I am having an issue where the plex app on my nvidia shield pro (2019) will stop or buffer randomly when playing high bitrate 4k hdr files. I am at my wits end because everything direct plays and I believe my hardware is set up in a way where it shouldn’t ever buffer. I will put down as much information as I can, and hopefully its not excessive but I really have no idea what could be causing the issue and every other thread or forum that I have come across either has no answer or addresses a similar issue but with different reasons. When the issue occurs, sometimes I get the message, “Your connection to the server is not fast enough to stream this video. Check your Network.”
I’m currently hosting my server in my windows PC.
Ryzen 7 3700x
32gb @3200mhz ram
5700 xt
I am trying to play files on my nvidia shield pro, connected to my TCL R617 TV. I have my shield connected to my router, a cox communications panoramic wifi router (Technicolor CGM4140COM), via ethernet. My pc is also connected to the same router via ethernet. One cable is cat6 and the other cat5e. The router supports gigabit speeds, my pc supports gigabit lan, and I know the shield supports gigabit lan. My internet speeds are 300mbps down and 30mbps up. Since the 3 components, router, server, and client are all gigabit capable and hard wired, it should be supporting a 1000mbps local area network, and yet I receive the connection to the server is too slow message. Furthermore, on the plex web app dashboard, it states the file as playing “Local (192.168.0.154)”
The files are in mkv containers. None of them every transcode on the shield, and on the dashboard it always shows them as Direct Playing. The files play off of hard drives I have connected to the pc (server).
Does anyone see any issues with my set up, or have any input or ways to test to see where the problem lies? I appreciate any help I can get. I attached the logs I downloaded from my server.
This sounds like you have a 100Mb/s connection somewhere between the PMS and the Shield. High Bitrate 4K files can sometimes transition above the 100Mb/s level and this will cause the pause/freeze.
Even though devices may be capable of 1Gb/s all it takes is a wrong cable or interface and the speed will suffer. You may need to access your router and confirm the speeds coming in and out of the device. As well confirm the connection speed of the shield through the setup menu.
I have seen a similar problem with my setup and it was related to a cable that fed a switch that then fed my shield.
So should trying new cables be my first check? One cable should be new as I got my router in April, the other is a couple years old. On the router gateway the ethernet connections are showsn as being 1000mbps. I attached a screenshot below. Idk how important MAC Address is so i hid it. The router only has 2 ethernet ports, one connected to the shield, the other to the server.
Same problem with my TCL (roku) client (win 10 for pms). Doesnt happen with android or standalone roku clients.
Work around when video freezes is:
Pause video. (Timeline info is inaccurate)
Play video. (Video is moving! But now out of synch with audio)
Stop playback
RESUME playback.
It’s like the client is deindexed from Timeline. Happens much more often on OTA DVR recordings than other video media.
And the TCL ROKU PLEX client particularly (versus android and standalone roku plex).
Sorry to piggyback on this, but I’m having essentially the same issue. Looks like as of mid August that this hadn’t been resolved. My configuration…
-4K mkv files uncompressed stored on a Synology NAS (w/gigabit ethernet port)
-24-port TP-Link gigabit switch
-NVidia Shield Pro
-Plex server running on PC w/gigabit ethernet adapter
-NAS, server (PC), and Nvidia Shield all hardwired to the switch via cat 6 cable
-dashboard shows the file is direct play
-playback on Nvidia Shield plays fine for a minute or two, but then I get the buffering wheel
-buffering lasts for +/- 5 secs, and then playback continues again for another minute or two before more buffering
I have used this configuration successfully for several years with uncompressed 1080P bluray mkv’s w/ no problem. Now uncompressed 4K bluray mkv’s are experiencing the buffering. I get that it’s a much higher bit rate, but I believe my configuration should be more than adequate. I only have a handful of mkv files thus far…so far just the Avengers series, which appears to have an average bit rate of ~50 mbps (with peaks around 80-90 mbps), but this is far lower than what should be capable with a 1000 mbps network.
Any recommendations/settings I should be looking at?
I believe I’ve found what was wrong in my case, so I wanted to share here just in case it helps someone else. I was noticing on my windows PC (which is my server), under the network performance section, that it said my wired network was connected via a 100 Mbps link, which doesn’t match when considering I have a gigabit ethernet adapter. Under the device manager I found that you can adjust the settings of the ethernet adapter… the speed and duplex setting was set to auto. I adjusted this to a manual setting of 1 Gbps, and this changed the 100 Mbps network performance link to 1 Gbps. I’ve played a few segments of 4K mkv files now and so far no buffering wheel.
So last night I got some new high bitrate files and kept running into this issue, and your simple little fix in the Device Manager seems to be working like magic. Have gone through 2 files now without issue. Thanks for this!!
Movies are stored on a HDD on my computer, using /tmp as temporary storage. Pc connected (Ethernet) to my router which itself is connected to my Nvidia shield via Ethernet as well.
I’ve tried so many settings but so far nothing seems to work.
