Server Version#: 1.41.2.9200
My video playback using the Apple TV app keeps pausing and I get an error message saying the server connection isn’t fast enough. This just started recently. I haven’t changed anything on my network and everything has been working fine until the last few weeks. I have played around with the various settings on the Apple TV app but can’t seem to fix the problem. Any suggestions?
You’ll usually see this error message / warning in two scenarios:
(1) you’re trying to stream media with a maximum bitrate beyond the network bandwidth available between your server and the Apple TV. If you’re on a wireless connection, WLAN can easily be impacted by physical stuff “in the way” (concrete things, metal…) or neighboring WLANs competing with yours.
(2) your Apple TV cannot direct play the media (or has been configured to play a different quality), and the server isn’t up to transcoding the file in real-time.
Best to look into those two use cases.
Checking out the server’s “Now Playing” section during the troublesome streams might shed some light on what’s going on (e.g. information about the bitrate, local/remote/indirect stream, transcoding).
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200871837-status-and-dashboard/
Also something to check for, is what other processes do you have running on your Plex server. I’ve been playing around with Jellyfin to help a friend cut the cord. Occasionly it seems to go nuts and uses around 30% of my servers memory and top goes to around 50-60. I have no idea why. This usually leads to all kind of connections troubles from Plex to my Plex server. It seems like you are running Plexmediaserver on you Apple Tv and it is semi-unix-y. Can you run top and see if resources are bing exhausted?
There’s no Plex Media Server Running on Apple TV, just a client.
Ok, clearly I misread your post. But it may be worth checking on the machine that is running PMS
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Thanks for those suggestions.
I changed my Apple TV to an ethernet connection to the modem and I was able to go over an hour without a server connection error and that was brief. The modem is still connected wirelessly to the server so WLAN interference could still be an issue.
Thanks, I did make sure there was nothing else running on the computer running the server.
I changed to an Ethernet connection for my computer so there is now no wireless as the Apple TV is also hard wired….and I’m still getting the error message. It seems to happen about 60-90 minutes after starting the stream and I wonder if it is my hourly Time Machine backup that is slowing things down.
Could be an option.
Anything stealing your bandwidth could impact the streaming quality.
Ok, I’ll turn off the backup and see if that makes a difference.
Curious - what mac are you running PMS on? (I apologize if you mentioned it and I’m not seeing it)
That message can be a bit of a catch-all but since you wired both ends, having no other competing applications for processing power, the issue should be narrowed down to the hardware and/or available bandwidth I believe.
I’m running PMS on an M2 Mac Mini. The problem isn’t as bad as it was before I hardwired and turned off hourly back ups but I still get the error message occasionally.
I have a wired connection to the computer and to the Apple TV running the client and it cannot play any files for more than a minute.
After spending hours checking all of my network configurations, I can say it’s definitely an issue with the Plex client on Apple TV.
I installed infuse and connected it to Plex and it plays all of the files giving me the same error without any issues.
For what it’s worth Apple tvOS 18,4.1/ Plex client 8.45
Any client setting that might fix this? Server and AppleTV both on ethernet and connected to the same gigabit hub
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