Most Effective Way To Play/Stream Media on TV

[Commander Llama]

So I have a pretty plain old Samsung HDTV in my living room that the household likes to watch movies and such on. I got rid of my Xbox One because it was a dust collector, and I now use Netflix on my WiiU. No problem there. The problem is we used to watch Blu-Rays, but the WiiU can't do that. I've went ahead and digitized my whole collection, but now I'm wondering what is the most effective method for playing these high quality, 1080p movies on my TV from my desktop across the house.

 

Effective means:

 

1) plays high bitrate 1080p content without a hitch (bonus: future proofed for 4K)

2) cost effective (I don't want to build an HTPC that ends up being more expensive than a console, for instance)

 

I have a gigabit home network, and I also have a Chromecast on the TV. The Chromecast only does 720p through Videostream though. I've been thinking of installing Plex on my desktop, but does Plex for Chromecast also cap at 720p?

 

Should I get a NAS and install Plex through that? HTPC?

 

Choices, choices, and I'm just not sure. 

[jscottyh]

AFAIK Plex does not have a streaming limit on your home network. You can adjust the streaming quality to devices outside the network (For me I sometimes stream movies from my desktop to my phone while I'm on the train heading to work.) Streaming 1080p movies does take a bit more processing power. Depending on what CPU you have (i3 or better to Phenom II or better) it shouldn't have any problems transcoding the 1080p files. I use plex with my chromecast all the time but I haven't heard of anything with a 720p cap on streaming to chromecast.

 

You have to be careful on your choice of NAS when doing the streaming route. Most NAS processors are not powerful enough to stream 1080p. I have owned a Synology NAS thinking I could offload media transcoding to that. But what I learned is that the Intel Atom processor couldn't cope with ANY HD media. So if you go the NAS route, check the processor specs. Once you start going into a NAS with an i3 processor in it, the price goes up quite a bit.

 

EDIT: Just seen your system specs, If you stream from your desktop, you will have no problems with 1080p or 4k when that time comes.

[Commander Llama]

AFAIK Plex does not have a streaming limit on your home network. You can adjust the streaming quality to devices outside the network (For me I sometimes stream movies from my desktop to my phone while I'm on the train heading to work.) Streaming 1080p movies does take a bit more processing power. Depending on what CPU you have (i3 or better to Phenom II or better) it shouldn't have any problems transcoding the 1080p files. I use plex with my chromecast all the time but I haven't heard of anything with a 720p cap on streaming to chromecast.

 

You have to be careful on your choice of NAS when doing the streaming route. Most NAS processors are not powerful enough to stream 1080p. I have owned a Synology NAS thinking I could offload media transcoding to that. But what I learned is that the Intel Atom processor couldn't cope with ANY HD media. So if you go the NAS route, check the processor specs. Once you start going into a NAS with an i3 processor in it, the price goes up quite a bit.

 

Thanks for the input. For some reason the Videostream app for Chromecast has maximum of 720p streaming. The benefit was that it accepted literally any file format. But all my movies and shows are the same format nowadays, and Plex-friendly.

 

My processor should be able to handle it, sounds like I'll avoid a NAS most likely. And if Plex to Chromecast has no cap, guess I'll do some testing and see. Thanks again.

[Rmusic10891]

I'll throw this out there.  I've had a slew of issues with high bitrate 1080p content streaming. Depending on your 1080p source (Full quality blu-ray rips in an MKV wrapper) you could have some issues with playback. HTPC's are probably your best option, or possibly even something like a NUC. I've run into issues with the Roku 3, Raspberry Pi, and my Samsung 6500 not being able to decode the DTS audio tracks.  Even with plex transcoding the issue isn't resolved. Just something to bear in mind if you don't want to re-encode the audio tracks.

[techguru]

So I have a pretty plain old Samsung HDTV in my living room that the household likes to watch movies and such on. I got rid of my Xbox One because it was a dust collector, and I now use Netflix on my WiiU. No problem there. The problem is we used to watch Blu-Rays, but the WiiU can't do that. I've went ahead and digitized my whole collection, but now I'm wondering what is the most effective method for playing these high quality, 1080p movies on my TV from my desktop across the house.

