Server Version#: 4.87.2
Player Version#: 5.52.3
I had been using Plex on the Xbox for a while without issue, but when I finally set up my own library, I ran into more and more videos that simply won’t play properly, at least in the default client.
They take a while to buffer, play for a couple seconds, buffer for several seconds, play for a bit, then buffer again. Totally unwatchable.
Nothing seems remarkable about the files impacted, it’s not like they’re fancy 4K or higher resolution or anything. All the ones I’ve really tried have been 1080 and have used a variety of codecs, including both h264 and h265/HEVC. Some have had multiple audio files, others have not.
I’ve tried toggling just about every setting I can figure out, from mode-switching possibly triggering some HDR setting, trying to lower the max resolution on both local and remote streams in the hope of forcing transcoding, enabling/disabling direct play, etc. Nothing seems to have any impact.
While playing, the media server never really goes above 20-30% CPU usage overall, regardless of whatever hardware transcoding option I set. I am a Plex Pass owner.
Both the Xbox Series X and the Synology DS920+ (server) are on the same network, both wired to the same switch and both getting great speeds whenever I run a speed test.
The same videos play fine via the web player on my laptop and in the iOS app on both my iPhone and iPad.
I was also able to get the videos to play properly by having Plex pre-convert optimized versions, but that’s only really viable when I thought it was a couple problematic files, not a consistent issue popping up repeatedly (though not universally).
I did encounter similar buffering issues on both my Samsung TV and 2021 Apple TV HD. The latter actually reports that the server is not powerful enough to transcode the video, but - again - the CPU is not being fully utilized.
What is really throwing me for a loop, though, is that if I install Kodi on the Xbox and then use the Plex plugin there, the videos play perfectly fine on the Xbox, so that makes me think the problem is somehow with the Plex player app itself (which I have reinstalled). Unfortunately, the Kodi interface isn’t that great.
The ultimate solution I’ve arrived at for now is to just AirPlay my iPad to my Xbox and watch it that way, but that is obviously less than ideal.
What am I missing? Is there a known problem with the Xbox (and Samsung & Apple TV) app? Or some setting I missed trying?
