Plex is now a broken product. When will it be fixed? Or, WILL it be fixed?

General Discussions
1

Plex used to be buttery-smooth in its operation but over the past several months — I’d say at least the past 7-8 months — it’s gotten more and more troublesome to the point of unusability. I am just about ready to ditch this whole thing and move on to another system as I no longer have faith in the developers’ ability to solve this issue.

By far the most common problem is one that apparently dozens if not hundreds of people are having (based on a Google search), where media playback — on a local network with little network traffic and a strong signal — falls victim to constant lags and stutters, generating that now-sickening yellow pinwheel and, more often than not, an error message saying that there’s not enough bandwidth available. Over the past few months especially I’ve been completely unable to play any movie or TV show from my PMS to any iOS device, PlayStation, or Roku box. My mother, who has access to my PMS via a Roku box, gets similar errors.

This error was literally nonexistent up until several months ago. My Plex experience was literally flawless. As I write this I’m watching my iPhone try to play “Justice League: Gods and Monsters” from my PMS. My server is less than ten feet from my router and has 92% signal strength. My iPhone is 30 feet away from my router and has 79% signal strength. There is nobody else using my server, my internet connection is barely being touched, and the only three active network devices on my LAN are my PMS, my computer (which isn’t doing anything other than web browsing), and my iPhone. Yet my iPhone plays about five seconds of video, then pauses for anywhere from 1-15 seconds, then repeats. There’s NO REASON for this to be happening. My daughter’s iPad does the same thing, as does my PS3 and my OS4. It’s horrible. Once in a blue moon we’ll be fortunate enough to be able to watch a movie with a minimum of interruption but never without ANY interruption. There’s ALWAYS hiccups and burps and delays and hang-ups.

I have rebuilt my server from scratch. I have used macOS and Windows as my host OS. I’ve replaced the computer with an entirely different computer (both Core i7’s). I have connected my server to the router via ethernet rather than wifi. I have cold-cycled my entire network and shut off every network device except for my PMS and my iPhone. I’ve re-encoded videos. I’ve used different storage mediums to hold my library, and different interfaces to connect it to the computer. In short, I’ve put more effort in trying — and failing — to get Plex running as smoothly as it did two years ago, than I did in setting it up in the first place.

In my opinion Plex is now a broken product with no hope of repair. As I’ve said, I’ve seen dozens of people online with this same issue. I’ve been patient and hopeful with every release of Plex and I always come away disappointed. I am no longer confident that the developers are even interested in solving this issue.

I would very much like to hear from the developers about this issue. Based on my Google searches I’m clearly not the only one experiencing this issue, nor am I the first; I’m finding people’s reports going back months earlier than my own first negative experience with Plex. If anything, this issue is getting WORSE with every release.

So does anyone know when, if at all, Plex will return to the performance and reliability it had a year ago?

2

Out of curiosity, have you tried deleting the Plex apps off the devices that you’re streaming to and done clean wipes and software updates on them? Have you started adding higher profile / file size media to your library ie 2160p items?

I get that you’re upset… but Plex is FAR from “a broken product” when the majority of us are having next to no issues with it (and almost never have had any)… of course you’ll see plenty of complaints online; when something doesn’t work as desired (whether it was actually suitable for the user or not, or whether or not it was user error) people get loud.

The rest of us are busy watching our shows, movies etc… :wink:

3

@sgodun said:
This error was literally nonexistent up until several months ago. My Plex experience was literally flawless. As I write this I’m watching my iPhone try to play “Justice League: Gods and Monsters” from my PMS. My server is less than ten feet from my router and has 92% signal strength. My iPhone is 30 feet away from my router and has 79% signal strength.

So your Plex Server is connected via WiFi to your router?
Have you tried connecting an ethernet cable between your server and router (they are 10 feet apart) just to help rule out an issue with WiFi?

4

To contrast, I run the latest version of Plex in a Windows Server 2012 R2 virtual machine using Hyper-V 2012 R2. There are 3 other running virtual machines on that physical server (thus total of 4). This is just on an AMD FX4100 Quad-core 3.62GHz CPU with 16 GB ram (I’m embarrassed to even admit that I am still on this antique).

Just Saturday I noted that while we were watching a movie in house (wired LAN server-switch-Roku3), there was also 4 remote streams running at the same time.