 

Effective means:

 

1) plays high bitrate 1080p content without a hitch (bonus: future proofed for 4K)

2) cost effective (I don't want to build an HTPC that ends up being more expensive than a console, for instance)

 

I have a gigabit home network, and I also have a Chromecast on the TV. The Chromecast only does 720p through Videostream though. I've been thinking of installing Plex on my desktop, but does Plex for Chromecast also cap at 720p?

 

Should I get a NAS and install Plex through that? HTPC?

 

Choices, choices, and I'm just not sure. 

a cheap i3 htpc with a gpu capable of decoding h265/4k/1080p content

if you have ripped the bd's to iso file..then you can just play them directly on KODI on the htpc

[Commander Llama]

I'll throw this out there.  I've had a slew of issues with high bitrate 1080p content streaming. Depending on your 1080p source (Full quality blu-ray rips in an MKV wrapper) you could have some issues with playback. HTPC's are probably your best option, or possibly even something like a NUC. I've run into issues with the Roku 3, Raspberry Pi, and my Samsung 6500 not being able to decode the DTS audio tracks.  Even with plex transcoding the issue isn't resolved. Just something to bear in mind if you don't want to re-encode the audio tracks.

 

I started with the full quality Blu-Ray rips, but given the size of my collection, I didn't want to invest into that many hard drives. After ripping to MKV, I encoded each one into much smaller MP4 files. I can't tell the difference between the 30GB file and the 4-5GB file, honestly.

[Rmusic10891]

I started with the full quality Blu-Ray rips, but given the size of my collection, I didn't want to invest into that many hard drives. After ripping to MKV, I encoded each one into much smaller MP4 files. I can't tell the difference between the 30GB file and the 4-5GB file, honestly.

I think a lot of that tends to do with what you watch and how you watch it. I tend to watch a lot of action/drama movies with a lot of moving action and darker shadows.  That on a large high quality TV makes the compression artifacts stand out and easy to spot even from across the room.  If you're watching a bunch of bright Anime or something, maybe not as much of a big deal.

[Holford]

If you have another media device (Android TV, Xbox One, etc) that can handle the Plex App (and export above 720p), I'd recommend sticking with it. I run Plex (with Plex Pass) for media streaming in full 1080p quality, at 20mb/sec over my home network, without issue via my Xbox One. This includes MKV and MP4, with hard and soft coded subtitle content playing without issue, even with live transcoding of content.

[michrech]

Being as I have a Plex Media Server setup in my home, I'll add my two cents.  

If you obtain a Plex client that can handle the original content, the Plex Media Server will not have to do *any* transcoding, which means it can be a fairly low power device.  In my case, I have an HP Stream Mini 200-010 connected to my living room TV (I use Plex Home Theater on it) -- This device is used only when I watch movies, as it is capable of processing / passing the DD/DTS audio properly.  

 

I recently added a Nexus Player to my living room TV, as I had read that the recent Plex app updates have added the capability to pass DD/DTS audio.  This is something for which I still need to do some testing.  The few minutes I've spent with it seem promising.

 

If you go the Stream Mini 200-010 route, either plug it into your wired network, or do yourself a favor and order an Intel m.2 NIC with it, as the NIC it comes with is *garbage*.  I purchased this for mine : http://amzn.com/B00GUNZUG0

I configured Windows to auto-log on, and I threw PHT into the "Startup" folder so that it'd boot and then immediately go into PHT.  What's nice is, if you have the Plex app on an Android phone/tablet, you can control PHT from it.  Since Plex Media Server also has a web interface, you can *also* control PHT from there (so long as you're on the same network).

My mom was so impressed with how easy it is to navigate that she actually allowed her husband to have me build a PMS/PHT system for their house.  
 

Additionally, I have a FireTV Stick in my bedroom (that TV is usually used for 30-60 minutes each night, as I "wind down" to go to sleep, and doesn't have a surround sound setup).  When I travel, I bring the FireTV Stick with me and use it in the hotel while connected to the hotspot on my cell phone, so I can still watch my media while away from home.  I also occasionally use it on my tablet.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask!