PC Tech Thread

Oh...

And Plex hardware transcoding information:

• Nvidia Shield supports it https://support.plex.tv/articles/221099648-limitations-when-running-plex-media-server-on-nvidia-shield/ but has storage considerations (mostly... get the Shield Pro and use the NAS for storage)
  
• Most Synology NAS do not support it
  
• Most QNAP NAS support it sometimes (lower resolutions, best support on the TVS models which are more expensive business models)
  
  

There's a big datasheet on Plex and NAS support for transcoding features https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MfYoJkiwSqCXg8cm5-Ac4oOLPRtCkgUxU0jdj3tmMPc/edit#gid=1274624273

the tl;dr of that spreadsheet is that some QNAP NAS devices (higher priced ones) do OK... Synology do bad, most will struggle to do anything at a high resolution and your Plex server will likely refuse to play (or crash - which is what happened with mine).

Shield gets your further... but only for some codecs.

Hence... once I'd acquired enough media to encounter these restrictions, I went for a fanless PC to run Plex.