I don’t know if it’s a Plex problem. I’ve found that rebooting my tube helps a great deal (it can go a month without reboots, at least in my house), and the last Shield TV update brought more stability.
Additionally, that last update gave the tube the ability to convert HDR color space to SDR on the fly. I have a 4K TV, but it’s not HDR, and the conversion works pretty well. (The resulting image is not as bright, but the colors are correct.)
Mine is shut down and booted daily (home automation shuts down the Tube through adb, a power plug controls the power from tv/amp/tube etc.)
Problem happens still, its heavily dependent on which files you play, and what ‘mood’ the Tube is in. Uptime seems irrelevant, for me at least.
After being frustrated for months I finally threw in the towel and bought a Shield Pro since Plex seemed incapable of fixing this issue and the whole reason I bought a Shield in the first place was for perfect 4k/HDR playback.
Like others, happy to report no issues so far with the Pro and it handles all of the movies that caused me problems on the Tube. Again, I could play these files on the Tube, but not from Plex - I had to pivot out to VLC which was a pain and defeats the purpose.
I am not pleased I had to drop another $250+ and my Tube is past the return date.
That is strange I am using shieldtv tube and only had issues once on some specific 4k remux movie, which was playing fine the next day I tried it, other than that all of the 4k remuxes are playing fine so far.
I’ve never had any issues playing 4K/HDR content with DTS:X or Dolby Atmos on my Shield TV (tube).
My Shield is ethernet hardwired and my iMac ‘server’ is also hardwired. I direct play every video.
If I come across a 4K video that crashes the tube, I’ll report back.
Some 4k content played ok, seemed to be the higher the bitrate the more problems I’d have. One good example was Don’t Look Now which was something like 89 Mb/s and would just kill it for me. Others which were down in the 60s might have issues like audio dropouts and random pausing but wouldn’t necessarily kill the whole tube.
I guess the other thing I could add is that I have all my 4K videos on an external 7200RPM drive. Previously, they were on a 5400RPM drive and that stuttered the video and subsequently crashed Plex.
I would like eventually to put all my 4K videos on an SSD, but i’ll have to wait for the prices to come down for the storage space required.
I don’t know if this affects performance or not, but it did work for me in eliminating the previous erratic behaviour of 4K content.
Add me to the list of former Tube owners who sold that version and bought the Shield Pro. The Tube caused constant crashes, pauses, and all sorts of strange behavior for remuxes of my UHD discs. I do not further compress the video/audio streams when I remux.
I also couldn’t rewind or fast forward any of my UHD content. Reboot sometimes resolved the issue temporarily but it eventually came back.
After going to the Shield Pro, all crashing stuttering and issues have ceased and I am thoroughly enjoying my UHD content. Luckily I was able to sell the Tube for actually close to what I paid for it on eBay, so upgrading to the pro was only a $50 expense.
highly recommended option for those that don’t want to waste a ton of time troubleshooting this ■■■■.
Same issues here with a 2019 tube Shield playing UHD/HDR content. Very disappointed to be sending it back since I picked it up for just £130 on a Amazon Warehouse deal, so it’s more like £70 more to upgrade to the Pro.
Reading this thread explains why Amazon have so many Warehouse Deals on the tube. Must be getting a lot of returns.
Just bought the Tube last week due to Dolby Vision support in Plex (been using Kodi before). Initially, when I tested last week everything seemed fine, but yesterday when I was actually going to use it the stuttering was there from the very start in both Dolby Vision and plain HDR movies. Nice to see it’s a known issue, bummer that’s it has been going on for so long. I’ll stick to Kodi for now and wait a bit.
Don’t bother, some of us have been waiting 9mo. If you only bought the tube last week, take it back now and get your money back before you’re stuck with it like the rest of us. Do yourself a favor and get the pro version for a little more, otherwise you’ll be stuck with a paperweight waiting for plex and Nvidia to blame each other and sort this out.
Same bloody issue for me too. Notice it only on high bitrate content. Annoying as hell!
Even Kodi struggles a bit when I watched 1917 just now. Two times during the movie there were a 60 second or so period with a lot of stutter and audio dropouts, similar to how Plex is constantly while playing the same movie. Going to return the Tube and get the Pro on Monday
Ok so there is definitely a problem I did not notice before, or I wrote it off as some kind “one of” issue with particular file, but now I’ve noticed in multiple instances with 4k videos, going to replace with pro version I guess…
Been experiencing this problem since I purchased a 4k TV a few months ago… unfortunately about a year after purchasing the Tube 2019.
I can use the Plex client on my smart TV to playback content that the Shield TV tube can’t handle… How embarrassing is that!
Same here, i ask for a solution please. Go on Plex team, it’s time 
The only solution at the moment, (which I did) was to sell the tube and buy the pro. Pro has no stuttering.
If you don’t need DV support you could use PKC for Kodi.
I’ve been tearing my hair out for the past 3 months trying everything to troubleshoot my server not being able to direct stream + direct play content to my tube shield and really, it’s been Plex the whole time?
I bought the Plex lifetime pass because it was decent enough, but I noticed months ago higher bitrate 1080p content would stutter/buffer.
It was strange because everything was hardwired gigabit. All manner of ethernet/internet troubleshooting had been done on both ends. Gig upload on server and gig download on the shield.
just got an x900h and decided to download my first 4k HDR content, 22mbps.
Stutters after 5 seconds. Then non-stop stuttering / buffering.
Did a ton more troubleshooting last night and today, only to give up and try using the Plex android app on the Sony x900H tv.
Works.
Just works.
There is a half second buffer right after it’s been playing for 2 seconds but then it is flawless.
Who’s to blame? Plex or Nvidia? Either way I’m not happy with either company after what I’ve paid.
Hey all, I found a fix that has made all the stuttering on my Tube go away.
Thanks Sneakypie. I’ll try that tonight. Got a Tube model - same issues. Nivida’s claim that Plex’s memory usage is excessive makes sense as I’ve had the issue where a film plays fine for the first few minutes then the issues start. But once the issues start it only gets worse. I’d assumed it was fluctuations in the bitrate. Occasionally a 4k HDR film will just straight up crash and it goes back the Plex’s main menu.
I’d been wondering if my local network wasn’t up to scratch, but my Tube is connected via gigabit Ethernet…Also wondered if my Plex server was struggling to serve the files - but it’s a fairly powerful Windows PC I built myself, also gigabit Ethernet, and the CPU/memory usage is minimal when direct playing.
Then I got a Pro - no issues at all. Hopefully Plex can fix the non-Pro issue soon. Unfortunately it’s the same pattern with Plex, as with other things like the many Plex Live TV/DVR issues - many users report an issue and Plex just sort of ignores it and hope it goes away? Or maybe they are working on it. But just can’t get a solution for years. And little if any communication, so users are left to fume and speculate while trying to cobble together some sort of workaround.
Especially disappointing in light of the fact that a year or two ago when Plex was trying to kill PMP for Windows, their rationale for doing so was more or less, “F@$% you, get an Nvidia Shield”. Well, I took that amazing advice. And the Shield’s Plex app is crippled and won’t play a lot of files properly. Great. My Tube can’t be returned, and anyway functions perfectly in every other way. So hopefully that fix can at least help make the files playable.
