WD to Plex - will there be quality changes

[foreright]

Currently I use a WDTV Media Player to play my ripped DVD collection (SD only) and because my AVR hasn't HDMI I use the optical out of the WDTV - AVR and HDMI for the Video replay to the TV (a Samung).
To enable me to give my son the WDTV and allow him to play the DVD's with an Ext. HD. I want to try and set up a Plax system for myself.
I can network the films to the Samsung TV using the Plex app. and will need to use the TV optical out for the audio.
My questions are a) is the video quality over an ethernet cabled network as good as the WDTV serving the TV with HDMI, and b) will the optical out from the TV provide 6 channel audio.
Hope that makes sense. Cheers.

 

[AbsenceJam]

a) It's the same thing really, it's just an app using hardware built into your TV rather than WD's external hardware + software. Quality will be the same, I don't know about codec/container support and functionality but I expect they are similar.

b) It should do.

 

[glenimp617]

The quality will be the same as the app on the samsung can only stream from plex as is

If you had something like a roku at a remote site then plex would be able to transcode so the quality would be based on the internet bandwidth available so could potential loose quality

You'll be fine