# OSMC Vero V Review: A Legit Nvidia Shield Alternative for Plex?

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Lon.TV
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ombFsEjYaw
- **Дата:** 27.04.2026
- **Длительность:** 11:46
- **Просмотры:** 10,905
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/49179

## Описание

Sign up for a Plex Pass! http://lon.tv/plexpass (compensated affiliate link) - In my latest sponsored Plex video we take a look at the Vero V - a player capable of playing back everything the Nvidia Shield ! Is it a replacement or just a good alternative? We'll explore in this video. See more Plex: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCZHp4d1HnIvqJPAmMooCKOHieLdi3I7o and subscribe! http://lon.tv/s

Find it here: https://osmc.tv/vero/

VIDEO INDEX:
00:00 - Intro
02:14 - Vero V Specs
03:43 - Boot-up Time
04:12 - Initial Settings
04:46 - PM4k For Plex Add-On
06:45 - Playback Performance - Dolby Vision, Lossless, etc
08:35 - Dolby Vision MEL and FEL
09:43 - Nvidia Shield Longevity & Conclusion

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## Транскрипт

### Intro []

Hey everybody, it's Lon Syman. I am back with my monthly sponsored video from Plex where we dive into the Plex ecosystem and see what new things we can do with our Plex servers. And this month, we're going to focus on a new player that I found that might actually give the Nvidia Shield a run for its money when it comes to playing back very high-end video formats. Every couple of months, I take a look at this spreadsheet that you can find online at l. tv/shield. I am not the maintainer of it, but it's something I do check in on. And what I look for are devices that can support all of the different video formats that an enthusiast might want to play back, including Dolby Vision Profile 7 and Profile 5, lossless audio, all of that kind of stuff. And on the list, of course, we had the Ugos AM6B Plus that I looked at a year or two ago. That does work with many popular video formats, but requires a lot of shoehorning to get to work. It wasn't the best userfriendly experience as it doesn't do all this stuff out of the box. But a new one popped up the other day called the Vero 5 and the maintainers of the spreadsheet here say that this is the second ultimate full Dolby Vision dedicated player that is well supported and plays most formats. So I went out and bought one to see how it might perform playing back my Plex media. And I was pleased to see that this device works just as well with high-end video formats as my Nvidia Shield did. In fact, in some cases, it did a little better sometimes, which was really fun to see. But there are some drawbacks because it's not as featurerich as the Shield, and it costs about as much as the Shield as well. I paid a little over $200 for this. You have to import it from the UK. And of course, you can get an Nvidia Shield for about the same price. Now, before we jump into this, I do want to let you know that this is my regular monthly sponsored Plex video. I always like to look at some different aspect of Plex serving in this sponsored series, and I thought this would be a good match for that. Plex has not reviewed or approved what you're about to see before it was uploaded, and I also purchased the device here with my own funds, and so the manufacturer of this hasn't seen this video either before it went up. And of course, all opinions are my own. So, let's get into it now and see what this device is all about. Now, you can find

### Vero V Specs [2:14]

the Vero 5 over on the OSMC website. OSMC stands for Opensource Media Center. And so, this runs Linux, and when it boots, it goes right into a fork of the Kodi media player. So, if you've ever played with Kodi before, you'll feel right at home with this one. But because it's not Android, you don't have all of your other apps. So, no Netflix, Disney Plus, or any of the subscription services on here. You get a Kodi media player and whatever add-ons that media player supports. One of them is a Plex add-on which we'll explore in the video here. Now, as far as specs are concerned, this has an AM Logic S905X4-. It's got 4 GB of DDR4 RAM and 32 GB of storage. The Wi-Fi isn't great. It's got 802. 11 AC at the max, but it does have gigabit Ethernet on the back. And if we take a look at the ports here, you can see what you've got. So, you do have an uh analog audio output here. You have your gigabit Ethernet, your HDMI that does support all of the high-end Blu-ray modes that we might encounter with some of our served files. You have optical audio out along with your power adapter that goes in there. You have two USBA ports here on the side, a USB 3 and a USB 2. And you also have a micro SD card slot on here for augmenting its onboard storage. So you could connect your media directly to this, but it can also connect up to your Plex server. So why don't we plug it in and see what it

### Boot-up Time [3:43]

looks like. So I'm going to apply power to this just so you can see how fast it boots up. This is just running a very minimal installation of Linux that then boots up the OSMC interface here. So as you can see, a brief little glimpse at its underlying operating system and then you are in uh to their interface here and it is up and running in like 25 or 30 seconds. It is super fast to get into it. The interface here has its own skin, but this is a Kodi installation running underneath. You can have the default Kodi if you want. Uh what I did

### Initial Settings [4:12]

initially when I got it was I headed over to the system setting here. I went to audio and made sure that my uh audio pass through was enabled on it. So I did allow pass through and checked off all the boxes on the different media types that it supported. I made sure that my resolution was where I wanted it to be. In this case, 4K at 60 frames per second. And from there, it pretty much works on its own. I didn't have to do much configuration. That includes having it switch into 24p mode for movies that are shot at 24 frames per second. It was a very simple setup process. Now, to get

