4k MKVs are unwatchable on SmartTV

Hi.
This kind of movies judder very often. I have a 1Gb LAN and it shouldn’t happen. May it be a buffer problem?
I have Plex on a WEBOS 3.5 (LG)

Don’t think LG supports MKV…
Try encoding
mp4 / h.265 / ac3

Should direct play.
Does on my LG…

@jjrjr1 said:
Don’t think LG supports MKV…
Try encoding
mp4 / h.265 / ac3

Should direct play.
Does on my LG…

It plays 1080p MKVs

Well, is it transcoding???
You need to know that first…

What Plex Client are you using??

The TV might support 4K natively BUT the Plex app on your client may not…

Take a look at MDE entries in the log if transcoding.

Try encoding a file as I suggested…

The Plex Smart TV app on the LG will DirectPlay H264 MKVs, but not H265 MKVs, according to the support article

REF: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/203810286-What-media-formats-are-supported-

Plex doesn’t support 4K on LG TV’s at all.

XPlay app plays them just fine. Just goes to show how bad the Plex player app is.

@hthighway said:
The Plex Smart TV app on the LG will DirectPlay H264 MKVs, but not H265 MKVs, according to the support article

REF: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/203810286-What-media-formats-are-supported-

It can play 4k HDR MKVs from plex DLNA without problems

DLNA is a standard which Plex supports. I can go ahead and get any media server to advertise DNLA and scrap Plex altogether if I didn’t want the functionality that Plex brings.

Sorry DLNA is a different play mechanism.

Encode as we are suggesting and it will work.
My LG works fine with that encoding and it WILL NOT play 4K in an mkv file…

And BTW in general, for best Direct Play capability ALL your media should be in mp4 containers…

Trust me, my LG it plays every MKV (4k or HD) without encoding throught DLNA

@ jjrjr1
DLNA - Correct and totally unrelated to Plex.

Two reasons for using Plex -

  1. To play 4K content - fail.
  2. To transcode content if not supported by the device - fail.

@ Matixo
I trust you.
However, two LG’s TV’s bought within the last month with the latest firmware and Plex server version don’t support 4K. Plus the LG TV being used remotely with PMS buffers no matter what content is used.

And in case anyone is wondering, the hardware being used can transcode 4x 1080p streams simultaneously with no issues and any other platform other than LG.

Mine is LG OLED LG OLED 65C7V with last firmware

What I need is someone from the Plex development team to be asking me questions e.g. what’s the firmware version, can you gather some logs? etc. as a decent software developer would do and value the people who are willing to test their product. But I given up on that.

@jjrjr1 said:

And BTW in general, for best Direct Play capability ALL your media should be in mp4 containers…

Another option is not to use any client that’s so poor it can only direct play mp4. :slight_smile:

It’s funny, as soon as I saw this I thought, “I bet he has an LG”.

Everyone covered it above: Move the MKV’s to MP4 containers (without transcoding!), and the LG will direct-play HEVC files. It’ll already direct-stream AVC MKV’s. But if course, MP4 spec doesn’t allow for newer Dolby and DTS high-def tracks.

A kind user in the Smart TV forum has also produced an interesting workaround: Updating the device profile for the LG to allow for HEVC on MKV. You need to reapply the profile each time Plex updates. You might try fooling with this (back up the current profile first!) to see if it helps. It worked for me.