Fire Stick Forcing Use of 4K media when 1080p Exists

Plex Players Streaming Devices
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Server Version#: 1.32.5.7349
Player Version#: Latest

Hoping someone can help with this one.

I use a number of different clients: iOS (iPhone and iPad), Xbox one and SX, Nvidia shield, Firestick 4K and PC.

I keep x2 versions of every movie. A 1080p and a 4K. For all of my clients EXCEPT the Fire stick 4K when I hit ‘play version’ and click 1080p I can transcode 1080p from the 1080p file.

The Fire stick however always somehow forces transcoding from the 4K file down to 1080p. I have no idea why this one client would force a transcode for the 4K media when a 1080p version exists. All the other clients just use the 1080p so what is going on?

The issue is definitely caused by the Fire stick Plex client. Whatever I try and no matter what video quality settings the Fire stick ALWAYS tries to transcode from the best quality file available. ie a 1080p copy of big buck bunny and a 4k version of big buck bunny in a folder. I go and select ‘play version’ hit 1080p and the Fire stick will without fail use the 4K file.

This is not an issue on Xbox, IOS or Nvidia Shield. So looks like the Fire stick Plex client is causing this. Will post again if I find out why and if I get a solution.

I will not be separating the libraries. I use Plex for media management and refuse to manually manage a separate library for watched status etc just because of one client.

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Still having this issue - only on Fire Stick 4K

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Issue persists on fire stick

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Sadly this has been a problem for a long time…

An old employee said they were going to look into it, but nothing ever happened. (I think they were one of the people laid off recently)

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I just can say that it works without issues here on a Fire TV 4K Max and two Fire TV 4Ks.

All of them are connected to 1080p SDR TVs and automatically select the 1080p SDR version of a movie.
Of course I can manually pick the 4K version and that would direct play then (resulting in pale colors on the 4K Max, because that doesn’t local tonemapping in contrast to the 4K Sticks).

EDIT: To be clear: I direct play everything, why is yours transcoding in the first place?

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I reported the same issue so long ago I can’t even find it.

I don’t need to transcode the 1080p version. It direct plays and that’s why I’ve gone through the trouble to keep 2 copies

Instead Plex picks the 4k version and transcodes it to 1080p with the native 1080p copy sitting there unused

I’ve already been forced to do this since I have so many Firesticks/Fire TV’s connected remotely to my server. Hardware transcoding has also been failing in J series cpu’s now for several months. One software transcode on a 4k movie can completely demolish my NAS

The same titles matched with the same agent retain the same watched status across libraries
I’m not suggesting you separate your libraries because it’s a PITA, I’m just letting you know

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Thanks for getting back to me. Damn I was hoping this wasn’t the case and someone would just point me to a setting.

I wont transcode 4K as I don’t want to saturate my server. I have a Tautulli rule to block it outright.

Let’s hope Plex pick this up and give us a fix. For me at least the Fire Stick is now useless for Plex. Sod’s Law I just bought a lifetime pass :frowning:

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Well maybe you should have written it better then?

Why the transcode? What are you trying to achieve here?

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Will keep commenting here frequently until the Plex support guys pick this up :grinning:

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Is this on the first 4k Firestick (AFTMM) or the new 2nd gen (AFTKM) ?

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Hi Morgan thanks for getting back to me. These are all Gen 1 models.

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Fire TV Stick - 2nd Gen (2016-2019) model AFTT
Fire TV Cube - 2nd Gen (2019) model AFTR
Fire TV Cube - 1st Gen (2018) model AFTA

Edit: Update

By chance I just got a push to update the Fire TV Cube (model AFTR)

Before the update I tried to lower my quality to SD and start a video with two versions. It automatically picked the 4k version and started the transcode

After I got the update, I tried the same video and repeated the same test. It then correctly picked the 1080p version to transcode

Screenshot (1903)_edited
Screenshot (1903)_edited948×413 103 KB

All the other models are remote so I can’t test them directly. They have 1080p TV’s so that might be a true test as to whether this is working properly

Can you reproduce @robclarke41?

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@JaysPlex is it only correct on the AFTR what about the other models you listed? And which version of the app are you testing it on?

So far I tested the 3rd gen cube and it transcoded 1080p instead of 4k. I can test a few more models.

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Sure let me check this and get back to you.

I’m on firestick 4k first gen AFTMM

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(updated yesterday) 10.3.0.4685 (works by manually lowering quality)

The post linked above by blim5001 is from June ’22 so no telling what version introduced this issue

Purposely lowering the quality to see which version transcodes is a test with promising results but…

What I need to know is if someone with a 1080p tv or firestick only capable of 1080p playback gets the 1080p version selected automatically for a direct play. (without manual interaction of lowering quality)

It’s almost as if Plex lost its way to identify the specs of the device the video was being played on. Regardless of what was being played it just always defaulted to the highest resolution available

AFTR is the only Fire TV I have access to. The other models I mentioned are being used in remote locations by children or semi-uncooperative adults. I can’t rely on them for testing

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As I said above, that works without any issues here.

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Were you ever having the problem?

Are you using any of the models listed here?

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Well usually the 1080p (or 720p) version is selected and direct played automatically. So thats not the situation OP describes, where apparently everything transcodes for a reason he’s not disclosing.

Indeed it happened sometimes for me as well, that it choose to transcode (most often remote) and then sometimes it transcodes down the 4K version, instead of the 1080p.

AFTMM and AFTKA

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ok, so I found my old firestick and dusted it off. It’s an AFTT

I have just tried a TV episode that I have in both 1080p and 4K

And by heck, It is actually playing the 1080p as direct stream

If I change the Streaming quality in the settings down to 720p it shows as transcoding from 1080p to 720p.

So it looks like it is working as expected.

(Issues with audio on some files, but need to do more investigation and that is probably for the other thread)

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@blim5001 that helps a lot, thanks for checking that. AFTT is one of the models my remote user has and was probably causing me the most headaches

I’ll have to monitor the dashboard to see if this is finally solved but I’m hopeful for the first time in a long time

Looking at the release notes for Plex for Android 10.3.0 I don’t see anything even remotely related that might have fixed this. Hope it doesn’t get accidently reintroduced

I guess I’ll go against my natural instinct and remain optimistic lol