Just thought I’d share my recent experiences using Plex to stream 4K HDR content. I picked up a Sony 65" OLED TV w/built-in Android TV over the weekend. I currently have it connected to my network via wi-fi (I don’t recall the speed but I recently purchased a new Asus router and it’s only a room away so my wifi is very fast and stable).
My server is nothing special…running an i5-6500T with built-in graphics so not planning on having it transcode any 4K video.
Installed the Plex app, downloaded some 4K HDR content to my server (I’m going to need more disk lol), and started watching the movie…ZERO issues! Everything I’ve thrown at it streams perfectly!
Now I do know that if you have a file with Dolby Atmos/TrueHD audio streams, you will need to either select an alternate stream or the server is going to transcode the audio (which fortunately is much less strenuous than video).
I even had a friend stream some 4K HDR remotely and he was able to Direct Play as well (thank God for gigabit up/down). I’ve also been able to stream 4K movies stored on my Google Drive (using RClone) without any issues as well.
Hi STWallman,
you’re really lucky having a symmetrical Gbit connection. Though I do agree on Plex handling 4K streams perfectly fine. Most of mine are low bitrate (also because of 24p frame rate, I believe 4K and 24p should never meet again…), but while buffering the first minute or so, I see some decent speeds on my ethernet connection (about 600mbits), which is way more than enough for my 3-and-a-half clients to all stream 4K content at the same time.
In my case only about 15-20 mbit/s, though I’ve heard “bursts [of 4k video] can exceed 100mbps”, but depending on where you get your 4k footage from and how you handle converting them you’d see around 40-50mbps lossy compression and about double~triple for lossless compression.
Well, I have no way of seeing a Dolby Vision movie with the same i5 6500t, it doesn’t look smooth, they have microshocks. Wi-Fi connection 350 mbps up and down and it does not go well. By ethernet it only reaches 95mbps
But that’s not your internet cable’s fault I imagine, even rust can transmit faster than 95mbps. The 6500t is already rather old (and was not anywhere high end even back then) and nobody ever said handling 4K is easy, but that might look different on another device or even another player!
Many of the ethernet adapters for a wired connection in TV’s are 100 mbps so theoretically WiFi is faster (although that’s assuming good WiFi, router nearby, etc.)
You mention Dolby Vision - keep in mind that’s a totally different ballgame that requires the proper media file, hardware, apps, etc. I’ve only had success with a single DV video so far. My original post was in regards to 4K/HDR, not DV.
Have you also confirmed that your Plex server isn’t transcoding the media file instead of direct playing it?
@Super4Jet@Lazarus_Long Thanks for answering.
Yes, I imagine that the pc lacks power to move that type of movies, if it is true that the demo plays them well but they do not occupy 60GB like the movies.
Yes it is true that the post talks about 4k but imagine that using the same processor could help me.
Both the tv and the pc are together next to the router.
I think it is well configured, and the playback is direct without transcoding, but my notions of plex are minimal and I have not found a step by step tutorial on how to configure it correctly.
Could you do something to make it work? or really with that hardware I waste my time?
We probably should’ve opened a new thread for this, but let’s just assume this is part of the “experience” mentioned in the title. So, before I reused old MB/CPU/Ram combo, my PMS was running on a Pi3. The Pi is not powerful at all, it can barely handle playing back 1080p content, with barely meaning you’d be glad it’s not crashing, but don’t expect less than 90% dropped frames; playback is more like a slide show. But Plex was okay with that: If you always direct play, which you can expect from any modern player like PMP for Windows/Linux, The RaspPi is fine. But sometimes, Plex Media Player would decide to not stream it locally (happens after waking up from hibernation without closing the player first), which causes it to use the proxy, which then requires transcoding and - the Pi freezes. Freezing in this case means it’s literally melting down, 85C is not uncommonly the highest sustained temperature. And although I don’t think your server will suffer from this, for smooth playback I’d suggest to either:
Check all your clients are capable of direct play/direct stream (which they don’t seem to be, so you’d need to think about excluding those devices) or
Create optimized versions that the TV might be able to play back without live transcoding (it also reduces the performance requirement at lower resolutions), though I have very little experience on if and how they work or
Reencode those 4k movies to a codec that the Tv understands, they usually all support MPEG-4, but try not to use that, it’s inefficient af (->huge file size)
If you can’t accept any of those trade-offs -
you might actually be wasting your time.
But I hope thats not the case
Thanks for answering.
I understand that yes, that the pi3 is much less power.
In plex server I put direct transmission but I do not remember finding in plex server of the tv the option of direct reproduction.
The Tv is the Sony x900h that the panel is 4k 10 bits and it reproduces smoothly 4k, hdr10, h265 and it is supposed that Dolby Vision but I am not able to make it smooth.
So in direct transmission, it does not matter the requirements of the pc?
