Hi, I’m having some issues with buffering on my LG 32LK6100 TV. Plex is on a fairly new QNAP NAS and works fine to my other Plex app on a Samsung TV. My movies are 1080p rips, shrunk with handbrake keeping 2 audio streams, DTS-HD and DTS.
I have Direct Play selected on the LG, but had to deselect DTS and DTS-HD in order to get any sound at all, so presume it is now transcoding (I don’t get the debug info screen on the LG as I do on the Samsung). According to the TV spec, it should allow DTS and DTS-HD though.
Does anyone know how to get the debug info screen on the LG, the one that show whether direct play is used whilst playing, and any other advice to help fix the buffering?
What version of the Plex client are you using? It should be displayed in the app settings “About” screen. You should be running a recent release. Current version is 4.21.1.
Are you using TV speakers or passing audio to another system via optical/HDMI-ARC? It can affect how the system responds. For example, if the audio system does not support dts, but the LG is configured to pass dts, you may not hear any audio for dts tracks.
What happens when you play a AC3 audio track? Direct play / direct stream? This is just a “sanity check” to see how things are working. Pretty much all current devices support AC3 audio.
Enable both Direct Play and Direct Stream in the Plex LG app. Also, make sure the Video quality settings are set to Original/Maximum for local playback (or remote, if you’re remote from the server)..
During playback, check status using Plex Dashboard. Plex Web → Activity → Dashboard. If needed, click the gold rectangular icon on the right to expand the view. This should show if the video and audio are transcoding, direct streaming, etc.
To pull up the info screen on the Plex LG client, look for an “i” in a circle when you pull up the controls. Screenshot below from my LG B7. I believe yours will be the same.
Also, be aware of the limitations of the Plex LG client:
Enabling PGS or VOBSUB subtitles forces a video transcode.
If the audio is transcoding, enabling SRT subtitles will force a video transcode.
I’ll have to check tonight but i’m sure my Plex version is 3.x, and I’ve checked the LG app store and it says it’s the latest version. I don’t get all the options shown in the bottom image and can’t access that info screen, I can on my Samsung though. I don’t have an option for ‘Direct Stream’ either, I do have ‘Direct Play’. Seems like I have an older version, maybe not supported on my TV anymore?
I’m using the built-in speakers. I re-ripped a film and added an AC3 track and it seems to handle it better, i’d previously been just adding DTS-HD and DTS
Thanks, will do that tonight.
Just read this which says only 4K LG TV’s are supported, that may be why I can’t get the latest version. Seems a bit daft that they can’t support brand new 1080p TV’s, i’ll just get a Fire stick.
