Server Version#:1.14.1.5490
Player Version#:
I did some tests today with nVidia Shield 2017.
- Same movie (4k, high bitrate, display rate switching enabled)
- Content available on 1 gbps network on Synology NAS
- Plex content stored on USB key (Sandisk)
When trying to play the movie from the beginning, this is the time taken to start showing anything (including display rate switching):
- Kodi: 3 seconds
- Plex Player with server running on Synology NAS: 8 seconds
- Plex Player connected to Shield TV server: 40 seconds (3 seconds: waiting for server, then 37 seconds of throbber)
So my question is: is there any work done to optimise Plex as it’s nearly unusable.
Things to note:
- The library is fairly large
- I optimised database but still noticed long delays just to show details of a movie prior to playing it
Thanks
I would start with probably swapping out your USB key for an external USB 3.x based SATA SSD.
You are going to generally see much better performance on that vs. thumbdrive.
I would also make sure your Nvidia Shield TV is on the most current Shield OS as there have been major changes in the 7.2.x releases.
just to clarify something;
is the 4k movie staying on the nas?
or is there a copy on the nas, and a copy on the usb key ?
Either way, no doubt the bottleneck is very likely the usb key and an ssd usb3 drive is a likely solution.
all that said, if you were not already aware;
from the shield settings you can mount a nas and then plex shield server can add those nas shares to the plex shield library.
so, the plex library and metadata are still on the shield and/or usb key (and thus the overall performance is limited by whatever is slowest there), but the content is loaded from the nas across the network to shield, then on to the plex client (the client can also be the same as the shield server, or a separate plex client).
long story short, you can perhaps do this (if you are not already)
nas > lan > shield pms w/usb stick or usb drive > client (either shield or other plex client)
Hello
In all scenarios, the movies are located on a NAS connected via gigabit.
The USB key is I think quite fast.
But the thing that surprised me is that it takes 10 times longer to start playing a movie compared to Kodi when the server is the built in one.
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I bought a new USB key which is rated at over 200 MBPS so will try this very soon.
I do have as well a USB SSD drive which I could try.
But I am finding that 40 seconds to start showing anything a bit slow, I didn’t get that kind of delay when I first tried Plex on Shield so it might very well be something due recent releases.
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To give an idea, a GOOD SATA SSD is around 500MB/s (assuming no USB bottlenecking).
Also make sure your Syno is using SMB 3 on it’s side for for the Shared Folders you are presenting to your Shield TV.
what is actually even more important for plex is latency.
regarding plex vs kodi;
kodi will always be faster starting up playback
because kodi is a direct access media player, it does not go through a server
plex is a client/server model, so all plex clients connect to the plex server and the performance of the plex server is what determines how good or bad the response time for library navigation and media playback.
while the shield does have a good gpu, it is still a low power arm based CPU.
and the CPU is what manages the library and all the other non-transcoding tasks.
So even with a high speed SSD attached, the shield is still going to be limited by the overall power of the system.
if improving the storage speed does not improve your playback satisfactorily, it seems your library has outgrown the power available from the shield as a server.
Perhaps it is time to looking into a decently powered intel x86 based nas that supports plex. Or build your own dedicated plex server of the size and power and cost that you determine.
You can buy an older generation NUC box from amazon for a low cost, throw a decent SSD in it, and there are variety of linux os or even mediacentric os you can install, or of course windows.
No matter what tho, the shield is still the best all around plex client especially for 4k/hdr.
I bought a 300 MB/s 128 GB USB2 stick which I plan on using as removable storage to put the Plex library into.
I just enabled SMB3 on File Service (set SMB2 through to SMB3 support) on my Synology NAS and it seems to be helping but it’s still slow to start playing (over 10 seconds for large files).
Though I noticed that on the Web dashboard I can see that when I start playing the movie there is indeed no bandwidth usage on the local network up until the throbber stops and the movie finally starts playing.
I will look at the logs on the NAS as it might very well be the source of my trouble due to how PMS on Shield’s trying to access its files.
Just make sure it is USB 3 vs. USB 2. USB2 will significantly throttle your performance (irregardless of what the NAND itself can do).
Hi
I noticed on my NAS logs that Shield TV is accessing the shares via SMB3.
But I’m still noticed some extended delays before anything is played, and during these delays no network traffic can be seen on the NAS side.
My guess is the slow down might be related to the size of your library and the associated metadata/db updates that happen through various library events.
As has been said earlier, the Tegra1 chip does great for transcoding (GPU offloading) but then you are limited by the ARM cpu performance for the other operations.
Making sure you optimize/prune/compress/etc. the DB as much as possible to might help.
Also maybe see if you have any processes that are running actively under Server Settings > Library that can be deferred to help reduce load.
Hello
I will do my checks certainly such as looking at SMB logs on the Synology as I wonder if the problem comes from there. 10 seconds delay before any noticeable network traffic is seen is rather strange IMHO so it could be somehow an incompatibility. I have read a few people commenting same symptoms with same setup as mine: gigabit ethernet, Synology SAN and delays before movies playback starts.
Daniel
There is apparently an ongoing known bug with Nvidia Shield using smb3 while the plex server is also on the shield. I too have run into exactly what you describe in your first post and sometimes the file won’t even play. Nvidia has told me that if one wants to run the plex server on the shield to go to file service on the Synology nas>smb>advanced settings and limit min and max smb to smb1 then go into the shield settings>storage & reset>mount network storage>remount all shares. This worked for me until nvidia resolves this issue for good. Or just run the Synology plex server.
Hello
Ok it does indeed a bad combination of Shield + PMS on Shield and Synology NAS.
I don’t recall noticing that problem a few months ago so maybe it’s regression of some sort.
Thanks
I have the same issue on a brand new shield.
Funnily enough, when watching a video from my phone things go smoothly, even though the machine has to transcode instead of simply play it.
As you said, issue seems to be when server and client are on the same box.
Actually it’s more than that. I have two shields. If one acts as server and the other as client, the same issue occurs so it is PMS residing on the shield that is the problem.
I too noticed no problem streaming to my iOS device from PMS on the shield. It’s weird.
I don’t have slowdowns for all movies but the larger the movie is the longer the delay before it starts playing.
So as some mentioned there are some maybe compatibility issues going with Synology.
Workaround is SMB1 only.
except that, if I only activate SMB1, I can no longer mount the share on the ShieldTV
I confirm, just by limiting to SMB1, it works very, very well 
30 sec → 2sec
