jimmyca69
Active Member
Morning all,
I have run various HTPC's for the past 12 years roughly and currently I have a modest setup now which runs as a Plex media server. Spec is a an i5 processor, 4gb DDR3, RAM with 4TB of disk space and running Windows 7. It is sat on a home network (100mb/s speeds) with me using Plex apps on 4 smart TVs (all LG so running latest LG OS) to view content.
Recently when trying to watch 4K content from Plex via the app on my LG OLED55B7 it was struggling, on research it seems that the LG Plex apps will need 4k content to be transcoded and the spec of my HTPC simply won't be capable of that unless I upgrade to a CPU spec around the 17,000 score on passmark. Whilst looking into options I came across some further info that I wasn't aware of as I have done little research in the last 5 years!
1) HTPC's seem to be dying off somewhat
2) Alternative solutions such as NVidia Shields etc seem to offer much better solutions as able to stream 4k content (think there is a particular format that means they can dont need to transcode?)
My initial thoughts were that if I wanted to run 4k content that I dont invest in upgrading the HTPC but look at a setup with an NVidia Shield, or equivalent, connected directly to the OLED TV running Plex Server. Then having a local network NAS for storage of the content. In theory it would mean the 4k content would run fine on the OLED (only 4k tv in house) but would still allow the others to connect to the Plex Server and storage to run content via the Plex apps on the TVs?
Is this a viable option? any other options including alternatives to the Nvidia Shield as well?
I have run various HTPC's for the past 12 years roughly and currently I have a modest setup now which runs as a Plex media server. Spec is a an i5 processor, 4gb DDR3, RAM with 4TB of disk space and running Windows 7. It is sat on a home network (100mb/s speeds) with me using Plex apps on 4 smart TVs (all LG so running latest LG OS) to view content.
Recently when trying to watch 4K content from Plex via the app on my LG OLED55B7 it was struggling, on research it seems that the LG Plex apps will need 4k content to be transcoded and the spec of my HTPC simply won't be capable of that unless I upgrade to a CPU spec around the 17,000 score on passmark. Whilst looking into options I came across some further info that I wasn't aware of as I have done little research in the last 5 years!
1) HTPC's seem to be dying off somewhat
2) Alternative solutions such as NVidia Shields etc seem to offer much better solutions as able to stream 4k content (think there is a particular format that means they can dont need to transcode?)
My initial thoughts were that if I wanted to run 4k content that I dont invest in upgrading the HTPC but look at a setup with an NVidia Shield, or equivalent, connected directly to the OLED TV running Plex Server. Then having a local network NAS for storage of the content. In theory it would mean the 4k content would run fine on the OLED (only 4k tv in house) but would still allow the others to connect to the Plex Server and storage to run content via the Plex apps on the TVs?
Is this a viable option? any other options including alternatives to the Nvidia Shield as well?