To say that Plex is now broken is not looking at the right place for the issues you are having. I truly hope that you are successful it sorting this out.
Consider these points:

  1. wired connections are always better than wireless ones (and even though you yourself may only have a few devices on your wireless, that frequency is shared with your neighbors and interference can and will occur). As illustration… you can have 1 or 6 people in your vehicle, you can have a VW bus or a Porsche, but you are still having to share the road with others nearby.
  2. have task manager (or equivalent) running and when these frustrating problems happen, try to see what is spiking, It may be the CPU, it may be hard drive timeouts, it may be network is saturated by a background file transfer.
  3. I have had a hard drive cause problems because of bad blocks. The hard drive would just pause while it tried to correct itself.
5

@sgodun said:
Plex used to be buttery-smooth in its operation but over the past several months — I’d say at least the past 7-8 months — it’s gotten more and more troublesome to the point of unusability.
If anything, this issue is getting WORSE with every release.

Similar issues, the Plex Web was rock solid and now it lags, forgets the position when paused, etc. All the unnecessary bells and whistles (photos, music, etc) are detrimental to the core functionality.

6

@sGarver said:
To contrast, I run the latest version of Plex in a Windows Server 2012 R2 virtual machine using Hyper-V 2012 R2. There are 3 other running virtual machines on that physical server (thus total of 4). This is just on an AMD FX4100 Quad-core 3.62GHz CPU with 16 GB ram (I’m embarrassed to even admit that I am still on this antique).

Just Saturday I noted that while we were watching a movie in house (wired LAN server-switch-Roku3), there was also 4 remote streams running at the same time.

To say that Plex is now broken is not looking at the right place for the issues you are having. I truly hope that you are successful it sorting this out.
Consider these points:

  1. wired connections are always better than wireless ones (and even though you yourself may only have a few devices on your wireless, that frequency is shared with your neighbors and interference can and will occur). As illustration… you can have 1 or 6 people in your vehicle, you can have a VW bus or a Porsche, but you are still having to share the road with others nearby.
  2. have task manager (or equivalent) running and when these frustrating problems happen, try to see what is spiking, It may be the CPU, it may be hard drive timeouts, it may be network is saturated by a background file transfer.
  3. I have had a hard drive cause problems because of bad blocks. The hard drive would just pause while it tried to correct itself.

Sorry to hear your frustration but in my opinion Plex is not the issue. I would take sGarvers advise. If you want a solid connection for your head end wired is the only way. Wired will always be more reliable over wireless.

 I stream to 56 friends and family. In the past 2 weeks I have had 10 simultaneous  streams 3 times with not one problems. In the evening hours there are 4 to 6 streams running everyday. Most of my users are using Roku but some use PC's, iphones, Smart TV's etc.
7

For those of you saying “go wired” I point you to my original post where I say quite clearly, “I have connected my server to the router via ethernet rather than wifi.” There are also other things in my original post which I pointed out in my effort to troubleshoot this, including moving to an entirely new computer (which, yes, includes a new hard drive).

And thanks to everyone for telling me how wonderful your Plex server runs. Unfortunately, praise for your server doesn’t actually help me.

8

Signal strength is not quality signal.

9

I don’t doubt that you were able to find results on Google that met your search criteria…that’s the point isn’t it? :wink: It’s hardly definitive proof that PLEX has a issue. As others have noted, it’s is performing fine for nearly everyone else.

I have been running PLEX on various hardware over the last 6 years and YES- I have seen what you mention. But every time I did- it was either a issue with the content, the connection or bandwidth to the devices. I suggest you try setting your daughters IPAD to stream at about 4 Mbps and see what happens. When you are streaming, open up taskmgr on your server and see what your CPU usage is at. BTW- PLEX will use 99% even with one stream, so you’ll need to stress it a bit and maybe even open another 4 Mbps stream on a different device.

Also, if you are encoding content @ h265 you will have issues with more than 1 or 2 steams. I have a i7 4 Ghz box with 32 GB ram and that’s about the max I can get at that threshold. (As of testing back in Aug…may be better now…) I’ve done 15 connections at once with normal content @ about 8-12 Mbps quality per stream. What formats are you encoding to?

10

My money is on the network causing your issues. Start with the NIC in your server and then work towards the switch/router/etc. Verify current drivers are installed for the NIC and all settings are correct. If that isn’t the issue, the next device (switch/router) may be the problem. Troubleshooting network problems can be time consuming - good luck.

11

@sgodun said:
Plex used to be buttery-smooth in its operation but over the past several months — I’d say at least the past 7-8 months — it’s gotten more and more troublesome to the point of unusability. I am just about ready to ditch this whole thing and move on to another system as I no longer have faith in the developers’ ability to solve this issue.

