It’s not thermal throttling. It’s tied to a specific plex version on a particular hardware, unless plex has changed something that makes the exact same file suddenly behave so differently as to induce immediate thermal throttling, which doesn’t happen on plex 8.16 or infuse, then it’s not a thermal problem.
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Once again, the specific issue this thread is about has nothing to do with thermal throttling.
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“Once again”, in the comment I just replied to above and again right here in this top comment the reasons mentioned why it couldn’t be thermal throttling are NOT reasons that exclude thermal throttling.
Maybe the confusion comes from not understanding that thermal throttling CAN ABSOLUTELY be caused by a change to the Plex app. ESPECIALLY if it coincides with one of the dozen other factors that affect thermal throttling (eg: coinciding with a tvOS change that causes higher CPU load, the thermal characteristics of the device’s set and setting, etc).
The fact that it stutters on an AppleTV with no internal fan, but not on other AppleTVs with an internal fan does NOT contraindicate thermal throttling.
The fact it plays perfectly in Infuse does NOT contraindicate thermal throttling either. Infuse uses highly optimized Metal hardware decoding, Plex does not, using MUCH more CPU (generating MUCH more heat) for the same file.
The fact that Plex staff have trouble replicating on the identical hardware, identical Plex app version, and identical file, is ALSO EXACTLY THE CASE with the other thread which 
*is* stuttering caused by thermal throttling. (Likely the thermal state of their set and setting has less environmental heat and heat retention.)
I haven’t dug into this specific issue, so I don’t know if this specific stuttering is a result of the thermal throttling causing other stuttering.
I’m just pointing out that the reasons given are not reasons that rule it out. 
So maybe you wanna run the simple test to rule it out? Who’s gonna be the first to replicate this issue with the AppleTV on its side and a fan blowing over it?
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Please stop derailing the thread. Or at least read it in full before replying.
The kind of stutter this thread is about happens every few seconds as soon as you press play on a video. Doesn’t matter if you put the Apple TV on its side with a fan or even put it in the freezer.
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Maybe some water cooling, a Bucket of water
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Fwiw my apple TV sits on top of the TV stand in complete open air and it was stuttering through winter through low teens Celsius temps. Unless you are actively going out of your way to cool it, which the plex devs surely aren’t, I don’t think you can get a better situation to avoid thermal issues.
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@chrisallen Any update on this ? (Not talking about thermal issues). When I disable directplay I don’t get the jitter …
Also running into issues with 4K H.265 files. I have a 2022 ATV. Only workaround I have found so far is to enable conversion.
I can provide further information and media files if it would help troubleshoot this issue.
@chrisallen , @DaveBinM , I noticed you both have both posted in this thread. Could you possibly provide us with an update, or tell me what I can provide to help solve this issue? Almost all 4K H.265 videos have had this stuttering issue recently.
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I no longer work for Plex, I’m afraid, but Chris should be able to help you
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The problem with disabling directplay or enabling conversion is that you can no longer adjust the audio delay. So you have to decide if you would rather have it stutter or have smooth video but the audio is out of sync. For now I just use Infuse. Too bad Plex doesn’t seem to want to address this issue.
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Has anyone tried using the avplayer instead? I use a python script to remux my videos to mp4 and everything now plays fine. In fact, I get better results with avplayer over the plex enhanced player.
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I created a sample from a file that has severe stuttering at any temperature.
(Posting in all three related threads)
How did you create that file?
I extracted the audio and video to raw streams & created a new file - it seems to behave much better.
(I think the color metadata was preserved but I’d have to stare at it more closely to be certain.)
I wonder if the original had PTS/DTS issues or some other stream/structure/muxing problem. But knowing how the original was created would be helpful.
(I do think Plex will need to make some changes to improve support for DVHE 08.06, especially in MKV. But it’s not immediately obvious to me that the stuttering decode problems with your sample are related to that.)
Is there any update on this issue? Is anyone from Plex actively triaging this issue and trying to develop a solution?
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Hi folks! Dropping a link to the other message I wrote in the thermal throttling thread because I don’t like to copy/paste text around 
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Thanks for the update. Much appreciated. Hopefully we have a solution soon.
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i have been using infuse for the last 2-3 months as the plex app, everything played stutters really bad.
i even did a fresh install of the apple tv os and reinstalled plex on my NAS.
so i will continue to hop between each app until i see it fixed.
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I’ve been using Infuse for around 6 months and it works flawlessly. I did notice that in the Plex App settings if you turn on the Old Video Player and/or Old Audio Player then it reduces the stuttering. It doesn’t completely eliminate it but seems to make it better. However I just use Infuse for now until they fix the app. Not sure why it’s taking so long. This seems to be a big issue.
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Exactly the same situation with me. Infuse works perfectly for all file types on the new AppleTV 4K, but it is frustrating, as I prefer the native Plex app (in terms of UI and functionality), which works pretty well with all other iOS devices. I’ve also got very large libraries and Infuse tends to struggle with big libraries during sync (i.e., media additions, watch status updates, etc.).
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Any update on this?
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