New home set up help.

Gurky · June 27, 2021

Afternoon all!

I move in a few weeks and will be looking to get the living room movies ready! I have narrowed down the TV to the Samsung Neo 65 (Maybe 75) QN95A or the Neo 65Q800A and for sound the Samsung HW-Q950A. My next question is what I'm going to watch?! Now if I'm going good TV I want a great picture! So the logical step is Blu-Ray but the Blu-Ray market is crazy to pick from I know I'd need HDR10+ but no need for Dolby Vision. Or wold I bet better "acquiring" my Blu-rays online and using a Plex server? If so do I get a small PC for the living room or a Nvidia Shield Pro? I want to be able to play 4k Blu-Ray is the Shield able to do that? If I got a PC will it need to be beefy? Or just I just have a USB in the TV with my movies?

Any help would be great I just want the best picture possible I don't mind messing a little to get that.

tikker · June 27, 2021

What kind of setup are you looking to get? The easiest and best picture quality would indeed be to get a UHD capable Blu-ray player. What will your sound solution be?

Plex will depend a lot on how capable the receiving devices are. Worst case scenario if your TV doesn't understand the incoming video format it will start transcoding video, which will require a beefy computer if you're doing UHD (HDR it either cannot transcode or needs the paid subscription and a GPU, I don't remember exactly). The Shield can help with that as it understands many formats (but still requires other audio devices if you're dealing with fancy audio such as DD+, TrueHD etc. as it doesn't understand that). Keep in mind that UHD Blu-ray rips are huge though. So if you plan to rip your Blu-ray collection or something do account for ~80 GB on average per movie if you keep the original quality.

Donut417 · June 27, 2021

5 hours ago, Gurky said:

f so do I get a small PC for the living room or a Nvidia Shield Pro? I want to be able to play 4k Blu-Ray is the Shield able to do that? If I got a PC will it need to be beefy? Or just I just have a USB in the TV with my movies?

With Plex you essential have to rip your Blurays to a hard disk that Plex has access to. You need to make sure these rips are in a format that the device you are streaming to understands OR Plex will have to transcode. Transcoding requires potentially a lot of horsepower if your talking 4K content. You will require a Plex pass purchase if you want to use Hardware transcoding on a GPU. As far as GPU transcoding is concerned any modern day Intel iGPU should be able to do it, Nvidia GPU's can do it and some modern day AMD cards (Windows Only) can do it.

Plex operates thru your home network. So really you dont need to have a Plex server directly connected to the TV. As long as the Plex server is wired to your router you should be fine. I have heard that 4K content depending on quality can defiantly be over 100 Mbps of activity per stream on your network. The reason I mention this is because a lot of streaming devices on have 10/100 Ethernet ports, to bear that in mind. There are tons of devices that can play 4K content. I have a 4K Fire Stick. Roku has its own thing. Nvidia has the shield. You can play on a PC via a web browser. You just need to figure out what device you want to use.

The other option you have is a 4K Blueray player or a game console if you can find one.

Gurky · June 28, 2021

17 hours ago, tikker said:

What will your sound solution be?

HW-Q950A From Samsung.

17 hours ago, tikker said:

So if you plan to rip your Blu-ray collection or something do account for ~80 GB on average per movie if you keep the original quality.

I don't mind needing a lot of storage due to being able to get hold of high capacity drives!

17 hours ago, tikker said:

Worst case scenario if your TV doesn't understand the incoming video format it will start transcoding

Is there a best format to use? The TV would be a Samsung Neo QLED.

tikker · June 28, 2021

50 minutes ago, Gurky said:

HW-Q950A From Samsung.

Dang that's an expensive soundbar. Good news is that it understand the fancy sound formats like Dolby Atmos, TrueHD, DTS(:X) and such and can do 4k passthrough, so you can do Blu-ray player > soundbar > TV then or Shield > soundbar > TV and enjoy them without transcoding anything at all (in case of Shield that is, Blu-ray players don't transcode :P).

50 minutes ago, Gurky said:

I don't mind needing a lot of storage due to being able to get hold of high capacity drives!

Just something to keep in mind depending on your hoarding habits and how often you get new movies.

50 minutes ago, Gurky said:

Is there a best format to use? The TV would be a Samsung Neo QLED.

Should be fine with standard format and MKV containers I guess. The TV is new enough. That's what a Shield will easily circumvent should you choose the Plex route, it understands a wide range of formats and what it doesn't it can pass-through to something that does (if you have if of course). I have a similar setup with Shield > AVR > TV and this combo plays back basically everything I throw at it without having to transcode.