After further testing with my Shield tube, I noticed that the longer the device was in use, the more problems I had playing 4K content. I started rebooting the device before playing 4K movies, and every time the reboot led to smoother and more consistent playback.
To be absolutely clear: I never had any issues playing 4K content on the Shield tube until about four weeks ago. I don’t know what eldritch combination of Nvidia, Plex app, or PMS update causes the issue, but this is a relatively recent hiccup, with no previous indications of trouble.
I found kodi and plex add on worked OK on the tube. No crashing at least. But some of the features like dolby vision didn’t work that way. The pro was the best solution.
It is much improved over the last 3 months or so, they are getting it worked out. Don’t let the naysayers get you down. Why is it taking so long for perfection is anybody’s guess. It’s gone from immediate crash 8-10 times to an occasional stutter and some missed frames with a crash less than one in 10. All this getting a different device because one app acts up sometimes is for the birds.
Why is it taking so long for perfection is anybody’s guess
Except “perfection” just means “functional” here. Like an airplane, a movie that ONLY stutters a few times a minute and ONLY crashes every 10-20 minutes is still junk.
Just adding my experience to ensure the thread doesn’t get closed down.
This issue is far from fixed and as stated by Nvidia seems to be due to the 2gig of memory on the tube getting used up when buffering very high bit rate content (so nearly any 4K title)
I do find it a little concerning that they still haven’t managed to fix this yet, although the fact Kodi’s player doesn’t have issues indicates it isn’t impossible.
As always it’s a great shame that Plex spokespeople don’t comment very often on these boards, as issues such as these are fairly significant and do render a device like the Shield tube temporarily un-usable for 4K Plex content
Agree its a shame they can’t fix or figure this out. Or at least acknowledge it more publicly. Between this tube issue and the lack of hdr tonemapping when transcoding, I’m taking a hard look at Jellyfin (free and open source) instead of plex…
Ah, fair enough. I’ve been on Plex for so many years now that the idea of moving my ridiculously large media library elsewhere, seems like a bridge too far
I have been toying with grabbing the Pro, much like yourself, but the fact that the tube should be more than capable of handling the task is the only thing stopping me.
Glad I came across this. Been battling wierd UHD playback stuttering, washed out HDR and stuttering Atmos sound. I thought this was straightened out. Better now but still there. I was hoping I didn’t have to sell this damn thing. Guess I will look at the Pro.
Yeah I saw this fix, will definitely have to try it. If I can get the plex plugin on Kodi to run dolby vision, well I guess that’s good enough.
Shame Plex has such crap app development that owners have to be the ones to kludge together their own fix months after the problem has been discovered.
Man, even with the pro I’m am having the same problem. A few weeks ago I was watching direct play 4k no problem. But now I buffer every few seconds. Guess I can try Kodi, but I really hoped I wouldn’t have to bother with that.
I had troubles watching a 4k HDR movie with about 70MBps with the tube. With Kodi the file played just fine.
Anyway, got the pro and these problems are gone for now with plex. I hope this won’t get out of hand.
Quiet a shame, that a 150€ piece of hardware isn’t able to play high bitrate content with plex. And it’s clearly the plex app, that is at fault here.
Same issues here. Got myself a new LG OLED, lower tier B9 but still nice. The Tube and Plex (updated) plays everything else perfectly except for high bitrate 4K HDR or SL DV files. Its mostly hit and miss too. Sometimes it starts playing and stutters like hell, sometimes it just crashes outright or becomes unresponsive. Tried several different versions of Plex, and disabling the new player. Some imrpovement here and there but nothing that FIXES the issues.
Kodi on the other hand seems to be handling stuff well, except for no SL DV right now. At least Atmos is there and it plays smoothly. Have to test a whole movie to see how Kodi really holds up.
Please fix Plex though on the Tube. I wish there was a light version of the Plex app without all the TIDAL and Live TV and who knows what else. Non-bloated app for just playing your own stuff.
My tube crashes nonstop on 4k mkv rips. Tried every setting, old player, new player. Eventually I can get it to play but the playback drops frames randomly. Please fix this plex.
