that I can keep track of between both shield TV's by running the Plex docker on unraid.

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

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The Shield is the best client for Plex - you won't find better for the price, and probably if you are ok spending a bit more.  Everything works flawlessly 99.999% of the time for me and Plex+Shield is a great combo.

 

Re Plex V Kodi, the only reason I sonetimes use Kodi is the TVH/DVB-T/PVR functionality/support is better, but Plex is catching up fast and is good enough to be my main PVR now as I hate switching apps.

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Hi! I didn't want to respond yet, since I've been trying out the native LG C9 Plex app during this last week. It works. It direct plays everything I've tried, from HD to 4K and also HDR.

 

The problem I've encountered is that it sometimes stops the playback to buffer. It happened a lot with The Lion King 4K HDR for instance. It could play the movie perfectly for 35 minutes and then pause to buffer like 4 times during a 2 minute period. I've read it might be related to subtitles (I turned all of them off) or True HD audio tracks I think (I tried both DTS and AC3).

 

The TV is wired connected to a router acting as a repeater. I've ran speedtests on a Mac Mini which is also connected to this same router and I get around 250/300 DL/UL speeds (main router has 600/600), so I assume the connection to the main router (the one unRAID is connected to) is perfectly fine.

For some reason this TV doens't have a 1 gigabit ethernet port, just 100Mbps. It should be plenty enough though, specially since the Lion King Movie is "just" 54Mbps for 4K HDR.

 

My deduction then is that it's related to the native Plex app on the TV?

I might go for a Shield, I won't accept having pauses during a movie to buffer, I just liked the idea of using LG's remote for everything. The shield will add another remote and although not really a problem, it's an inconvenience. On the other hand I'd get a better 1080p scaling with the Shield as far as I know, so that's nice.

 

Thanks!

 

P.S: In case I buy the Shield and buffer still happens I'll update thread.

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