I apologize in advance for the long intro, but I’m hoping the backstory will help focus the advice I receive for the nextsteps I should take to tackle this buffering problem I’m experiencing.
Two years ago, I set up a Plex server primarily so my parents in Daytona could watch my local NYC stations on Sundays to watch the Jets. My parents have Spectrum 500/500 Mbps internet (increased to 600 Mbps on Oct 1) and I have Verizon FiOS 500/500 Mbps internet. I got a Synology DS720+, HDHomeRun Flex 4K, an Antennas Direct ClearStream Eclipse, and a Channel Master Amplify preamp. For the first year eveything worked flawlessly. This spring, during one of the few Mets games that gets broadcast over Pix11 instead of SNY, I noticed I was no longer picking up Pix11 or ABC (both VFH stations). I messed around with relocating my antenna and but ultimate turned to other means to watch the OTA Mets games.
When football season began this year, my parents started complaining about Plex, saying they couldn’t gt live TV to work and it would just keep buffereing and be completely unwatchable. I tried chnging a bunch of local settings on my plex server and my router and did some remote troubleshooting with them over video calls, but nothing seemed to work. The advice I recieved online was that it was almost certainly a transcoding issue. So, in addition to upgrading my antenna to a Channel Master Omni+ to rule out any signal issues and regain Pix11 and ABC, I purchased an Intel NUC 13 (i5 1340P), installed Ubuntu, and migrated my server to it. I figured that would rule out any possible transcoding problems.
Even after the upgrades, my parents were still having bubffering issues. We’ve tried an LG and Samsung Smart TV, Firestck 4K, both their phones and a Windows laptop. I just sent my mom home with a Roku Ultra to see if that gives a different result. The only time they haven’t experienced buffering is when they turn off the WiFi radio on their phones and use the TMobile 5G service in their area.
This leads me to beleive it’s something their ISP is actively doing to Plex traffic, or some weird setting with their router. Internet speeds tests report they are getting the speed they pay for, and other streaming services (Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, etc.) all work fine. I also had them try streaming some local files, which I kept stored on my NAS. Previously, they watched 9 seasons of a show with no issues. However, now even saved media buffers for them.
I’d like to know what troubleshooting steps I should take on my end, if there’s even anything I can do to try and resolve it on the server side, and what things I should try when I go to visit them at the end of October. I’ve read some posts about changing the default port, but I’ve read an equal number of posts saying an ISP has more sophisticated ways of blocking traffic is thats what Spectrum was doing.
Any help would be appreciated!!
