So i have had Plex for a while now and it has worked sort of okay but mostly in a way where i would just want to leave and never come back.
I have a NAS and while that isn´t nearly as strong as an actual server with an i5 or even a Xeon processor it is and should very well be capable of what i want it to do. The NAS i have is a WD EX4100 with two 3tb WD RED HDD in JBOD. The first one i had to RMA due to the fact that it kept crashing on me every 6 day but other than that played every single movie i threw at it.
Now that i have gotten a brand spanking new one still the EX4100 i simply can´t play any movie unless the bitrate is at 0.4 Mbps. I always test with the same movie due to it´s high quality and high bitrate. With the old NAS i could run three streams at the same time at a bitrate of 10 Mbps without any issues at all. Now i keep getting the “This server is not powerful enough to convert video” error message each time i want to watch a movie on the Android app and with the option of playing it at the original quality which doesn´t work at all.
The movie i keep testing is the MKV filetype and so are most of the movies i have. They play absolutely fine on the PC using chrome but using the IOS app on the iPad or the Android app on the phone or tablet they aren´t able to play very stable at all.
Remote streaming does work but if you want to switch movie you have to close out of the app completely and clear the cache before it will play at all otherwise you just get the “This server is not powerful enough to convert video” error and the option to click yes to convert to original quality which as i´ve mentioned before doesn´t actually work.
My NAS has got two LAN cables connected and setup in link aggregation in order to really push it´s transfer rate and spread out the load. Network speed in general is 78Mbit/s both down and up.
I have attached my database and serverlogs for you to take a peak at.
Well now absolutely nothing works… I used to not have the Plex pass but now i do and it seems that there are way more issues than anything. To be honest i´m about to cancel my Plex account immediately because it simply doesn´t work at all.
What I am saying is, it could be as simple as the EX4100 just isn’t going to do what you want it to do.
PC probably plays fine, because it can direct play it. And the pad/phone/android or what not gets transcoded, well except it gives and error as you say.
Though it does seem weird that it kinda works but at the same time doesn’t.
Either way, it does not seem like the EX4100 is that suited for any PMS that requires transcoding at all. Which is also said a few times here on the forum.
The weird thing is that the other EX4100 played 1080p movies at like i said 10-20 Mbit/s just fine and only had issues with ISO since Plex doesn´t support that for some reason. The one i got is brand new like the other one was but it had too many issues shutting down and what not so they replaced it and gave me a new instead.
Instead of trying to get something that weak to work with Plex and get it to transcode i might as well get a proper server with a Xeon e3 1225v6 instead. so getting an actual desktop pc kinda setup with server grade hardware installed that will fix my issues so i´m closing it from my side here.