By far the most common problem is one that apparently dozens if not hundreds of people are having (based on a Google search), where media playback — on a local network with little network traffic and a strong signal — falls victim to constant lags and stutters, generating that now-sickening yellow pinwheel and, more often than not, an error message saying that there’s not enough bandwidth available. Over the past few months especially I’ve been completely unable to play any movie or TV show from my PMS to any iOS device, PlayStation, or Roku box. My mother, who has access to my PMS via a Roku box, gets similar errors.

This error was literally nonexistent up until several months ago. My Plex experience was literally flawless. As I write this I’m watching my iPhone try to play “Justice League: Gods and Monsters” from my PMS. My server is less than ten feet from my router and has 92% signal strength. My iPhone is 30 feet away from my router and has 79% signal strength. There is nobody else using my server, my internet connection is barely being touched, and the only three active network devices on my LAN are my PMS, my computer (which isn’t doing anything other than web browsing), and my iPhone. Yet my iPhone plays about five seconds of video, then pauses for anywhere from 1-15 seconds, then repeats. There’s NO REASON for this to be happening. My daughter’s iPad does the same thing, as does my PS3 and my OS4. It’s horrible. Once in a blue moon we’ll be fortunate enough to be able to watch a movie with a minimum of interruption but never without ANY interruption. There’s ALWAYS hiccups and burps and delays and hang-ups.

I have rebuilt my server from scratch. I have used macOS and Windows as my host OS. I’ve replaced the computer with an entirely different computer (both Core i7’s). I have connected my server to the router via ethernet rather than wifi. I have cold-cycled my entire network and shut off every network device except for my PMS and my iPhone. I’ve re-encoded videos. I’ve used different storage mediums to hold my library, and different interfaces to connect it to the computer. In short, I’ve put more effort in trying — and failing — to get Plex running as smoothly as it did two years ago, than I did in setting it up in the first place.

In my opinion Plex is now a broken product with no hope of repair. As I’ve said, I’ve seen dozens of people online with this same issue. I’ve been patient and hopeful with every release of Plex and I always come away disappointed. I am no longer confident that the developers are even interested in solving this issue.

I would very much like to hear from the developers about this issue. Based on my Google searches I’m clearly not the only one experiencing this issue, nor am I the first; I’m finding people’s reports going back months earlier than my own first negative experience with Plex. If anything, this issue is getting WORSE with every release.

So does anyone know when, if at all, Plex will return to the performance and reliability it had a year ago?

Do you now have this sorted? The community is trying to help so please consider your negativeness is not appreciated. We do understand your plight but knocked who are trying to assist is not helping your cause.

Please advise you have reaserached your wifi signal quality. If not you have a closed mine.

Sorry to be blunt but your being non helpfull. We do not thing your a idiot. Qe wish to help

OK

12

I had weird issues like this and it ended up being my server disk space was messed up and PLEX could not buffer to the media server; had to make sure temp directory for transcoding had PLENTY of space. Plex has it’s issues, and then makes things worse by not offering people the option to download prior builds (really???) - but in this case going to have to say that it’s probably your setup and something has changed in the last 9 months (you added movies, your tweaked something somewhere, etc.)

13

I can confirm to original posters issues. I’ve long been posting here about the little issues with the plex web player being unable to pause, and resume if you wait longer than 15 seconds. I’ve also posted about issues with the Vizio tv app, where plex used to work absolutely just fine, then they changed things, broke it, and the developers just raise up their hands and say it’s a problem with the TV, we can’t fix it, which isn’t true, they could roll the app back to the latest working release and it’d be fine. Just now I downloaded the very latest release of plex. Guess what, now I have zero video playback over the web app. This is a joke. This isn’t some free product, we’re paying customers for plex pass! We have a legit grievance for how the developers took a great app, introduced VERY MINOR AND UNNECESSARY features that have done nothing but slowly break the app over time. RIght now, it’s unusable. I can’t watch videos with it, which is why I got this thing in the first place. I just see a spinning wheel, and hear audio. Files that I was watching before the upgrade no longer play either.

14

@sgodun said:
For those of you saying “go wired” I point you to my original post where I say quite clearly, “I have connected my server to the router via ethernet rather than wifi.” There are also other things in my original post which I pointed out in my effort to troubleshoot this, including moving to an entirely new computer (which, yes, includes a new hard drive).

And thanks to everyone for telling me how wonderful your Plex server runs. Unfortunately, praise for your server doesn’t actually help me.

