I have recently upgraded to an LG CX 4K set. I’ve been using my 2019 Shield TV Pro with an older 1080p set and all was working fine.
If I try to stream 4K HDR remux files with large bitrates I get pauses and occasional crashes. As above I am running a Shield Pro 2019 as the client and my powerful PC as the server. The PC chews through the 4K files without issue and the Shield is powerful enough and supports damn near every format. Just to be clear everything I have is hard wired CAT6 ethernet. I have no wireless networks operating. I even bought a Plex pass to check transcoding was disabled and still get the issues.
I’m tearing my hair out as other people seem to have got this working, please help me before I just give up.
Many thanks
Server Version#:1.21.1.3876
Player Version#:8.1.1.0.22186 (android)
How is the shield connected? To the TV or AV receiver? I suspect it is an incompatibility with the audio format. Have you looked to see if anything is transcding?
Nothing seems to be transcoding, I have used Tautulli to check and checked via the Shield client player. It uses using exoplayer -is that correct?
Audio-format wise I have ripped using a variety of formats to check, and this doesn’t appear to make a difference. 7.1 DTS is supported by the shield as is HEVC and it tells me it is playing them directly and I still get buffering. TrueHD which I have used on some needs to transcode but I have exactly the same issue as direct play.
Certain things play fine for 40 minutes and then randomly buffer every 30 seconds. On replaying the same content buffers at others points and wouldn’t play straight for 40 minutes. I’ve monitored traffic and bandwidth and I’m only using about a very low percentage at full whack so I’m unsure what is causing it.
Okay so it looks like I may have found a solution. I’m not entirely sure I understand audio passthrough but by enabling HDMI pass through on Plex client on the Shield it plays perfectly…so far! I’m unsure how this works as some of the files I’m streaming have 7.1 DTS and I’m aware the CX series doesn’t support them, and I thought passthrough meant the Shield was offloading the audio onto the TV so it could handle it?
Most TVs do not support HD audio so it may be that the shield be trying to convert the audio. Using the passthrough you are correct and shield is passing the audio directly to the TV and does no processing. It good that it works now but you may get no audio if the audio is not supported by the TV.
Still having issues with this. Getting a message randomly ‘your connection to the server is not fast enough’. I’m really unsure where to go from here. I’m also now getting the Dolby Atmos logo apper every 30-40 seconds on-screen. This is maddening, can anyone help?
I assume you have done this but make sure that everything in your network between the shield and server is 1gig network speed. 100mbit is not fast enough.
One thing you might check is to see if there is a bitrate limit on the format you are using in your TV’s specs. I know some TV’s have that. You could also try lowering the max bitrate in the plex app to see if it starts playing better, that might give you a clue if that may be the case.
