The Plex app relies on the video player built-in to the OS of the device. This is true for all Plex clients (except Plex Media Player). The only way Plex could fix this would be to switch and use another player. This would mean either licensing a player for every platform or writing our own video players.
This is a topic coming up again and again within the smart TV forums (at least within the webOS parts i sometimes browse through). Though there is a catch to the argument that the TVs players do not support tons of formats and the content needs to be transcoded. Just take a hard drive with any movie that plex transcodes on it, plug it into the Television and play it. Or just use xPlay or playZ for LG televisions and it also works.
I gave up asking questions going that direction long ago and the best hint for a answer i found till today is:
@MovieFan.Plex said:
The player is basically a fancy web browser with very limited support.
which lets me guess that the app may be not limited by the operating systems media player but by the media player used by the browser which not necessary needs to be the same one.
@sestere said:
which lets me guess that the app may be not limited by the operating systems media player but by the media player used by the browser which not necessary needs to be the same one.
In this case the OS is WebOS, which is basically one big browser, so it is the same thing.
@MovieFan.Plex and so goes my hint of a explanation 
but back to topic:
@wesman said:
ā¦you should know that its a 6th Gen Sky Lake Processor, which does not have hardware support for x265
Thats not true, Intel added hardware decoding/encoding capabilities for H.265 to Skylake processors (sry for the german source)
@sestere said:
@MovieFan.Plex and so goes my hint of a explanation@wesman said:
ā¦you should know that its a 6th Gen Sky Lake Processor, which does not have hardware support for x265
Thats not true, Intel added hardware decoding/encoding capabilities for H.265 to Skylake processors (sry for the german source)
Hmmm, I though it was first added to Kaby Lake
Borrowing the thread.
I have problems with streaming 4k from my pc to my tv. Itāll play for a minute then it starts to buffer, and itāll continue like that.
My setup is an i5 6600k with gtx 1070 OC hooked to my modem and from there, to my tv. Both with a cat6 cable. 1080p streams just fine though. The tv is a samsung 60ks7005. Runnig through smart tv app.
Am I supposed to get myself a new CPU or should I wait? Is it the connection?
Regards, Viryz
The best solution is just encode your 4K media to direct play.
MP4 / h.265 / AC3
Be sure your client quality setting is set to āOriginalā
Ensure all your local network connections are Cat 6 (No WiFi)
Donāt try to remote streamā¦
That works on most clients I have used except for UHDs that do not let Plex Clients use the internal h.265 codec.
If your Plex Client on your TV is not capable of using the h.265 codec in the TV you will need to get a streaming box like a Roku 4, Ultra, or the other new one that supports 4K
2 Likes
@MovieFan.Plex said:
@londawg314 said:
Itās my plex server. I use assorted devices as players. None of them can direct play at the moment but I have an nvidia shied arriving tomorrow. Regardless when I am out of town it will always transcode remotely.That shouldnāt be. If the device can handle 4K H265, it shouldnāt matter if it is local or remote. Maybe you have the remote quality setting too low.
Correct, when viewing remotely the hardware does not support 4k so must transcode. locally over my new shield directly plays fine.
This has came up a few times in recent months. Itās time for the transcoder gods to come up with a new benchmark that covers 4k / h.265 and gives us a high level overview of how the transcoding engine utilizes the CPU and individual threads. Likeā¦ Does it use one thread to decode and another to encode? How much individual thread Passmark rating does it need to reliably execute this function? Orā¦ Does it use one thread for the entire operation? Or does it spread the work out over multiple threads at once?
Inquiring minds want to knowā¦
Doesnāt Nvidia do a thing where, if you set it up right, during a cpu intensive task like this, transcoding 4k on a pms, it can utilize the unused the gpu as additional cpu? I know Macs used to do that, and I feel pretty certain there was a way to do it with custom built PCs that had Nvidia GPUs.
Thatās a thing right? Has anyone tried that?
What does Nvidia call that feature?
@captaintater said:
Doesnāt Nvidia do a thing where, if you set it up right, during a cpu intensive task like this, transcoding 4k on a pms, it can utilize the unused the gpu as additional cpu? I know Macs used to do that, and I feel pretty certain there was a way to do it with custom built PCs that had Nvidia GPUs.Thatās a thing right? Has anyone tried that?
What does Nvidia call that feature?
Wait, hereās what Iām talking about.
@captaintater said:
@captaintater said:
Doesnāt Nvidia do a thing where, if you set it up right, during a cpu intensive task like this, transcoding 4k on a pms, it can utilize the unused the gpu as additional cpu? I know Macs used to do that, and I feel pretty certain there was a way to do it with custom built PCs that had Nvidia GPUs.Thatās a thing right? Has anyone tried that?
What does Nvidia call that feature?
Wait, hereās what Iām talking about.
Looks like Nvidia calls it NForce for marketing purposes.
I run an i7 6900k with a GTX 1080Ti (with ahrdward decoding off) and I have never had 4k buffer on that system. However, Iām looking to build an i5 7500 mini-itx build - and according to the stats that processor SHOULD do 4k transcoding. You can also turn on direct play if the device requires no transcoding (my LG TVās play 10bit 2160p natively).
