Yeah, I've read about transcoding and I certainly don't want that!
I'm all about picture quality and awesome sound!
I hate watching films via the various streaming services as the quality is just not there....then there's the sound. It's just awful.
Dolby Digital is the best you can get which is adequate I guess.
At least DDenables my dual subs to sing! data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
My wife doesn't get it at all but it's my thing so..data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
God the set up I would have if I had a good few quid! But that's a different topic .data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
If you are all about PQ and awesome sound, why overcomplicate it? Put a disk in a player and cut out all of the faff.
I understand it’s cool to be able to pull up your library on a big screen, with all of the screen scrapes, I’ve been there. But for me watching a BD or 4K now is a bit like the vinyl experience, the act of physically handling and playing the media adds to the experience.
I totally get where you're coming from and maybe you're right. Well, you ARE right really. I have an OPPO 203 which I love and I guess I would be sacrificing such a good component in my system by not using it.
It's just the ease of accessing my movies which is swaying it for me.
I know, it's lazy. data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
I'm a bit of an addict when it comes to movies and music and when I see an item I like the look of, I go into "must buy must try" mode.....data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
I get you and these forums do not help. I am often the same and have been down this path so many times. But as I have got older (and I work in Space / Aerospace / Military Engineering) I have begun to realise that there is much to be said for simplicity of process. Over-complicating engineering often leads to modes of failure that we neither expected or anticipated. And I see the same here.
You have a state of the art, best in its class, source component. It delivers almost perfect PQ and is flawless in its execution. Do you really want to trade that for 'second best' ? For the sake of looking pretty?
I guess the decision is ultimately yours.
Oh and ask yourself this, 'How many times a year do/will I watch the same movie? Base this on what you have done previously, not what you think you will do (because you wont).
I'm totally for the convenience of playing something immediately. Same with music for me too. You don't have any of the disc loading trailers or menus or waiting for the BluRay to connect to the web etc. Just straight into the movie, no messing.
You see for me the trailers and menus are part of the experience. I like to look at the extras. I like to see whats coming up. Its the difference between a Cinema type experience (trailers, etc) and a TV type experience (..and the next program is).
I loved LPs, I would savour the album art, read all the extras and lyric sheets and generally enjoy the whole experience of a new album. CD to a degree and streaming entirely has taken all of that magic away. I feel that it has devalued buying music. This is similar (for me).
I hate trailers. I really hate forced trailers. I don't want to watch trailers I've seen on that same disc I bought 6 years ago with its 6-year-old trailers I've seen multiple times already.
I don't even want to watch trailers for new movies as they're now showing you all the best bits, have spoilers in them and ruin the plotline.
@Sloppy Bob don't get me wrong I am a total hypocrite here. I have my entire CD collection ripped to Flac and my 24/192 Studio Master Flacsall on my Synology. This mainly for convenience of playing music around the house, so i understand your position. I do actually still like playing CDs and will deliberately put a CD on, rather than streaming it, not for musical reasons, but to just listen to an Album in its entirety, without getting distracted (which is very easy with a digital library).
I have Spotify, but dont use it, but will stream radio stations, mainly because its convenient and the quality is generally better.
I guess we all consume media in different ways, for different reasons.
I have the Fujitsu TX1310 M1 with 24GB ram and Xeon E3 1226v3 processor.
It runs 4k movies without any issues (no need to transcode as it plays directly) through the nvidia shield using Kodi or plex.
It's not running the 4K movies though, the Shield is doing all the hard work. Your server is just serving data and could do that with a fraction of the RAM and a lower power processor.
Where your sever would come into play would be if you were using a Plex app on a device or your TV and it had to transcode. That would be the server doing the hard work.