Mac desktop client displaying small boxes across video

[at0dd]

Server Version#: 1.40.0.7998
Player Version#: 1.87.2.87-87488d5a
Mac: 2021 M1 MacBook Pro running macOS 14.3.1

When playing any video file on the Mac desktop client, there are strange small boxes that show up across the entire image. They are faint, but more noticeable on a dark background. I tried playing files on the web player and other devices and could not replicate the issue. The laptop is not plugged in to any external monitors. Tested with the laptop plugged in to a charger and without. Tested when streaming at original quality and transcoding.

I uploaded two small screen recordings that display the difference. (Uploaded to WeTransfer since the upload function here does not allow video and has an 8MB limit.) The boxes are most noticeable on the last few frames of the desktop.mov file, when the video is paused. Obviously some grain/noise is expected with any video, but this seems different. I just recently noticed this, as it’s a bit distracting to me when watching a video.

Plex-examples

Edit: Disabling hardware decoding on the client seems to fix the issue.

[gbooker02]

@at0dd

Edit: Disabling hardware decoding on the client seems to fix the issue.

Most likely, the video you are playing is out of spec for the codec. Hardware decoders are less tolerant of these deviations and tend to produce more artifacts in those cases.

You could try reporting this to Apple as the hardware decoder in use is theirs but if, as I suspect, the steam is out of spec, they likely won’t do anything.