"paul lee"  wrote in message
news:497943163@f420.n105.z1.binkp.net...
> I had setup an Open Media Vault on a Raspberry Pi 3, which I know doesn't
> have
> gigabit ethernet...
>
> I use cheap USB Hard Drives, 2 x 4TB Seagates...
>
> I run a PLEX server and, although I'm sure I don't have awesome 4k content
> [Probably not even all 1080p!], it seems to work just fine for streaming
> to ONE
> television at a time.

Do you find that the RPi3 acting as a Plex server is powerful enough to
transcode recordings from the format in which you recorded them (MPEG TS or
H264 TS) into whatever esoteric format Plex clients require?

I found that even a RPi4 gets very hot and runs at very high CPU % if it has
to do any transcoding. Using the Plex client on a Roku box, it seems that it
will play SD recordings (MPEG TS) natively but has to transcode HD
recordings (H264 TS). I suppose this is an improvement over Windows, where
it seems to transcode everything.

Why did Plex devise a client-server architecture where the client cannot
play the files in their native form, but must instead get the server to
transcode them? Is there a format that recordings could be converted to
(offline) which allows them to be played without transcoding? What a faff
having to do that for every file of my several TB of recordings...

At least on RPi4, VLC will run fast enough to play either SD or HD TS files,
either from a local disk or over Ethernet/SMB. All I need to do is to get
the sound to work - either via the analogue output or via the HDMI lead to
my TV. I may end up binning PLex server and playing to the TV over VLC on
the Pi - at least VLC can play whatever file format is available.

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