1) No, but my ShieldTV can do that albeit they seem to have broken it so it causes stutter in the video which doesn't play nice with my TVs motion interpolation which I ALWAYS use. I can't stand 24fps, it hurts my eyes. In this case I'm referring to Topaz Video Enhance AI where especially if you're scrubbing to find a scene rather than the whole file, IO speed is relevant. Example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEJVo2o6BOM
2) Sometimes yes, though I obtain files "from other places" where I will remove all audio tracks other than the best quality one and often the subtitles, because anything taking up space you don't need adds up over hundreds of files. Also after using Topaz Video Enhance you have to remux the audio back in.
3) Plex is awesome, its the only way I can watch a series and remember which episode I am on. I'm quality oriented so will use Bluray wherever possible, but remembering which disk I was on is a PITA. However I can't rip all my Bluray to the NAS as I'd need about twice the storage, and there's already over £1000 of HDDs in there. Then you have the backup drives.
very interesting learning about
Topaz Video Enhance AI , cheers.
I too get REMUXES off "friends"' - you can't beat them can you, 1:1 4K picture quality on a DV OLED. I used to mess about with MKVmerge back in my old transcoding days, I miss it, but my system whilst still a good spec is over 10 years old & transcoding just to DVD (SD) on this is 25 minutes+
(Intel i5 'Quad-Core' SandyBridge @ 4.6Ghz / 14GB DDR3 @ 1600Mhz / 1TB SSD Samsung 850 EVO system drive / 1GB GTX650 GPU / 3 x 2TB Internal HDDs / Noctua super cooler) - it does the trick for my use.
But I'm saving up extra, to upgrade the "guts" so i can get the new Intel 'big.LITTLE' chip, that has high-performance
and low-performance cores
(copied partially from smartphone chips made by ARM) and parts/specs such as DDR5 RAM, PCie4 NVMe SSD, 90+Gold PSU) so it has much lower energy use in low power mode, as my energy bills with one radiator on for about 1 hour per day, washer on once a fortnight, shower 3 x a week, is hitting £70-90 a month
(its the GAS gone up 25% & electric 12% from the 1st November), single man too! and I work for most of the week too! all plugs in the house are OFF at the wall when I go out, so Im looking to buy low power devices from now on, the other day my bill was £4.50 for ONE DAY! - before anyone says..I've checked and according to all sites BRITISH GAS is still the cheapest for my area.
Plex is brilliant especially pulling all the data to go with the videos, its like Netflix isn't it but better! - personally, I've started going straight to DLNA as it seems to play more codecs than the PLEX app on the LG TV.
I too am coming to the peak of my storage lol... gunna have to get a big external drive on my SmartHub2 that'll do me.