### PM4k For Plex Add-On [4:46]

Plex to work with this device, we have to install an add-on. There are a couple of them available. The one that I found worked the best on this was PM4K for Plex. You find that by going into the settings menu. You go to the add-on browser. You go to install from repository. you choose the Kodi add-on repository. I did try to use the Plex Kodi Connect, which is very popular, but that one didn't seem to install on this properly, but PM4K did. So, you go over to video add-ons, and you can scroll down the list until you see PM4K 4plex. And after you install it, it will be available to you in their programs library here or through the video section. So, we'll go into video, for example, go to add-ons, and we'll see PM4K4 Plex. Let me boot this up and show you what it looks like. So, when you boot it up, this is the interface that you will see. It will look very similar to your Plex server, but a little bit different. So, what you'll get when you hover over a particular media library is kind of the recommendation screen that you typically see in Plex. But if you want to go in and look at everything that's in that library, you click on that library again. And what it will do is bring you to a browsable interface here so you can access everything. So it is a little bit different than the Plex interface typically, but still very easy to navigate. You can also change how the thumbnails look here by selecting this little icon. So you can make things uh in a different format if you want and toggle through them. So that's a pretty neat way to see more on screen if you need to. And then of course you can play the entire library, shuffle things if you just want a random episode of something and go from there. Let me show you what a TV show looks like on this. So, here is the show page, and I can jump into Star Trek Peicard season 3. And as you can see, the add-on here is also keeping my bookmarks to where I last left off in an episode. I've been getting my wife to watch season 3 of Picard with me here. And of course, you get all of the other information that you typically see on your Plex client.

### Playback Performance - Dolby Vision, Lossless, etc [6:45]

Now, as far as playback is concerned, I watched a bunch of movies over the weekend, including some Blu-rays that I put onto my Plex server earlier that have Dolby Vision Profile 7 along with lossless audio. And this device played everything back just as well as my Nvidia Shield did. So, Dolby Vision, both profile 5 and profile 7 worked. I have a little caveat on that in a second, which I'll get to. HDR modes also worked. 24p mode worked perfectly. It switched my TV into the right mode without issue. And then on the audio side, Dolby Atmos audio worked. Dolby True HD lossless also worked. And we were able to get DTSXX mode along with all the other DTS modes working perfectly as well. And it also looks like it's got some built-in tone mapping features. So right now I'm playing a Dolby Vision Profile 7 movie back on this 4K display that lacks any of those HDR modes. Plex is sending me back a video here without any transcoding. It's just direct playing both on the video and the audio. We've got very little CPU utilization here yet. It is tone mapping everything perfectly. I can't show you the full film due to copyright, but I can tell you looking at it, it all looks pretty good. So, there are some nice little built-in features of this device that allow you to enjoy your Plex media in a bunch of different ways without having to resort to transcoding. You can, of course, enable the transcoder through uh your interface here, so you can adjust quality settings just like you could on a regular Plex client. And of course, upstairs, this played back wonderfully on my home theater system without any issues whatsoever. I found the streaming from my Plex server to be a little more reliable. I got a couple of films that glitched out occasionally, and they didn't glitch out at all on this box, which was very encouraging to see. Now

### Dolby Vision MEL and FEL [8:35]

I did want to expand briefly upon the Dolby Vision support on this box. This is going to get a little technical for a second, but I know it's important to some of you. So, out of the box, this will support Dolby Vision Profile 5 and 7. It'll just pass it right along to your TV, but it only supports the minimal enhancement layer or MEL. That is the same support level that the Nvidia Shield has for Dolby Vision content. However, this box is currently experimenting through their beta firmware full enhancement layer support or FEL, which would make it pretty much the same video support as a Blu-ray player that can play 4K Blu-ray discs. And they're currently in testing with this. You can install it on your box for a couple of weeks and see how it plays out. They are working on this very heavily. So, there's definitely a commitment to get this box to be the best and most supported box out there when it comes to media formats, and that was really encouraging to see. So, at least at the time I'm shooting this video, it is me only, but this really is pretty much the same level of support that the Nvidia Shield has right now for

### Nvidia Shield Longevity & Conclusion [9:43]

high-end ripped media. So, I'm really encouraged by what I'm seeing out of this box so far. This didn't require any shoehorning or any hacking. It just comes out of the box ready to play back your media pretty much as well as the Nvidia Shield does, at least when it comes to connecting to your Plex server. I would of course love to see a native Plex client for this, but the add-on I'm playing with feels pretty close to that. The media playback here is exceptional and it supports everything my Shield supports. And although it costs about the same, it's nice to know that there is an alternative that uh should the Nvidia Shield go away sometime, we do have something that will continue to work. And it's nice to see that we've got some hardware here supported by an open-source project of enthusiasts that also wants to keep this alive and running. So, I think we've got a good alternative here that doesn't require any hacking or shoehorning or rooting. It just works out of the box playing back all the media that I threw at it over the weekend and that was great. Now, one thing about the Nvidia Shield is that there was some news back in January where the company committed to continuing to support the device and presumably continue manufacturing it given that it's like a personal pet project of the CEO. In fact, they went as far to say that for as long as we shall live, they will continue supporting the Shield into the future. They didn't announce any new hardware, but they alluded to the fact that the Shield is something that they're passionate about, even if it's not the biggest money maker for Nvidia. And of course, given the scale of Nvidia's stock these days, they certainly have the resources to support a niche product that might not be making them a ton of money, but something they all love to keep running internally. But still, it's nice to see now there are alternatives that are not complicated to set up that work quite well and may actually work a little better once the FE support gets integrated into the operating system in the future. So that is the Vero 5. Definitely check it out if you want to play around with an alternative. Again, it works great with Plex and just directly attached media as well. That will do it for this one. Until next time, this is Lon Syman. Thanks for