I have a PS3 with the Plex App. Connected to Homeplug wired network and the Media server is a quad core Windows 8 box with loads of disk and memory.
Playing video streams from the media server buffers such that they are unwatchable unless I turn the quality right down.
Example- trying to watch a movie in 8Mbps 1080p, buffers for 10s every 5s. image looks great
so then go down to 4Mbps at 720p buffers for 10s every 5 s, image still looks good
so down again to 3Mbps at 720p now buffers for 5s every 5s, image quality OK but dropping off
so down again to 2Mbps at 720p buffering for 5sec every 6-10s. image quality OK
so down again to 1.5Mbps at 480p buffering now for 2 sec every 30sec or so. Image quality dropped off noticeably.
dropping down again to the 720K setting works fine, but the drop in image quality is huge now.
Some movies seem to be worse than others.
Any ideas, how can this be fixed ?
Does it still buffer if you watch via DLNA?
I’ve found that the PS3 app will buffer things at 20mbps when DLNA can play the same file at a much higher bitrate
Yep, same movie buffers on dlna, just as bad. I thought it might be network related, so ran some tests on the home plug network. That shows a throughput of 15-16Mbps. I don’t know whether that is likely to cause buffering problems. I might try to eliminate the home plug network and test.
Anyone have any experience of the actual bandwidth needed for playback? When the app says 8Mbps is that what the stream can consume ?
It might be network related. What kind of powerline adapters are you using, are they plugged straight into the wall or have you got the on a surge protected extension? 16mbps is not that quick, I’d expect to see way more than that.
Usually when a file says 8000mbps this is an average for the whole file, there will inevitably be some parts which are higher than this. I’m not sure how plex handles this when you are transcoding on PMS, if it works like a brick wall limiter or is still an average for the whole file, maybe a Plex Ninja can answer that for you.
The powerline adaptors are Solwise 200Mbps and are based on an Atheros chipset (apparently…). I run their Powerpacket utility and it shows the adaptors connecting at 150Mbps, so I was assuming that it was not a quality problem there.
The powerline adaptor on the Server side is connected to an extension lead, the one on the PS3 side is connected to a Solwise “piggy” extension, which has a 5 way socket and 3 powerline ports.
I’m going to run a test without the homeplug kit in the way and see if performance improves. That will at least eliminate one component.
Right… so after some more testing.
I connected the devices to a gigabit switch, no buffering issues on any quality setting. The video is a 5mpbs stream according to the Plex app.
So… I then moved some powerline adaptors around, got the speed up to 44Mbps as measured by iperf, with the PS3 connected to a powerline adaptor. This still buffers across all settings as before, i.e. no improvement.
The question seems to be, is there something fundamental about the Plex app and the powerline boxes which causes compatibility issues and buffering ? 44Mbps ought to be enough to support a video stream…
Any ideas ?
