The first thing I will ask is
“What’s the codec, video bitrate, which audio codec, and are subtitles involved ?”
Codec: H264
Video Bitrate: 4609 kbps
Audio Codec: AAC (stereo), AC (5.1)
No Subs
I’m going to be a bit critical here with the best of intentions. Please forgive me if I sound harsh in any way.
When you stream from Netflix or Amazon, you get somewhere around 20 Mbps.
When you watch OTA digital television (1080p) you get somewhere from 8-12 Mbps (depending on provider).
Sorry to say this but: 4 Mbps is ‘garbage input’. “Garbage in => Garbage out”.
Plex nor the AppleTV can invent image quality which has already been lost.
The fundamental math. 1080p = 1920x1080 (2,073,600) pixels. with RGB (3 bytes) per pixel => 6,220,800 bytes for a full static image (uncompressed).
If I assumed you had a Black & White video, at 4 Mbps, we could update the display twice a second on 1080p. On 2160p (4K) you would be able to update it once every 4 seconds.
Movies are usually at 29.97 frames (images) per second. We already need 15x more RAW pixels but compression (H.264) will save us a lot because it can reduce large areas of the same value to a single ‘block’.
Below is another image I have from one of my movies (I ripped it). It’s 4K HEVC and the average bitrate is 65 Mbps. Peak bit rates are well over 100 Mbps.
I’d like to suggest an exercise you can do.
- Get some content which is mostly drama / camera work (no CGI) in the 12-20 Mbps range.
- Try it.
- Now get some content with CGI in it (20-25-30 Mbps)
- Try it.
Let me know what you think.
Here is a photo of my 1080p TV (which is a huge quality loss) displaying 65 Mbps HEVC.
Notice the clarity of the CGI ?
If you want this level of clarity / quality, you need be willing to keep it on the local disk. Nothing is free in this arena.
I’ve uploaded the full size image so you can zoom if you wish.
Notice, the more you zoom in, the blockier it gets. If I had a 4K display, this wouldn’t happen. The AppleTV is discarding 3/4 of the data just so it can fit the display size.
To equate this to a laptop or phone,
The physical display is smaller… of course it’s going to look better.. UNTIL it’s zoomed in (just like what happens when my pic above is zoomed)
appreciated, but I’m not talking about image quality. I want to know why all of a sudden files that used to work are now buffering constantly on ATV but not on other devices (ipad, windows 10 1aptop)
What’s the difference?
- AppleTV App setting?
- Network (wired versus WiFi signal) ?
If it can’t stream 4 Mbps without stuttering/ buffering, I would be all over the network to find out what the problem is. 4 Mbps = 500 KB/sec
the NAS is wired but the ATVs are on wifi
Its not the network as the other devices work and the ATV worked fine until a few weeks ago. The wifi is working fine for everything else. We reset the network, reset our router and modem. Updated to the latest Plex
Let me ask, just for clarity on my part.
Is this still an image quality problem?
thanks for asking - no
Let’s break this off into a new thread? No sense beating up on image quality folks.
please make a thread and ping me? @chuckpa I’ll get the notification and jump over.
I have a Synology running and a Plex pass on my own account. All works fine in general.
Shared my library to my brother in law and my father. Similar non Plex Pass accounts with exact same settings (I set them up). Dads account works on Apple TV 3, mobile devices (Android and Apple) and all laptops.
Brother in law works on every device as it should except for the Apple TV 4. In his house my connection works fine. Tested at 100mbits up my side, he has 800mbits down. File is a H264 AAC 5.1 13gb movie. Looks great on my LG 65" C9, so the image should be fine.
Setting Apple TV 4 to automatic results in 350p image. Setting it to maximum results in 720P 2Mb. Absolutely frustrating.
Thing I would like to know; has anyone tried a Plex Pass sign in and see if it works when the advanced player is activated? I read on sites this seemed to resolve some issues, but didn’t find a direct post linking these issues mentioned here with the advanced player.
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