So I’m a hardcore plex user and I share my libraries with some friends/family. Long story short, everything was working beautifully. I have a synology diskstation 8drive bay setup and connected to my imac and wifi router. After the most recent update, my server has been disconnecting constantly (from within my network at home), and my users experience this error:
“Not enough bandwidth for any playback of this item. Required bandwidth is XX kbps and only XX kbps is available”
Now this is not right because most of the users say that they use fibre optic internet, so that’s high speed connection. Moreover, they’ve reduced their quality to the lowest. How can we get rid of this error? Is it something I have to tell my users to change in their settings or are they from mine? Can someone give me steps of what I need to change? Please help - I want this to go back to normal! I will really really appreciate the support.
What is your upload speed? Do you have the upload speed set from the setting page I link in the FAQ above? When they get this error, are other people streaming?
Thanks for the help guys - I think it was definitely the upload speed.
I think I fixed this. I removed what my upload speed was stated as. My speed right now (just checked via speedtest.net is 8.92 mbps). Not the greatest but it’ll do for now. My friends aren’t complaining about that error anymore.
I’ve also had a few friends complain about this bandwidth message they are seeing. And after finding this post I recall that I had set these limits at some point in the last couple months, after upgrading my ISP service for more bandwidth… and there is no way that I am really starved for bandwidth, so I’m thinking there must be a bug related to this setting.
I plan to do some tests with my buddy later today. He’s going to retry a movie that had been giving him the error message, send me a picture of the message, then I will remove the settings and he’ll retry it.
edit: my ISP service is 100 Mbps Downloads/35 Mbps Uploads
@timstephens24 said:
I’ve gotten the bandwidth message in my house with everything hardwired, but it still plays (and doesn’t transcode) from my Synology perfectly.
I’ve seen that happen too. But for remote users, after enabling these settings, it just refuses to play back some movies, but works fine for others.
Well played around and I’ve determined something is wrong with these functions. I have my limit set to 8Mbps, and instructed my buddy to change the setting on his end to be 8Mbps as well, but he still gets the following error:
Plex has two sets of bandwidths of which the more accurate is newer. Many clients only read the older set when determining whether to direct play or transcode. Either way, the recommended procedure for client initiating playback does cover this situation. Check to ensure your client is up to date as it may have already been changed to follow the new procedure. Also it would help to know what the client was in this case.
