Is a nvidia shield still the best? Are there others? I’d like to play various 4k HDR video files. Which one to buy? Any recommendations? Nvidia shield looks very much outdated but there’s nothing new.
What about plasma bigscreen? Would that be good? I’d just use it for jellyfin, the DE doesn’t matter much.
What is your network infrastructure that is giving you those poor performance numbers?
Most consumer all in one routers are crap but not that bad. the file server should always connect to the main hub of the network with Ethernet (whether that be the router, a switch or an all-in-one crap box), these days pretty much everything should be at least 1gigabit.
Are you trying to use wifi for everything? that’s a recipe for disaster unless you really know what you are doing and have multiple APs and careful signal strength and channel management
I am trying to use wifi for “everything”. I know it’s bad but there is no honest to goodness way I can get ethernet to anything except the router and modem. It’s complicated. Even a 60hz ac to ethernet wall plug transceiver has to go through enough breakers and stuff it’s not worth trying.
I forgot which exact router I have but it’s basically the highest end Cisco home router that works with dd wrt. It usually costs $300 on amazon. My internet connection is dsl but I’m not trying to get higher internet speeds, just higher lan speeds.
If my low effort network setup only yields me a maximum of 7mbytes/sec I’m fine with it I just want to be able to get more than 1 meg per second on the one system that needs it the most.
You should consider upgrading to some kind of mesh system then. sure they aren’t perfect, but even a basic 3 node kit could probably increase your throughput ten fold. If you want to use DDWRT or OpnSense or whatever you can still run it separately and route internet traffic or use it for your DHCP server.
To stream a 4K bluray remux rips on your Lan you need a solid 150mbit minimum between server and player to be reliable for example. I am hardwired all the way except for mobiles, but even on Wi-Fi I can easily pull 400-500mbit real world throughput through most of the house thanks to my Wifi6 setup with multiple APs