Samsung QLED issues

Plex Players Smart TVs
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I’m trying to figure out why some 4K content doesn’t work on my Samsung devices

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Check out my table—it’s clear that movies with a high bitrate aren’t working. However, the last one has issues, pausing every five minutes or so.

Has anyone else experienced similar problems and found the cause?

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The built in TV app? That thing has a tiny SOC and gimpy networking and is built around streaming platforms.

Streaming platforms do not push the kind of bitrates you are highlighting.

Audio/Video codecs and containers have a lot of minutia in how they are packaged. Look into those details and make sure you are building your files to the greatest compatibility.

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  1. the bitrates you have there are most likely average bitrates. Bitrate peaks in the video stream can easily go higher, which probably cannot be handled by the TV.
  2. Those kind of bitrates can only be found on Blurays. Your TV is no Bluray player. As @Menel already mentioned, the players in TV devices are developed and tested only with internet streaming services in mind. And those rarely exceed 20 mbps with 4K content. (1080px are typically much lower.) (There are some mentions of Apple+ going up to 40, but I haven’t found confirmation that this is actually happening.)

If you want to stream UHD Bluray-class bitrates, you need to be selective about your player hardware. Your best chances are the higher end add-on boxes, like nVidia Shield, Apple TV 4K.

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I’d guess your issues are down to audio transcode or subtitles.

Not all Samsung TVs are equal, but yes, in my testing UHD rips can work.

e.g. 4K DoVi/HDR10 HEVC 53,666kbps file which Plex’s deep analaysis shows:
requiredBandwidths=“94024,73977,72503,71206,70082,68958,66126,64503”

Plays fine for me on a 2022 QN95B.

It’s a popular opinion around here that Smart TVs are rubbish, but in my experience Plex is just as guilty for poor playback. I do agree with Menel saying to build files with the greatest compatibility as that saves a lot of hassle, but for a lot of people letting Plex do all the work is understandably preferable.

My suggestions…

  1. You generally want to avoid transcoding, even for audio. So that means no DTS. Convert to Dolby Digital / Dolby Digital Plus / AAC.

  2. You also want to avoid Direct Stream which can be triggered by an audio transcode, but also if the MKV has 30+ streams (audio tracks, subtitle tracks). Remove unnecessary audio/subtitle tracks OR see suggestion #5 and force direct play which stops this behaviour also.

  3. Avoid PGS subtitles. They don’t work all that well and as they’re internal subtitles (embedded in the MKV) Plex extracts them from the MKV during playback which causes high sustained 100MB/s+ reads which can cause playback issues depending on server load.

  4. SRT subtitles are much better but if they’re embedded in the MKV Plex will extract them so you get the same behaviour. I always use external SRT files.

  5. Force Direct Play under the video settings in the Plex Samsung app. This allows you switch to a secondary audio track without Plex forcing an audio transcode and direct stream (which it does no matter the audio format). In my case it also allows playback of TrueHD audio without Plex transcoding it (it won’t pass TrueHD to an AV system via eARC - no Smart TV does that on internal apps - but the TV will take a TrueHD 7.1 track for example and do its own conversion to a compatible Dolby 5.1 output).

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