You haven’t gone wired connecting your iOS devices. Have you gone wired with any client? Your problem is your WiFi.

My incredibly low power Plex server running on a Seagate Personal Cloud serves buttery smooth video to Amazon Fire TV 4K & Roku 3 & Roku Ultra & Roku Streaming Stick clients.

15

Just to follow up/close out this thread…

First, thanks to everyone for telling me how wonderful Plex is working for you on your own setups. That really helped a lot in diagnosing the issue I brought up.

For those intent on pointing the finger at my wifi signal quality, I reiterate two points that I made in my INITIAL post: “I have connected my server to the router via ethernet rather than wifi” and “My mother, who has access to my PMS via a Roku box, gets similar errors.” While it’s true I was unclear on the fact that my mother lives several miles away from me, I think given the fact that I also referred to “my daughter” it wouldn’t have been a stretch for anyone to (correctly) assume that my mother doesn’t live with me. Alternately, someone could have asked. That all being said and understood, it CANNOT be my wifi signal quality since wifi was taken out of the equation.

On the plus side of things, Plex Media Server 1.4.2 (released back in February) completely resolved the latency/streaming/etc issues I was experiencing. Since then, it started working at least as well as it did before all this started happening. (Of course, there are now other issues I’m experiencing but those are defined in another thread.)

So, thanks again, and for those who think I have a “closed mind” or aren’t appreciative of people trying to help, I’ll simply point out that sometimes, yes, it actually IS the product’s fault.

16

Follow the OSI model in your troubleshooting methodology. Look at Logs wherever you can gather them, they can be very beneficial in your troubleshooting. Network captures via Wireshark can be useful on your server as well.

Physical
Data Link
Network
Transport
Session
Presentation
Application

I know it is frustrating but you really have to vet out the network portion (especially home wifi networks) before looking at the application. It could be your Server or your router as well seeing you are having remote playback issues too. Just start isolating things down.

17

@sgodun said:

For those intent on pointing the finger at my wifi signal quality, I reiterate two points that I made in my INITIAL post: “I have connected my server to the router via ethernet rather than wifi” and “My mother, who has access to my PMS via a Roku box, gets similar errors.” While it’s true I was unclear on the fact that my mother lives several miles away from me, I think given the fact that I also referred to “my daughter” it wouldn’t have been a stretch for anyone to (correctly) assume that my mother doesn’t live with me. Alternately, someone could have asked. That all being said and understood, it CANNOT be my wifi signal quality since wifi was taken out of the equation.

WiFi was not taken out of the equation if you still connected your clients by WiFi.

18

Plex is far from a perfect piece of software, but then again, even further from being a broken one.

I am not sure I read anywhere in your posts what type of containers and such do you use.
You said you re-encoded your media, but to what?
I spend a lot of time encoding my media to match what Plex considers “transcoding free” and even then, stupid defaults like Burn Subtitles set to Automatic and 4 Mbps Remote Quality will laugh in my face.
And even if everything is setup the right way, on a freaking gigabit network, I will get the random “your server is not powerful enough” or some other “meaningful” message. Indeed, very rarely, but I do get those also.
That being said, I have seen some friends of mine just dumping any kind of media they can/find into PMS and expect everything to run smooth.
Also, the lack of “youtube style” streaming will generate some problems also.

As for WiFi, if you are in a crowded area, do not expect performance or stability. Forget about those fancy 300 Mbps, 1300 Mbps marketing stuff the producer states.
Even worse, some WiFi APs and routers are down right faulty from the get go. An expensive example: Cisco WAP series are duds no matter the location"

I am sure once you find your culprit you will laugh saying “was so obvious”.

19

@nigelpb said:
WiFi was not taken out of the equation if you still connected your clients by WiFi.

Let me make sure I understand you correctly.

My server is on cabled ethernet in my home, connected to the internet via FiOS. My mother’s Roku box is on wifi, in her home that’s several miles away from mine, connected to the internet via Optimum. Neither setup could possibly be considered “exotic” in any way. With that in mind, you’re telling me that my mother’s wifi is the problem? That because every client — whether in my house or not — connects with wifi, then the problem is with all of those wifi connections?

20

@dladrach48 said:
I know it is frustrating but you really have to vet out the network portion (especially home wifi networks) before looking at the application. It could be your Server or your router as well seeing you are having remote playback issues too. Just start isolating things down.

I did. The problem was with the version of PMS that was running. The update to PMS solved it. But still, way to continue defending PMS.