Hardware Spec Recommendation

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To add to TDP's great recommendations, you can silo media (e.g., 4K/HDR) in their own libraries and restrict access to those libraries to avoid transcoding on incompatible devices.

I have found that MP4 format compressed H264+AAC with 5.1 or fewer channels is broadly compatible. Most devices that only support stereo will not require transcoding to play a 5.1 track, they'll either downmix or drop extra channel content. I have only seen dropped audio channels with 5.1+ FLAC audio (center channel, i.e., dialog is often dropped).

I did say *compressed* H264 because you'll need to be aware of your network limitations. Remuxes are bloated as hell and will quickly overwhelm your upload capacity and/or require transcoding if you enable bitrate limits (either globally or per user). In other words, don't just rip Bluray content to 80 GB MKV files and expect even passable performance.