Player says server isn't fast enough but only on some devices

Plex Players Streaming Devices
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I am having trouble when trying to play back 4k HDR mkv bluray remux’s when I am remote. I haven’t had problems with this until a few months ago and I thought it must be a network issue. I have been troubleshooting and just found that everything works fine if I switch my Apple TV to the old player. However this is not an option on most other set top boxes like my Roku TV’s.

Anyone know what I could do that could fix this?

Here are a few details about the setup.

  • Sever is on a 1gbps symmetrical fiber connection and I have verified throughput with iperf
  • I have several guests trying to play the videos with the same issue but most of my testing has been done on a 200mbps down connection (about 180mbps consistently to the sever tested with iperf)
  • The issue happens 100% of the time when viewing anything with HDR even if it is 1080p low bitrate

All players are either a 4k Roku TV, Apple TV 4k connected to 4k HDR compatible TV, Nvidia Shield connected to 4k HDR compatible TV

Server Version#: 1.24.3.5033
Player Version#:

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“The server isn’t fast enough” doesn’t refer to your network throughput but the server not being able to transcode a file fast enough to stream it in real-time.

Depending on what Synology model you’re using, any transcode might be too much for its CPU / iGPU. Do you experience the same issue when streaming the video in original quality (assuming the client can deal with the file in original quality).

As for the Apple TV… it’s been quite some time since I was able to throw something at the Apple TV client w/ new player enabled that it wasn’t able to deal with as-is. I suppose some combinations of 4K HDR w/ weird subtitles / audio could cause some hiccups?!

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Yes, I should have mentioned that these items are set to direct play and transcoding of the video stream is disabled on the server.

To be clear this is happening on all devices but the only workaround I have found is to use the old player on the Apple TV.

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I noticed that the default settings on my ROKU app for Plex changed mysteriously after a recent update. It was changed to something other than “original quality” so forced transcoding. Check you settings.

The most recent update to the ROKU app seems plagued by numerous issues.

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Yes, same on my device Apple TV 4k. Getting same error with 4k Dolby Vision, if switching to old player everything plays fine however HDR will show up instead of Dolby Vision. If I set Apple TV preferences to 4k HDR I can use set Plex old player to OFF and everything works as well. If I set Apple TV settings to 4k Dolby Vision, I have to switch ON Plex Old Player in App settings.

My TV supports 4k Dolby Vision.

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