I've been impressed at the performance of the live re-encoding, but at the same time annoyed that it happens rather than streaming the original media (I think it always transcodes?). The upside is that it will play anything on anything.
My main gripe is with how hard it is to actually get it to find the files - you can't just feed it a folder full of media and expect it to play it, it needs to be some carefully crafted structure that I haven't yet fully figured out. So instead of dropping a file then watching it on the TV, I drop it, try to watch it, then have to go back to the PC to fiddle.
It does not always transcode. It transcodes if your client reports it doesn't support the format or if the bitrate cap on your client is lower than the source media. It says why transcoding is happening in the Administration Dashboard for any currently playing media.
My main gripe is with how hard it is to actually get it to find the files - you can't just feed it a folder full of media and expect it to play it, it needs to be some carefully crafted structure that I haven't yet fully figured out. So instead of dropping a file then watching it on the TV, I drop it, try to watch it, then have to go back to the PC to fiddle.