Plex Android New Player Buffering Issues for ALL High Bitrate Content

My (2017) shield has buffering issues with all direct-play high bitrate remote content exclusively using the official client and the new player. I’ve been able to narrow down the issue to those specific circumstances. The Kodi plugin on the same device works fine, as does turning the new player off in the official client. With the new player enabled, the video only plays for 10-15 secs before entering a constant buffering loop.

This issue may have existed BEFORE the present beta, as my wife only recently brought it to my attention to troubleshoot. But it definitely still exists in the current beta release, and seemed to persist even if I rolled Plex back to the one installed by the 8.0.2 Shield system image as well.

Is anyone else seeing this problem? Do we know if Plex is aware of the issue?

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Define “high bitrate”.

I haven’t noticed this. All my shields are wired. Gemini Man (4K) is my highest bitrate movie at 97.4Mbps. Just tried playing it and it played fine. Running 7.29.0.15583. I have refresh rate switching and resolution switching off for the moment because I’m having a separate issue where some videos won’t start playback with them turned on.

After a factory reset of the device, the new player also seems to be functioning correctly. I’ll do some more testing and see if the problem resurfaces. It may have just been some quirky android issue that had built up over time.

Nice. You can always count on good ol’ android.

Im having the same issue

I have found that repeated updating of the app, especially in Beta over time does tend to make the app unstable. I have been deleting the app after a certain amount of installs and reinstalling fresh. This always seems to fix any funny niggles that were okay before but broken now.

The same goes for the Android mobile app.

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I’m having the exact same issue and I’ve narrowed it down to high bitrate files played with the new player. It really surprised me when a 40 Mbps file stopped playing after 10-15 seconds and I got a notification about not enough bandwidth. This was surprising because the server and Nvidia shield are both connected to my router via gigabit Lan.

I tried with shield in my bedroom which is connected via wifi and it stopped at exactly the same place. I then tried the same high bitrate file over wifi on my iPad pro and it played perfectly. How could it work over wifi but my wired shield not work?! I tried a bunch of things including switching to the old player and it only works with the old player.

I hope this is something that can be address because though I hated the new player at first, I’ve gotten used to it now and would rather have it enabled.

Yeah me and someone else also have a similar post. For me I’m using a 15 Mbps CBR file and it’s doing it. As you mentioned it’s a bit odd as it’s always in the same place on certain files but fine on other devices. For me my content is CBR is wouldn’t think it’s a variance in the bitrate.

Yes! It stops at EXACTLY the same spot!

New Beta: Player: reduce memory requirements for playing high bitrate content.

Doesn’t fix the problem.

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