If you thought that the Nvidia Shield was the device that could play the most video/audio/subtitle formats outside of a PC, then think again.

Xbox One X & Xbox One S are the true winners here. Using the Kodi app with the official Plex add-on installed, it is the only device that

can play every single video, audio, and subtitle format you are likely to run across. It even supports the various 4:2:2 chroma formats

seen in backhaul feeds and 10-bit H.264 videos widely distributed in the anime scene. If you want to play everything, get an Xbox.

The Nvidia Shield holds up better compared to other dedicated video streaming boxes like a Roku, but if you have an Xbox you should

just use that instead of worrying about buying a Shield. There isn't a price difference either; a used Xbox One S costs the same

amount as an Nvidia Shield TV Pro. Note that you need at least a One S model or higher to play 4K HDR videos.

The PlayStation 4 Pro was surprisingly awful at everything. Even for the few formats it can direct play, it still has to "transcode" the container

to .TS before it can play them. Kodi would probably be able to fix a lot of this, but because Kodi is not available for the PS4, the PlayStation 4

is a terrible choice for a video streaming box.

On all platforms, the official Plex app leaves a lot to be desired in terms of direct play compatibility with a wide variety of formats. The

fact that Kodi can play back all these formats without issues indicates that it is not a hardware problem. It is purely on Plex's

end for not coding their software properly to take full advantage of the hardware it's running on. Their transcoding also often

does weird and unnecessary things, like re-encoding a 4K video to 1080p.