Server Version#: 1.14.0.5470
Player Version#:
I have PLEX on my newly built W10 Pro PC. It is a robust PC with an Intel i7 8700K processor. My library is local on 7200 RPM HDD’s. Plenty of memory. Connected to internet via FIOS 75/75. So I dont see a problem with thru-put.
I just installed Tautulli to monitor PLEX and saw something curious. My son-in-law is watching a 1080 movie on PLEX that is for some reason being delivered in 2Mbps 720.
His TV is a brand new Samsung and the device he uses to stream PLEX is the latest generation Fire TV 4K. We purchased the the 4k Stick and connected through wifi in his home to his television and we watched UHD content stream from Amazon Prime.
So how can I stream UHD content through the 4K Stick but the PLEX app on my son-in-laws 4K Stick delivers the 1080 movie in 720.
He has better connection speed than I do. I have the server settings set to allow 8Mbps 1080 to web clients. I have Transcoder quality set to prefer higher quality encoding but still kinda crappy results. What am I doing wrong?
Thank you for the quick reply. My PLEX server already had those settings, but I thank you for pointing it out.
My numbers were actually 84Mbps up as tested by speedtest.net.
The Limit Remote Stream Bitrate setting was also set to Original as you suggested. I find that setting curious. It states that the setting is to:
“Set the maximum bitrate of a remote stream from this server” and it seems to me the problem isnt at all that an upper limit needs to be established as my problem is that Im toying with the lower limit.
Check Plex settings on FireTV stick as well. One of the choices for remote streaming is 720p/2Mbps.
Video Quality
Adjust Automatically = Off
Remote Streaming = Maximum
Play Smaller Videos = On
Audio Quality
Remote Streaming = Original
Video
Display Information = On
During playback, on Fire TV, pull up on screen controls by pressing select button on remote. Look in upper left corner. It will tell you if video/audio is direct playing, direct streaming, or transcoding. If one of latter two it will provide a reason.
Example of FireTV on-screen display. Playing a 1080p movie, bitrate ~8.5 Mbps (H.264 High@4.0, AAC 2.0 audio). Plex client v7.8.2 on a Gen 1 AFTV stick.
So after tweaking his end the performance is better. However still the performance is some times disappointing.
Watching a 1080p AAC stereo I get a message on his television that “the server is not powerful enough to transcode this video” even though it was successful it had some trouble and occasionally the video will freeze and I have to restart it.
I find the remark that “the server is not powerful enough” to be ridiculous. a 7th generation i7 8700K Intel chip with 32Gb of memory and a 6Gb video card connected to a 75/75 internet service should be screaming with performance.
After looking into the performance of my friends/family PLEX I am learning that to stream HD an even more robust system is needed. Remarkable. Im not complaining, PLEX has done some solid work but the more I look into performance issues the more I have to wonder about its usefullness beyond a couple friends sharing a 720 stream.
@FordGuy61 is asking you the right questions. I started this reply earlier this afternoon and got busy working on some other tasks before finishing. So what were the settings on your son in laws Fire TV? My son can direct play everything in my library with no processor utilization on my server. I transcode all of my content after recording from h264 received by Plex from my HDHR Extends to h265 or HEVC and it all still direct plays for him. My home Internet is 100 mbps down/10 mbps up so nowhere near your Internet speeds. I also have another friend using a Fire TV Stick and she is not having any issues either. Check the Plex setting on his Fire TV. FYI some of the specific settings on my sons Fire TV Stick are:
Adjust automatically - Off
Home streaming - maximum
Remote Streaming - maximum
Audio Quality - original
