Server Version#: 1.25.9.5721
Player Version#: 9.0.5.31871
I have a Plex media server set up on a Intel NUC (NUC8i3BEK, i3-8109U, 3.6GHz, 32G) connected to a Drobo 16TB RAID array. The whole system works really well, and delivers both music and video throughout my home - and out to my phone when I am in the wild…
For video on this system, I have all transcoding dialed down as far as it will go. My video is a combination of everything from old 480p TV shows, all the way up to ripped UHD 4K movies, most of the audio that isn’t simple 2-channel audio is AC3 (5.1) or TrueHD.
Using Direct Play almost everything works great. It delivers the video, regardless of the video rez or audio rez, to my Shield Pro, my Sony Xperia phone, my Windows laptops, and Linux laptop… both in and out of my home. It should be noted all of my devices have 4K screens, of various flavors. (Including the phone.)
The one exception to all of this are Chromebooks. I have had a Google Pixel Slate (just got rid of it, but was 3000x2000), and now I have a Samsung Galaxy Chromebook which is a true 4K screen ( 3840 x 2160 ). I always had problems with the Slate for videos greater than 1080p (it would claim it needed to be transcoded) but that was understandable given the screen dimensions on that unit.
The Galaxy Chromebook, however, is true 4K coming in at 3840 x 2160 pixels. It also has the ability to deal with 5.1 audio (although there are issues with 5.1 on the Android Plex app running on Chrome OS 1224025 - chromium - An open-source project to help move the web forward. - Monorail - it seems to be a Chrome OS bug). Nonetheless, direct play of videos that are higher than a combination of source material specs of 1080pm with low bitrates (around 10K or so) do not play. It forces me to try to transcode… (“Error playing media” or “Your server doesn’t have the power to transcode” messages.) I want to stress here that this happens both with the play store PleX app and the PleX web app.
None of this makes any sense to me - I really don’t want to force a transcode (the NUC would struggle), and I shouldn’t have to. This specific chromebook can absolutely play 4K - and I stream 4K on it from other sources all the time.
The discussion I want to have here is: does Plex just not work on ChromeOS past a certain resolution?
