I have various Roku devices at home and at family members homes. This problem is specific to my Roku 3.
My Roku 3 is connected via hard line ethernet, with PLEX connecting to a VPS. Recently I started to notice a LOT of buffering to the point where playback was stopping every few minutes. Looking at my server the upload would start at 4mb/s, then drop to only a few hundred kb, at which point PLEX would buffer and quit.
To test if it was local Internet related, I connected the Roku to a wireless hotspotā¦same result. Then I used my Android phone connected to the same hotspot and was able to stream and cast to the Roku with no issues.
So the question is, what could be causing the problem?..is it the app and does reinstalling it do anything? is it the Roku 3 and some other problem with it?..
Any thoughts/ideas appreciatedā¦
thanks
2 Likes
Roku Premiere+ is also having this issue. Plex version 5.3.4
Plex Web and Chromecast at the same location are not having any issue. Tried reinstalling the Roku app.
edit: My Roku is also connected via ethernet. Itās acting like I donāt have the bandwidth but other devices are fine.
2nd edit: As you said, by casting from the android app to the Roku, all is good. I very rarely cast to the Roku, good temporary workaround, thanks.
FYI, tried a Roki Stick today, same problem.
The questions are, has this bug been identified, are the devs even aware of it, and when can we expect a patch?
Iām also experiencing issues with remote Roku devices and buffering a lot or giving a ānot fast enough to streamā error.
Itās impacting Roku sticks of multiple generations and Roku Ultra (2017).
I attempted to up my transcoder buffering time from 60 seconds to 180, to 300 but nothing seems to be working.
My Plex server itself is never jumping above 20% CPU and has plenty of available outbound bandwidth. Watching via the web or other clients like PS4 doesnāt seem to cause issues but Roku does.
I have 2 of my users complaining about the same issue, starting at some point this weekend.
1 Like
Iām wondering if this is a problem with Linux based clients, as SmartTVās appear to have the same problemā¦(based on friends/family calling me to report the same issue)
My 2 users on Roku are finding they canāt get more than 20 minutes on a movie/tv show & the roku starts constant buffering. Once buffering starts on one show, all future shows tried continue to buffer at initiation, a reboot solves the problem, but it returns within 10-15 minutes. Only on the roku, all other platforms are working without issue.
2 Likes
Iām seeing the same thing on my Premiere+. Able to use Roku Media Player & DLNA from the server as a workaround (so further evidence itās the Roku Plex app thatās the problem). This is a pretty significant bug on a very popular client. Hopefully it will be fixed soon!
@mpjohns3, were you transcoding both audio and video, or direct play/stream either or?
One file in particular I have been testing with I had encoded and converted to .mp4 at 1700kbps (standard for me)ā¦constant buffering/stalling. Today I encoded the same source at 3400kpbs and is playing without issue, although now both audio and video are transcoding, whereas before it would either be direct play/stream or a combination of direct and transcoding.
Yea, still borked. Seems like this would be high priority, but we donāt have any way of knowing if they are even aware that Roku is broken.
The plug-ins all went down on the Android app and Chromecast for a week and while we all talked about it on the forum here, there was no official acknowledgement of it. I think it was down for a week or so before they fixed it with updates. The system here is weird when you consider how other software companies keep a list of known bugs, or at least acknowledge a system wide issue on their own forums. It leaves us to troubleshoot our own configurations for no reason.
1 Like
Itās ok to reach out in a forum and confirm that youāre not crazy with someone else having the same issue. However, itās always a question of āis PLEX staff awareāā¦as there is no bug reporting feature. Standard questions for operation and etcā¦ are easily handled in the forum, however, there should be a way to tag something with a bug report that impacts service.
1 Like
I went to a friends place last night who exclusively uses Roku devices and holy junk, we couldnāt watch anything.
Thank you for the heads up about casting from another devices because we had to in order to get a decent stream. I would think this would be a much larger issue but ĀÆ|(ć)/ĀÆ, I have seen Plex Staff not give a single care about forum posted issues in the past.
For nowā¦I just cast from my phone to my Roku. It would be nice for PLEX staff to jump into this thread, check it outā¦and acknowledge there is a problem.
twiddling thumbs waiting for support
Same issue here. Roku 3. Hard wired. Began buffering a week+ ago. Unwatchable. Emby on same roku, same server works fine. Something changed around the same time ple x classic got canned. Though I have only use regular official plex.
I also started experiencing this about a week ago. I originally had a Roku stick and thought it might be the wireless connection even though I had download speeds of 150mbps+.
I bought a Roku Ultra and hardwired it and experienced the same issues.
I was streaming original content at 1080p anywhere from 20-35mbps and had constant buffering.
I tried to go all the way down to 4mbps (720p) and still experienced buffering.
I switched over the the Plex app on my Tivo running at 4mbps and it played the same movie, never buffering once.
I have others connected to the Plex server who were streaming 4K to the Roku app on their TV, never buffered once.
Not sure what changed in the last week but itās unusable.
Roku Ultra - software version 8.1.0 build 4137-46
2 Likes
FYIā¦my Roku clients are all set to āOriginalā, with the server capping each stream at 4mbps. So itās not as if iām pulling a 4K video and canāt keep up.
Any chance we can get confirmation or something from Plex employees that there is a Roku Plex issue? @sa2000, @anon18523487
Iām experiencing the exact same issue with remote streaming on Roku Ultra, Streaming Stick and Streaming Stick+. It started about a week or two ago. Iām running Plex Server on a QNAP and Iāve tested using the latest public and Plex Pass releases. Both have the exact same issue. Iād love to hear if Plex staff will confirm this issue and have a fix soon.
3 of my friends, all with Roku devices, have said that Plex has been unusable the past few weeks. Constant buffering. They never had any problems until recently.
