Does the Plex app work better on the Apple TV device than it does on the Roku? I am getting some freezes (could be a buffering issue) in Plex on my Roku.
If you’re getting freezes or hiccups on Roku my recommendation is to unplug it for a few moments. That clears out more caches and can fix oddities reboot\restart won’t clear. I don’t even bother with rebooting anymore, I just go right to “unplug it” these days when my Roku boxes or TV starts acting up. My TV acts up a lot more than my dedicated boxes. To be fair it’s not very often though - my main issue is my soundbar and TV will sometimes not communicate correctly is all (that’s not a Plex issue).
As far as “better” … that’ll depend. AppleTV GUI will be a LOT snappier than the Roku one even on the nicer boxes. Playback though… that can depend. AppleTV does a good job but the development languished for quite some time and when it did start picking up again to get it sorted out, the New Experience came along and gobbled up that development.
A lot of folks using AppleTV and wanting good 4k Bluray rip playback tend to go with Infuse instead of Plex client. It seems to handle it better. You can get Infuse Plex Connector setup so Infuse can act like a front-end to your Plex setup as well. I think if you’re doing pretty standard playback though the Plex client works just fine.
I’ve been using Roku for years and look at AppleTV occasionally when I get annoyed with Roku feeling sluggish but Roku playback has been pretty reliable (and supports DTS passthrough even with DTS-MA files) so I haven’t been too tempted to switch when you see the mixed reception of the Plex client on AppleTV. Also, it’s not hard to block Roku ads and trackers with a filter at the router or DNS level so the ad\tracking issue with Roku doesn’t really impact me.
Here’s a previous discussion about it that might help you out - it comes up pretty often. 4K rips + Plex + Apple TV = am I doing this right?
There’s a nice chart another user posted there too for some capability questions too.
Have you tried streaming to a browser on a Mac/PC? I would make sure it is the Roku client (and not server issues) before switching to another client.
Thank you so much for your detailed response. Much appreciated!
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Yes, I have tried streaming in the Safari browser on my Mac Mini. I do not have the freezes that I get in the Roku Plex app on my TV. But thank you for asking!
