75 inch TV / Plex streaming and file size coversion from PlayOn

Recording Devices / Platform Support PlayOn
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Ok all,
I have been out of the loop for some time. Let me catch you up real quickly…
I used to use an HDHomerun Prime box to get Xfinity Cable TV to which I would use NextPVR to DVR Movies and shows, MCEBuddy would rip commercials, convert to 720p (file size about 600-900mb), change to mp4 and place on my plex server.

This worked FABULOUS on my 40in Samsung 3D LED TV.

Ive got tons of movies and tv series at this resolution…

move forward…

left xfinity cable tv and went directv now for live stream tv, ditched dvr, and all the fun stuff…

more forward to today…
I am back at it, wanting to DVR from PlayOn for Netflix, Amazon TV and DirecTV Now…

Play on my new Sony Bravia 75" 4k TV…

Connected my plex account to the Plex App (being played through the DirecTV Now beta android box) and yes it all works…

BUT!!!
have you seen what a compressed video on a 75" UHD 4k TV looks like?!?!?!?!? UGHHHHHHH
lol…

so I ask the large tv guys… what have you found as a good
compressed file size for maximum space saving, 720p file?

PlayOn will only record in 720p

I have an example of doing a test on all MP4 versions with file size…
I tried the HEVC MP4 and it is watchable as a tv series your gonna watch once and just leave in the plex library as it isn’t great…
but then… Unprocessed is 500mb more (nearly 2/3 larger!!!) but Fast is not much bigger…

I didn’t watch the Fast file yet… gonna do that after I hit create topic… but im leaning towards that one…
anyone else try this and come up with good settings for good large screen eye pleasure viewing but keeping some space savings?

fyi - my storage server is comprised of a mess of sata and mess of ssd drives… ill post my hardware at a later time… but my ssd are not large and that is where my videos are stored… so I keep space in mind as I don’t want to keep feeding ssd’s… hah

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after watching a MP4 Fast converted file for about 30 minutes, I then dropped over to HEVC MP4 converted file and really see no difference… thus my thoughts of the 1.3gb file being the sweet spot is incorrect, which is a good thing as I can save almost half that space!

will be testing more later, in a few days…

3

here is the time taken for the profiles above…
wow it is so much faster now than when I was on 2.4.8!!!

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image.png1155×268 17.5 KB

4

You probably want to record with PlayOn disabling all compression so you aren’t either upscaling or compressing in PlayOn. You also need to check your media file’s image size - many apps get height and width swapped - 720p is HEIGHT, and would be 1280 in WIDTH (1080p is 1920 wide, and 640p is 1137 wide and often is mistakenly set to 1080 as “close enough”), which is why it is confusing to programmers and people.

I’ve found very little that I want to record for posterity from the streaming services, especially since the older content moves off the SVOD services to the secondary OTA channels/networks (PlutoTV, MeTV, Antenna, etc).

Learn to embrace deleting shows you’ll never watch again or will be forever on your backlog. Life is too short.

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