i’d really like to move to the Downloads feature but the transfer speed is just atrocious.
PMS Version 1.24.5.5173 on Shield
Plex Android on Galaxy Tablet Android 11, v8.25.1.28703
i first tried early this month with my simple Music collection with 98% FLAC files that are compatible for direct play on the tablet. i have the Downloads setting for Original on both Audio and Video, external storage on a 256GB SD card.
first test was a playlist of 58 songs - took all evening and some of overnight. this collection downloads from my NAS directly in a few minutes to the same tablet and SD card. granted this doesn’t have the PMS in the path but i don’t expect a 1000fold slower transfer when the PMS has a 1G connection to the same switch as the 1G connected NAS.
i tried another playlist with 240 songs and left it go over a weekend when i had a trip. i left tablet plugged in and sitting on the Downloads/Items screen since it keeps the device awake and in foreground. when i returned from my weekend trip the download had stopped at some point but hadn’t downloaded the entire playlist. there was no indicator of what happened, either on the screen or notifications. the PMS server hadn’t restarted and the home network didn’t have any issues.
yesterday and today i figured i’d try again with my Movie collection. last night i started it downloading a playlist of 61 movies - most of which are direct play on my tablet. by this morning it had downloaded only 11. the transfer rate from the PMS server appears to stay at a steady average of 8-9Mbps - far below what it is capable of on both ends (1G on PMS end, 300Mbps easily on the tablet WiFi). i never had this slowness problem using the Sync feature - the only problem was managing the transcoding but once it had finished transcoding the transfer happened very quickly.
the screenshot above shows the overnight bandwidth from the PMS. the 19-22 hours was me watching recorded TV shows and playing. the 23-10 hours were when i left the move playlist download going overnight.
i have logs from this morning but don’t really want to upload them to a public forum but am happy to share with Plex support if needed.
as near as i can tell what does get downloaded works fine - for both movies and music.
since the Sync feature is being ripped out by the end of the year i’d like to get my media moved to the Downloads system. however, i don’t know if it will ever finish transferring; let alone before christmas.
