Roku Ultra makes remote user force Direct Play in his settings, otherwise transcodes

Plex Players
,
1

Server Version#: 1.42.2.10156
Player Version#: 9.6.11
Logs: Plex Media Server.log.zip (778.4 KB)

Having an issue with a remote user (userx0 in the logs) who is by default transcoding on his Roku Ultra and an LG C4. I have the same generation Roku Ultra and a Samsung S95D, and we had matching settings, so the only difference is really just the local vs. remote connection and the fact that his TV supports DV while mine doesn’t.

For settings, even though his remote quality is set to “unlimited,” Plex kept defaulting to a 1080p transcode for 4K media. We found that if he pauses the video and brings up the interface, he can manually select “original” from the HD button list, and then it direct plays perfectly. I eventually had him set Direct Play to “forced” in the Plex settings, which fixed it for now, but I’d like to understand why “auto” is failing all of a sudden. He wasn’t having this issue a month ago, so I’m wondering if this is a bug introduced in a newer update.

I ran the logs through Claude and it spit this out, for whatever its worth:

After digging into the server logs, the cause is clear. When initiating playback, the Roku app is sending directPlay=0 and maxVideoBitrate=20000 in its request to the server — despite the remote quality setting being set to “Unlimited.” Because direct play is disabled in the request, the server runs its Media Decision Engine (MDE), which checks the client capabilities the Roku app advertises: videoDecoders=h264{profile:high&resolution:1080&level=41} — H.264 at 1080p only, with no HEVC listed. Combined with the 20 Mbps cap, the MDE correctly concludes there is no direct play or direct stream path available and falls back to a full transcode to H.264 at 1920x1080. The relevant MDE log entries for a Thor: Love and Thunder session are:

MDE: Thor: Love and Thunder (2022): Direct Play is disabled
MDE: Thor: Love and Thunder (2022): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/hevc
MDE: Thor: Love and Thunder (2022): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/hevc/eac3 Thor: Love and Thunder - video.width limitation applies: 3840 > 1920
MDE: Thor: Love and Thunder (2022): Direct Streaming is disabled, so video stream will be transcoded
MDE: Thor: Love and Thunder (2022): no remuxable profile found, so video stream will be transcoded
Final decision: Video=(decision=transcode encoder=h264_vaapi width=1920 height=1080)

When he manually selects “Original” from the playback UI, or when Direct Play is forced in settings, the request changes to directPlay=1 with no bitrate cap, and the server immediately returns a direct play decision. The app appears to be ignoring its own “Unlimited” quality setting and hard-coding maxVideoBitrate=20000 regardless, which suggests this is a regression in the Roku app rather than a server configuration issue.

So basically we fixed the issue by setting direct play to forced, but this feels unnecessary, and was unnecessary just a month ago. Thoughts?