What causes buffering (pixelation)?

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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Server Version#: 1.19.4.2935
Player Version#: n/a

I was trying to use Plex at my daughter’s house and the quality was horrendous: the best it could do was stream at below 480 or really low bit 720. On a 55" TV the quality was really bad, basically unwatchable. If I tried to adjust quality to anything better (like 720/4), it would be stuck with the “buffering” message every 5 seconds or so. After trying all kinds of things, I decided to reboot my server running Plex and voila: it fixed the issue. Any idea what might have caused the problem and why a reboot would fix it? Btw, restarting PMS (without rebooting the computer) made no difference.

I originally thought it was my bandwidth (the client was on a 250 Mbps download Comcast line and PMS was on a 5 Mbps upload Comcast line with a single client trying to stream a 720 video), but from what I read, 5 Mbps upload should be good enough for a single HD streaming. I asked my daughter who uses my Plex and she said it happens once in a while when for some reason content is totally bottlenecked to the point it is unwatchable. Anything I should look into? There is nothing going on on the server: I only run PMS on it (and no other jobs should have been running at the time: no transcoding, etc). Any ideas?

Thanks.

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Only in theory. It doesn’t take into account any other, simultaneous traffic on the same line and the inevitable shortages in bandwidth which happen during the course of the day.

Transcoding down to 3mbps in real time will also result in a worse picture quality than transcoding in advance, at a low “speed” transcoder setting (either by using the “Optimize” feature of Plex, or by creating a low-bandwidth version in e.g. Handbrake).

1 Like
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Only in theory. It doesn’t take into account any other, simultaneous traffic on the same line and the inevitable shortages in bandwidth which happen during the course of the day.

Ah, looks like I need to upgrade my internet plan. Bummer.

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