Different behavior between TV and an mobile android device

Plex Players Smart TVs
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Server Version#:4.51.1
TV Player Version#:5.9.2
Smartphone Player Version#:8.13.0.22986

Recently i bought a Samsung 4k TV and started seeing 4k content, direct streaming (all up to 20gb); but i have one movie (66gb) that it transcodes when played on TV but it plays directly on my phone on 4k. Any clue why?

Thanks in advance.

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I suppose you’re using a wired connection for your TV?
Many smart TVs only provide a 100 Mbps LAN port while your mobile probably supports a faster WIFI connection. If your TV is using a wireless connection as well, you should check if there’s something about your setup that might interfere with the WIFI bandwidth (e.g. some metal in the TV rack or in closely walls…).

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Tv is wireless connected to the same connection as the smartphone, being the TV closer to the wifi router than smartphone is.

Just saw that while Smartphone’s direct play speed is 75mb/s while TV’s transcoding speed is 275mb/s.

This only happens with the 66gb movie.

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In my experince its for the most part one of two things. Ether you use a subttitle format that the Tv not supporting or a 7.1 sound format that the tv do not support.
Try disable or change the subtittle to srt and if possibel select another sound format.

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While playing the movie on the Samsung, check playback status with the Plex Dashboard. It will tell you if the video, audio, or both are transcoding. If necessary, toggle the button on the top right to see expanded, per-track information.

The Plex app for Samsung Tizen TVs has limitations compared to other Plex clients:

  • Enabling PGS or VOBSUB subtitles results in a video transcode.
  • If the audio is transcoding, enabling SRT subtitles results in a video transcode.
  • TrueHD and dts audio will transcode, as Samsung does not license those codecs. Dolby Digital (AC-3) and Dolby Digital Plus (EAC-3) should direct play.

Samsung TVs have a limit on the number of supported tracks in a stream (either 20 or 25).
Samsung TVs support a maximum of 30 tracks in a stream. If your media file has many audio and video tracks, consider removing the unnecessary tracks. MKVToolNix is a good, free tool for remuxing files. The output is a MKV file, but it can accept other file formats as inputs.

Edit: Samsung TVs have a limit of 80 Mbps for HEVC/H.265 video and 60 Mbps for AVC/H.264 video. If the limit is exceeded, Plex will transcode the video.

See this post for additional information on stream and bandwidth limits.

1 Like
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Thanks to everyone, i’ll check subtitles files and audio tracks to see its behavior.
If it is a video bitrate issue… then i’ll recode the movie to get an slighty lower bitrate.

Thanks for all the info concerning Samsung issues.

EDIT: It was the forced subtitle while transcoding audio, it is SRT subtitle; i cannot believe that such a simple format can give that issue.

Well, i’ll convert it into another format.

Thanks everyone!

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