I am hardwired to a Firestick 4K via ethernet dongle for my one tv. I was watching a show that started buffering for me and opened the web client on my laptop to check what was happening in the dashboard and noticed it was transcoding from 1080p to SD 1080p, and the audio was transcoding from 5.1 AC3 to AAC. I thought this odd as I have not had any issues with h264 files before. I stopped and checked my settings for streaming and everything was fine. When I restarted the file it direct played. Thought nothing more of it.
Tonight I was watching a movie, again h264 3984 kbs 8 bit video, 384 kbs 5.1 channel AC3 audio and it happened again. Sure enough I opened dashboard and it was transcoding down. I double checked my streaming settings and everything was set up fine. Baffled, I tried restarting and it was still transcoding. I then realized that I am currently utilizing quite a bit of network speed for some Linux ISO’s. I paused my downloads and restarted, and voila, direct play.
Dumb question time; if my network speed is being utilized, will plex transcode down to adjust for it, or was that a coincidence?
