… All I want for Christmas is no bufferrring… no bufferrring … no bufferrrrring… on my Xbox One…
For what it’s worth, buffering with 4K videos on Xbox is so bad, I have abandoned (and unplugged) my Xbox One consoles entirely for Plex and all streaming services. I setup Nvidia Shield Pro as a replacement. I have had zero problems with any 4K video. The Nvidia Shield does have a few quirks but these are easily manageable compared to the constant buffering issue on Xbox.
Like many of you, I made a substantial investment (TV’s, new content, and more storage) to get 4K video and very much enjoy the 4K quality. Until now, I liked the Xbox as a media device. My Xbox’s may show up on eBay soon. Whether the buffering issue is in the Plex code or with Microsoft is no longer relevant for me.
I must now add my voice to the long line of dissatisfied customers with this issue.
I had previously (a few server versions ago last time I really worked the server) been able to trans-code 3+ 4k streams off my server, it has plenty of horsepower to run 4k. I have a solid wired LAN to my XBOX (gigabit to most devices, with 40GB linked switches and 10GB fiber to the PC’s).
Suddenly with the last few Plex server versions (and/or possibly Xbox player versions) I can’t stream 4k to the XBOX. It really only seemed to start upon install of server 1.18.3. I can start a 4k video, but can’t skip/search reliably, can’t resume at a later time, sometimes they finish, sometimes they get stuck in a buffering ‘loop’. I can watch my server CPU eventually go to 0% (idle) but Plex dashboard still shows full bit-rate continually going to the local link.
Whatever has been tweaked in the last few server and/or Xbox Player versions certainly hasn’t fixed the issue, and maybe caused it for me. Maybe I’ve just been increasing my 4k disc library and only noticing it now; although, I have certainly watched 4k versions previously, on Xbox, with good results.
HDR I don’t use yet, but I know it’s annoying not being able to use the system as it should. Even with Kodi I noticed that the screen is a bit sluggish when there is movement. It seems the payback is not very smooth. Yesterday I enabled DLNA and played with VLC, it was pretty solid quality. The only downside is that I could not load subtitles.
Buffering is worse than ever at the moment, whatever they did in the last update completely f**ked it. I can’t get more than 2 minutes without the ridiculous buffering loop.
It seems that this Plex bug is initiated only when launching streams from the Xbox One. As you can see in the images below occasionally I get the below error on the server (not with PC or Shield only Xbox). I also get a new transcode session opened EVERY single time it buffers! This of course eventually causes the server to fall over. I wish we could get some kind of support on this I hate paying for a faulty product. Like for many others this has made Christmas a bit miserable without the movie collection. It’s just such a miserable, unstable pathetic mess.
Gave up on the XBox and got an Apple TV 4K. Since then zero issues whatsoever with Plex. It’s a night and day difference. Looks as though the issue may lay with the Xbox platform itself rather Plex. We don’t seem to have these buffering issues on other platforms.
The lack of responses from the Devs is really concerning.
It wasn’t long ago they were talking of getting rid of HTPC support in favour of other devices, yet the Xbox is a major device with over 50million units sold, a lot of people want to use it as their media center, and it should be a priority to fix the app when so many people use it; The Xbox is a more than capable platform.
I mean come on, you’ve got to at least communicate with your userbase.
Unfortunately, I also have these issues on the Xbox One. I would love to use plex, but like this it’s basically an unusable horrible experience. If you can, avoid this program (until they fixed it)
Here are some of the observations I’ve made:
The problem seems to appear at regular intervals, probably depending on the amount of data streamed. This means it will appear sooner at high-bandwidth movies (or in shorter intervals) than in low-bitrate movies. The only remedy is to stop the movie and start it again. If you’re close to the end, it will immediately start at the beginning again (incredibly annyoing)
Jumping to a point somewhere in the movies takes AGES, ie never happens at all, if subtitles are active. The problem gets MUCH worse if there is an offset in the subtitles. If you want to go to a specific place in a film, start from the beginning, switch off the subs. Restart the movie, go to the intended location. Switch the subs on again. (Only works sometimes)
To be honest, I have a hard time believing that this is Microsoft’s fault. Other apps have none of these issues. I think somewhere in the “burn-in” section of the subtitles, combined with some weird buffer overflow on the XBOX One side the culprit could be found.
Please make Plex working. Please! It would be such a nice piece of software!
What is unbelievable is that we have this issue especially with 4k movies only with plex. If you watch a 4k hdr on Netflix with an xbox you don’t have any issue. I can’t believe that plex can say this is because of MS this is unbelievable for me.
Maybe if everyone comes back on here and blows this thread up, they’ll pay attention. This post is just shy of 2 years old and my comment should be #360… Blow this thing up y’all! Breach 1000 in a day just to throw some alerts into some big wigs email that there was a flare of issues! Xbox one shouldn’t be buffering to hell like it does. It’s ridiculous that it goes back this long with no resolution in sight… sigh happy New year. I hope they fix this sometime soon.
