Subtitles & 4K movies/shows cause network streaming issues

Plex Players Streaming Devices
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Hello everyone,

While I do have enough tech skills, anything to do with streaming, encoding and transcoding is still a mystery to me. So, hope you can help me.

I have few movies and TV shows in 4k, some stored on a seedbox server I have remotely, my favourites on Windows Plex Server in my house.

I have 2 Nvidia Shield TV Pro devices, one in my living room, one in my bedroom, all connected to same network in my house.

If I stream any 4K movies/shows on my living room shield TV, from remote Plex server or local Plex server, when I add subtitles from Opensubtitles through the Plex client interface, the video and subtitles show up as expected, no lag or issues.

When I continue the same videos on my bedroom shield TV, either remote Plex server or local Plex server, I have to disable the subtitles as the video will not play at all, I just keep seeing the loading icon. Once I disable all subtitles, the video plays as expected, some buffering from remote Plex server but nothing too big to report as an issue.

Question is, why would same 4k video work perfectly on my living room Shield TV, but not on my bedroom Shield TV? Even if I understand any streaming from remote Plex server might have an issue, why would enabling subtitles on local Plex Server content cause this issue?

Any suggestions, recommendations, or ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks.

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@Sokpan Have you tried downloading the subtitles from opensubtitles.org and then remuxing them into the movie container with MKVToolNix GUI?

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No I have not. Since the option to add subtitles from the Plex client is so much easier, I never download subtitles manually.
Wouldn’t this defeat the purpose of having the option in Plex to do this for us?

Since the issue does not appear on both Nvidia Shield TV devices, and only happens with 4K content, not sure I would choose to manually download subtitles and remuxing them, in the oft chance I watch the 4K content on this device.

Any other recommendations or suggestions?

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@Sokpan What is easier depends on your perspective…
I find it easier to package accurate subtitles inside the media container for maximum compatibility and organization.
Many people remux their files anyways to ensure they have the ideal audio/video/metadata so handling subtitles simultaneously isn’t really any extra work.

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Thanks for information, will try it on few movies to see, just like to keep it as easy as I can. Too many shows and movies to go back and redo them.

But good news is I found the issue, or rather what is causing the buffering with subtitles. It is the Nvidia Shield TV device, as when I tried same videos on Plex from my Android TV (same one connected to Shield TV) it had no issues with 4K or any videos with subtitles.

I assuming since this Nvidia Shield TV is old device (the 1st Shield Pro TV) it might not have the performance capabilities as my newer Shield Pro TV in my living room or my Android TV.

So I can just watch all 4K content with subtitles using my Android TV.

Will leave this topic open for few days if anyone else is interested in further discussion, then will close it if no more responses.

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As far as the subs go you don’t even have to remux them just leave them in the same folder with the same name as the movie and plex will find them.

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That is one of the options I was considering, as I have done in the past, was just so use to just let Plex do all the work.
Now that I found the alternate solution with my Android TV, saves me time doing the download and managing subtitles in each folder.

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