Photos Quality

General Discussions
1

Hi

I installed plex client on android tv, everything is cool, but photos are looking bad, seems like plex decreasing quality.
Here is the example (a lot of lines, low color depth?):
Plex server connected to router via 1gb wired link, android tv connected to router via wi-fi 5g.

But photos opened via DLNA on android tv are looking nice - original quality.

I tried to set max quality to video and audio via lan and internet connection (server settings and client settings), but nothing helped.

How can i disable decreasing quality (transcoding?) for images?

2

What image format is the photos in?

Have you tried accessing the photos through a phone/computer to verify that it’s plex’s fault.

3

Hey Karl! Thanks for the reply!

File info:
Model: Nikon D5300
Width: 6000
Height: 4000
Aspect Ratio: 1.66
Container: JPEG
Size: 9.37 MB

Screenshotted web page:

The same quality as in google photos.

Screenshot from iphone:

Quality is not the best as original but it is ok.

As i said image quality is original when image opened via DLNA in android-tv photos app, but not original (looking bad) in android-tv plex app. So maybe issue is in android-tv plex app.

Thoughts?

4

There is definitely a noticeable difference. We are downsizing photos to meet the requirements (and max resolution) of the client player. Others could be letting the device handle downscaling. We’ve been doing the downscaling ourselves because legacy Android couldn’t handle it, but it is something we should be able to improve on. We’ve opened an internal ticket to explore improving downscaling. There’s a chance we can employ the same methods Google has.

5

Same thing here…

6

Thanks for the reply!

For the record:
TV: Sony KD-49XD7005, android version: 7.0
Plex client version: 6.10.2.2954 (05664b51)
Plex server version: 1.10.1.4602

Differences between plex app (android-tv client) and google album app (dlna):

  • screenshot of plex app (made by adb screencap):

  • screenshot of album app (unfortunately screencap makes file with 0 size, so i made a photo by my phone, and it is looks better):

Could you please make an option in settings for example: original quality (slow image opening) - disabled by default, i can wait a few more seconds to see the best quality - i think users will agree with me.

7

Could you please make an option in settings for example: original quality (slow image opening)

We can’t, the problem is not that it opens slower, but that it will cause memory issues and it will never load (it was a problem in the past, which is something we already fixed). I guess we are compressing photos too much now, but need to take a look.

8

Ok, I could reproduce it in Android and fix it. It will be out in a future release.

9

Thanks Antonio! Waiting for the new build :slight_smile:

10

Has any progress been made on the quality of viewing photos via PLEX? I have an extensive collection of photos on my Plex server and it is really a bummer that I can’t view them at a higher quality when using the Plex application on my computer.

11

Unfortunately no. There are literally dozens of threads on this forum and elsewhere of people complaining about the photo display quality in the Plex client, but somehow no one at Plex can understand or care. I just use other DLNA/UPNP clients to display the photos from the Plex server at full resolution. It’s a shame since the UI of the Plex client is nice in other ways.

12

Thanks for your reply. Yes, preferably Plex will find a solution for this issue soon. Seems strange they have ignored it this far with so many requests for improvement. In the meantime, would you mind sharing the DLNA/UPNP clients you would recommend for photo viewing?

13

I can’t say as I actually recommend any of them. It’s a broad, shallow market out there for these kind of apps: every company and their brother tries to make one, but no one invests the time and resources to literate and improve the quality. Some I’ve tried and kept on my device, in chronological order, are ArkMC, mConnect, and 8player.