Amazon Fire TV re-visited

Hi there

I've found the BOX (2nd Gen) absolutely fine

Extra features with VLC I only discovered the other day

1) Will attempt to find and download subtitles wherever possible -- gives me a good success rate -- can download in a variety of languages.

2) Will play ISO directly if the ISO files are stored on HDD on your LAN.

Quad processor in the box (Gen 2 version) so transcoding if required is not a problem at all even on a not very powerful NAS.

Amazon have got this right IMO.

One tiny niggle -- No optical output --but with a decent HDMI splitter you can direct optical output to a Cinema amplifier / surround - or you can use the optical out on you TV if it has one. Personally A typical TV with a standard Soundbar works just fine -- I'm not turning my living room into Old Trafford Stadium !!!!!. (Man Utd's home ground).

Obviously VLC / Amazon Fire TV box is a single user application so things like PLEX are great for serving multiple locations / TV's etc but in a lot of cases if you have the fire TV box then VLC works better than PLEX which also can be run on the Fire TV box.

II would love PLEX users to petition PLEX to make DO NOT TRANSCODE an option in the settings -- it's not always obvious in PLEX to find ways of minimizing transcoding --even some AVI files can get transcoded at times (but in that case CPU load is fairly small--unlike larger HEVC X265 codecs). You shouldn't need an i7 to run a NAS server !!!!!!

Cheers
jimbo

paulsalter said:

Not used the Android/Fire version of the App, but have used a few of the others

Look in the video settings for Direct Play, if you set this to forced it will never transcode, usually set to Auto, so the server decides what it thinks the device can play

Hi @paulsalter

Unfortunately if you have ASS subtitles or AVI files it will transcode -- normally transcoding isn't a problem even with a low powered NAS -- However once you start using HEVC X265 then all bets are off !!! -- 720p works fine on HEVC X265 but once you start upping the resolution --then that's where problems start.

A much larger file of the same resolution (1080p) with same subtitles (ASS) with X264 MKV format works perfectly even on low powered NAS'es.

A lot of transcoding is done at times but often the user won't realize it's being done.

Direct play is of course fine but all sorts of other settings get into the mix which is why I'd really love to see an optional setting on PLEX - DON'T TRANSCODE and let the target device do the transcoding if required.

I like the idea of small file sizes with HEVC / X265 especially with 4K and 8K video around the corner --and if the transcoding can be done on the target device then why not let that do it instead of loading up the NAS server --these servers by design have lower power CPU's etc to minimize power consumption and allow them to run cheaply 7 days a week for months on end without any user intervention.

The Amazon fire TV box with PLEX is quite informative --if you enable the background text it will display the file you are streaming, whether it's direct play of audio / video and if transcoding the reason it's transcoding --very helpful info. !!

Cheers
jimbo