Plex have a very nice Android TV app but the app is dependent on an always on Plex Media Server but today Plex have announced coming in later this month the NVIDA SHIELD can be used as a full Plex Media Server without needing a PC, Mac or NAS. The SHIELD runs Android and its NVIDA Tegra X1 processor will make it a great media server and opens up Plex to people not wanting to run a server 24×7.

The NVIDIA SHIELD supports hardware accelerated video transcoding and 4K 60fps video output as well as having a 500GB drive so it should make a very good media server. The app is coming later this month.

More details on the Plex Blog.

If you’re not familiar with the NVIDIA SHIELD, we think it’s one of the most exciting streaming devices on the market. Combining support for 4K video, features like voice search, and a crazy-powerful NVIDIA Tegra® X1 brain, this thing was born to run Plex.

As you might know, we’ve had a lovely Android TV app for quite some time now, and it’s getting better all the time. But the NVIDIA SHIELD, with its 64-bit CPU and massive GPU, allows us to make it extra special by letting you run the entire Plex Media Server directly on the device!

You read that right: the SHIELD is so powerful that it can not only run our Android TV interface better than just about anything out there, it can also run the full media server, including support for hardware-accelerated video transcoding (H.264, MPEG2 and HEVC)! With multiple simultaneous streams! As for storage, you get up to 500GB right on the SHIELD, and you can easily add more via USB or over the network.

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