hey Everyone,
I saw the other threads being shutdown without a resolution.
One of the biggest things that people were mentioning is that their direct play was not working and their Plex server is trying to transcode. Some people were spit balling ideas such as using a hardware video cards to transcode (does not work), others blame plex for not catching up.
From what I discovered and got working repeatedly was the following info:
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4k UHD Hevc should be “direct play” and the stream over the LAN network, which is a huge stream (recommend 1 Gigabit connection between the server and client - wifi will have bandwidth issues)
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your 4k HDR playback plex app client needs to have a decent processor (such as Apple TV 4k, not LG WebOS smart TV)
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in the plex server settings you need to set your LAN networks and allowed IP to your local IP to allow direct play, otherwise it will force the system to transcode and do a “hairpin” (hairpin means your stream or data is going out to the internet and looping back into your local network - instead of going from Plex server directly to apple TV)
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to my knowledge, 4k UHD HDR/SDR are not meant to transcode yet (transcode causes picture to be washed out, dull, etc) - therefore you want direct play = Local network.
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direct play over the internet, you will need a really fast internet with preferably symetrical up and down stream and low latency (otherwise lower the 4k stream bandwidth from 40mbps to 20mbps)
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you need a compatible UHD TV that supports HDR and/or SDR (otherwise the client will auto adjust via plex server)
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on Apple TV 4k, my settings are format: 4k HDR@60hz - chroma: 4:2:2 - Match Content: “on” for all settings
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my plex server is running Dell Poweredge r510 with 2 x Xeon e5640 2.6Ghz quad core, 32GB ram, intel server video card (very low end - can’t even play Fortnite) *** the system stream fine and transcode 1080p Hevc fine *** direct play 4k HDR fine *** hardware video is probably not necessary ***
It has worked flawless on every system I helped setup so far.
key points: plex server use LAN networks and Allowed IPs (this allows plex server to detect direct play to your apple tv), make sure you have direct play do not set “automatically adjust quality”
This took a few hours to figure out after trying other methods from other forums - then I realized my plex server was constantly transcoding, but no one could explain why it would not goto direct play (hence the discovery from above)
Hopefully the above helps others get their HDR working on Apple TV 4k.
FYI - I tried Roku premium/premier (which has a 1 Gigabit network) but CPU on Roku is too slow and does not play 4k smooth.
I forgot to mention — on your network settings would probably look something like this: 192.168.1.1/255.255.255.0 ----- (replace 192.168.1.1 with your IP in your network) - 255.255.255.0 means to capture all the IPs starting from .1 to .254
(for example, my home I set 10.0.22.1/255.255.255.0 ---- see screenshot)