I have noticed that 265 vs 264 makes an enormous difference, so currently wondering if 265 can be converted to 264 to reduce stress without a gigantic loss in quality?
My main concern is I use my 6900k locally only and I have another box for my family members that are located remotely. I have full gigabit fiber at home, so I know my connection wonāt be the bottleneck.
Any thoughts on my i5 7500 build? Thanks in advance guys!
Steven,
My i5 3570k canāt keep up with any 4k content, it does stream 1080p pretty well though.
Sounds like your i7 handles the 4k transcoding just fine? Thatās a pretty beefy processor!
My i7 with 8k passmark buffers h265 4k and I must encode for direct play for 4K
I would like to know how you get it to work, LOL
What is the bitrate on that file? If the file is 40-50 Mbps, even a passmark of 8k might not be enough. Remember, the current guideline is a passmark of 2k for a 10 Mbps H264 file. A score of 8k can handle 40-50 Mbps H264. Not going to work for H265.
@ārobert.douglasā said:
Steven,My i5 3570k canāt keep up with any 4k content, it does stream 1080p pretty well though.
Sounds like your i7 handles the 4k transcoding just fine? Thatās a pretty beefy processor!
I have the same CPU, and having the same issues. I might have to buy an external hard drive and physically move the drive over to my shield when I transferred the 4k videos. Seems that may work, or buy a NAS or build a new PC.
@āsteven@envisionary.netā said:
I run an i7 6900k with a GTX 1080Ti (with ahrdward decoding off) and I have never had 4k buffer on that system. However, Iām looking to build an i5 7500 mini-itx build - and according to the stats that processor SHOULD do 4k transcoding. You can also turn on direct play if the device requires no transcoding (my LG TVās play 10bit 2160p natively).I have noticed that 265 vs 264 makes an enormous difference, so currently wondering if 265 can be converted to 264 to reduce stress without a gigantic loss in quality?
My main concern is I use my 6900k locally only and I have another box for my family members that are located remotely. I have full gigabit fiber at home, so I know my connection wonāt be the bottleneck.
Any thoughts on my i5 7500 build? Thanks in advance guys!
I just built a system with i5-7600K 3.80GHz. If I direct play to my Vizio 4k TV, no problem. Of course direct play doesnāt take much. If I send 4k video to my Nvidia Shield TV, which is set to 1080p, because it runs through a stereo that doesnāt support 4k, the video has to be transcoded and I get a lot of short, but frequent buffering. Itās not too bad for playing back short clips of home video, but I couldnāt watch a movie that way.
The processor is built to play 4K video, and does a great job of that, but transcoding 4K is a different story.
@kromaxx said:
@ārobert.douglasā said:
Steven,My i5 3570k canāt keep up with any 4k content, it does stream 1080p pretty well though.
Sounds like your i7 handles the 4k transcoding just fine? Thatās a pretty beefy processor!
I have the same CPU, and having the same issues. I might have to buy an external hard drive and physically move the drive over to my shield when I transferred the 4k videos. Seems that may work, or buy a NAS or build a new PC.
Heads up, I donāt think a NAS will work. If Iām wrong, someone please correct me. My understanding is that the NAS would then have to do the transcoding and in most cases their processors are much less powerful than general desktop and laptop processors. Iāve looked into that solution and found that a lot of people were saying that desktop computers make much better Plex servers since they have more horsepower for transcoding.
Side note: Out of curiosity I just tried putting a 4k file on a USB 3.0 flash drive and plugging it directly into Shield, like suggested above. That did work flawlessly even though my Shield had to output 1080p video. I used the gallery app to play it back. Itās unfortunate that transferring all of my stuff to my Shield isnāt a practical solution for me.
@captaintater said:
@kromaxx said:
@ārobert.douglasā said:
Steven,My i5 3570k canāt keep up with any 4k content, it does stream 1080p pretty well though.
Sounds like your i7 handles the 4k transcoding just fine? Thatās a pretty beefy processor!
I have the same CPU, and having the same issues. I might have to buy an external hard drive and physically move the drive over to my shield when I transferred the 4k videos. Seems that may work, or buy a NAS or build a new PC.
Heads up, I donāt think a NAS will work. If Iām wrong, someone please correct me. My understanding is that the NAS would then have to do the transcoding and in most cases their processors are much less powerful than general desktop and laptop processors. Iāve looked into that solution and found that a lot of people were saying that desktop computers make much better Plex servers since they have more horsepower for transcoding.
Side note: Out of curiosity I just tried putting a 4k file on a USB 3.0 flash drive and plugging it directly into Shield, like suggested above. That did work flawlessly even though my Shield had to output 1080p video. I used the gallery app to play it back. Itās unfortunate that transferring all of my stuff to my Shield isnāt a practical solution for me.
A NAS will work just fine for local storage. Nobody should use a NAS as a method of also transcoding. So with a NAS, you still want to have a server that handles the video streaming.
