

The output quality of video may be lower in some circumstances, appearing slightly more blurry or blocky.There are some potential drawbacks to Hardware-Accelerated Streaming: Using the dedicated video decoding/encoding hardware is more energy-efficient and so will consume less power.By offloading CPU-intensive transcoding tasks to dedicated hardware, video streaming has less of a performance impact on your computer.


To convert videos faster and with less processing power, you can turn on Hardware-Accelerated Streaming in Plex Media Server. Some computers with more powerful processors can even stream multiple videos at once, especially at lower qualities. Using the free, software-based transcoding in Plex Media Server, home computers can seamlessly convert and stream video in real-time to any Plex app. Converting the video (transcoding) happens automatically, in real-time, while you’re playing it. To play your video smoothly and on a huge variety of devices, Plex Media Server often needs to convert the video to a different quality or a compatible format. Tip!: Hardware-accelerated streaming is a premium feature and requires an active Plex Pass subscription.
