Over the last year I’ve had on and off issues with buffering 4k-hdr from my windows 10 PC to my nvidia shield pro. It’s been great for months. A few times I’ve simply reset my google wifi and it’s been fine. I have cat8 cables from main google to pc and also cat8 from google wifi hub to shield. I have a 200mbs connection.
MOST movies I have no buffering at all. Tonight I watched a remux rip of Fantastic Beasts and about 30 minute in, constant buffering. Reset everything, restart everything and it would be fine for a bit and then buffer again.
I did some reading and realize most of my 4k rips are ~20mbs but this one is 50mbs and also has 2 video streams according to media info.
My dashboard says direct play to shield for the 4k hevc and truehd @107mbs, other movies are in the 70’s. Does that mean it’s not even transcoding?
TLDR;
I currently have an i5-7500 @3.4, plex recommends an i7 @3.2 for 4k.
Is that really the likely cause of buffering? I’ve downloaded logs to lookup the transcoding speed and when I search them I cannot find the “speed” line even after enabling verbose.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
The i7 @ 3.2 GHz is an example. If you want an actual meaningful comparison, take a look at the “PassMark” benchmark references.
Your CPU has a passmark score of approx. 7900. That’s good enough to do multiple parallel 1080p transcodes. For a 4K transcode you’ll however need a passmark score of approx. 12000 (SDR) or even 17000 (HDR)!!
Long story short: Your CPU is not capable to transcode 4K media
That means as long as your Shield can direct play the media you’re throwing at it, you should be ok – if there’s any reason for it to transcode, you won’t be able to do that.
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side note:
I suppose you’re talking about having a 200 Mbps internet download speed – keep in mind that’s not relevant when it comes to streaming media inside your home. Buffering with high-bitrate videos could however also imply the issue is inside your home network and that you’re not consistently getting the required bandwidth. This can happen if an endpoint (or even your router) don’t operate a port at that speed (some routers will e.g. limit ports to 100 Mbps to be more energy-efficient). Same goes for WLAN which should in theory be fast enough but will highly depend on your actual environment (interfering factors can be walls, even furniture, distance to router…) – I know you mentioned both devices are using a wired connection… just stating that last part for completeness 
Thanks for the response. Is there a log or anything within plex or shield where I can review my transfer/lan speeds? I’m thinking it must be something with the network then, because it shows direct play, which means my cpu isn’t the bottleneck maybe? Although I understand there might still be some transcoding with subtitles and what not?
Sorry, I’m just trying to figure out what my bottleneck is here and what to throw money at haha
