This is a post to just help those who might experience the issue of some shows or movies freezing when attempting to play in original quality. I checked a bunch of different settings, but between my friends and I, we found this to be be a Chromium-based browser issue. Presumably it’s something with the way the browser handles the content being streamed.
The “FIX” is to either just use Firefox or to change the playback quality to anything not original. For me, I was attempting to watch shows at 1080p with a bitrate of around 20mbps at original quality. These shows are also mkv format as files. Changing playback to 1080p Medium at 12mpbs allowed the media to be played uninterrupted. Make sure you have the ‘Use alternate streaming protocol for video playback’ setting under Plex Web>Debug enabled.
The description describes the setting as an “experimental workaround”. I don’t know if this is the fault of the Plex or Chrome devs, but it speaks volumes that the setting has existed as such for at least the past 4 years from what I could find. I have no faith in this issue ever being truly resolved in the near future. Anyway, hope this helps someone. Thanks.
