Pre-loading video on Apple TV 4K

General Discussions
1

Hi Everyone,

I’ve recently purchase an Apple TV 4K after having used a Roku for a a year. The Roku is great, but Apple TV’s interface is much more pleasant on the eyes. The one problem is though that i’m having buffering problems on the Apple TV.

My Plex server is located remotely and has an upload speed of about 5Mbps. Logic dictates therefore that I should use the “720p 4mbps” video quality preset. However, with direct play and direct stream disabled, the Roku Plex app does a really good job of pre-loading or pre-buffering the content (for about a minute or two) before it starts playing. This has allowed it to load enough that if I set the video quality to “1080p 8mbps”, it is still able to play the full TV show or movie without stopping to buffer at all in the middle. Obviously, this allows for a much crisper viewing experience than the 720p preset… Setting the video quality to automatic keeps it in the “ugly zone” for far too long, so i prefer to keep it at the lowest 1080p setting.

The Plex app on the Apple TV 4K meanwhile plays the video almost instantly and therefore has to stop multiple times along the way when the video quality is set to 1080p 8mbps. I’ve turned direct play and direct stream on and off, but it makes no difference. What would work IMO, is the same trick that the Roku app uses - i.e. to pre-load a good chunk of the video before playing.

Any way I’d be able to do that in the settings somewhere? My transcoder is set to “Make my CPU hurt” and “Very Slow” on x264 background processing. Most of the files I use are 1080p MKVs with AC3 5.1 sound.

Thanks in advance!

2

Plex on Apple TV uses the player provided from Apple. It doesn’t allow for much of a buffer for some reason and can cause this issue over and over. The only solution right now is to get a faster upload speed where your server is located.

In the future, infuse is working on making their app into a Plex client. It MAY include remote access like Plex does and it COULD solve your problem because it’s an awesome player. Those are big maybes though.

3

Ah right that makes sense… Shame because Roku’s player is great at "pre-buffering…

As an alternative, it would be awesome to have the option for 1080p at a lower bitrate - like 5 or 6mbps. The downgrade from 1080p 8Mbps to 720p 4Mbps is sooo painful. The only manual method I could think of is to optimise, but I can’t really do that for every movie or TV show that I may want to watch. At that point, I might as well just continue to use the Roku app for Plex until my ISP magically offers a faster upload speed…doubtful :confused:

Thanks for answering!