NVIDIA Shield TV 4096 x 2160 HEVC will not Direct Play

General Discussions
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Your documentation states this:
" 4K (UHD) Direct Play Video Support

Some 4K (ultra high definition) devices are recognized by the Plex app. We’re working to bring 4K playback support to other devices, too. 4K/UHD content matching the following will Direct Play on supported devices:

  • Container: MP4
  • Resolution: 3840×2160 or smaller
  • Video Encoding: HEVC (H.265)
  • Video Frame Rate: 30fps
  • Video Bit Depth: 8

4K content not matching the above properties will be transcoded to 1080p. Transcoding 4K content is a very intensive process and will require a powerful computer running Plex Media Server."

A 4096 x 2160 HEVC movie (The Fifth Element) WILL DIRECT PLAY on a Samsung Tizen 4K (2017) running over 5G Wifi, BUT your software attempts to transcode the same movie on the NVIDIA Shield running on Gigabit Ethernet. Isn’t this a rather stupid limitation given the fact that other video players on the Shield have not issue playing the same movie (Samba mount). It appears to be some forced issue and not a function of the server, Shield, or underlying 4K TV (Samsung 2016)

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What version of PMS & platform? See Authorized Devices -> Server
What version of Plex client on Shield? See Authorized Devices -> Android

In the Plex app on the Nvidia Shield, set Display Information = On.

During playback, pull up the on-screen controls (pause, etc). Look in upper left corner of screen. It will show if movie is direct play / direct stream / transcode. If one of latter two it will provide a reason.

What does it show?

Also, please provide Plex XML information for the movie. Save the information to an XML file, zip, & attach to reply.

1 Like
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Im running the most recent versions of the server and the Plex app for the shield but I will get you the exact versions. I know what the problem is and that is the 3840 limitation.
PMS: 1.14.1.5488-cc260c476
Shield: 7.2.1.6015

Reason for transcoding: Device cannot play this video format at 4096x2160

MC.zip (13.0 KB)

4

Thanks for the info.

Easy to see why Plex via Shield is transcoding the video, as it is larger than the actual display: 4096x2160 video vs 3840x2160 display.

It would be interesting to know how the Samsung is able to direct play the video. Does it cut off the extra 256 pixels, scale the picture, something else?

You might be able to see something in the Samsung Plex app logs or maybe PMS logs.

But this will require input from somebody at Plex to resolve.

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