need input on hardware for plex

[towncarblue]

my friend has a plex setup in his bedroom. all of his files are 1080p mkv.
its on a pc with a Intel Pentium G2030 and a HD5450 video card. 4gb ram
he has his pc hooked up to a tv via extended desktop. all of the videos play fine. he has plex on his own network only

my friend recently got himself a vizio e60-c3 hdtv for his living room.
we opened the plex app {tv} and tried to play videos from his bedroom. the
videos would start playing and then freeze . i went home and got my smart blu-ray player , same issue
i went home and got my ASUS RT-AC56U [ his is a verizon modem/router with only 802.11g speeds } to check the wifi signal. it wasnt the router.

i noticed that his cpu usage would jump to 99% and stay there until the vizio
video would freeze. ( it would take 30 seconds to 6 minutes)
i think his pc is not powerful enough to transcode the video and send it to his living room.

what options does he have ?
should he just upgrade his cpu and mobo ?
or
should he get a chromebox and install plex home theater ? i think the chromebox should do its own transcoding , not sure though ?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I'm suspicious that the CPU should still be good enough for a single HD stream. (Plex suggests a 2.4GHz C2D minimum. A 3GHz IVB Dualie shouldn't be breaking a sweat.)

What formats are the mkvs containers for? (h.264/245? mp3/aac audio?) That actually determines whether or not the plex server decides to transcode or not.

Before you spend money, I'd bring over or use a device of some sort (laptop? another computer?) that you know can play the videos on its own and see if you can duplicate the behavior when you know for sure there's no transcoding going on. (Plex server CPU should be fairly low.)

What OS is the plex server running?

 

[Ken g6]

My first question is, why do the videos have to be re-encoded for the TV? I wonder if it's just a container mismatch issue? I'd try putting one of the videos in an mpeg4 container with AviDemux (copy, no re-encoding), and see if it plays better.

If that doesn't work, I'd just upgrade the CPU. Is it a normal-sized PC or is it extra-small? What's his budget?

 

[JeffMD]

Ken, it looks like one attempt was using the smart tv and the other was the blue ray player, both probably tried using DLNA. So yes, plex was forced to transcode.

That said, G2030 seems to have enough power to do a 1080p stream, did the videos also have a DTS or AC3 stream that needed transcoding? I know it was a DTS soundtrack that did it in for my old laptop that I was using as a server.

 

[towncarblue]

well...
i took my chromebox to my friend's house today, after i logged in to my friends account i started playing some of his videos. it worked flawlessly, no high cpu usage in his bedroom. his pc was not strained because the chromebox did all the work/if any. i went and got my samsung blu-ray player and it also worked flawlessly.
the issues happen when i try to use the vizio tv and the sony blu-ray player.
i guess they have no mkv support at all. ima try avidemux as requested and see if the vizio wil play it
some of the them are DTS. i tried using various mkv's with various audio formats and still no luck.
also how do i check if the sony blu-ray and the vizio tv are using DLNA ??

 

[dave_the_nerd]

also how do i check if the sony blu-ray and the vizio tv are using DLNA ??

If you're not using a Plex App of some kind, they're using DLNA.

 

[towncarblue]

i am using the plex app.
i went and disabled dlna from plex { bedroom pc }.
the pc still running at 99% [plex transcoder] while video is playing on the vizio

I just bought a roku 3 to try it out. Still kept using the pc to transcode Will return back to
Costco tomorrow.��

 

[towncarblue]

i had to use handbrake with their high profile setting, h.264 level 4.0 and web optimized.
now the video plays without any transcoding from the pc .
my friend is gonna have to convert all of the video files

 

[Raduque]

I use Plex on my server to stream my video collection to Rokus. The Plex app works great, and if I transcode everything to 720p, it plays without an issue.

My server uses a Conroe E6300 1.8ghz. Transcoding 1080p (or using Plex DLNA transcoding) doesn't work very well. I have considered re-overclocking that PC, because it ran for almost 7 years at 2.8ghz with no issue. 2.8 would probably be enough grunt to do 1080p transcoding and DLNA.