Why is my Plex Server so fickle especially when playing remotely?

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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Hello,

I have been a Plex Pass user for a long time. I use a Mac server and Apple clients and I have had persistent issues with Plex performance with video, most especially when accessing it from off-site.

At home, about 99% of the time, I get good performance and don’t see errors. But it does still happen sometimes. But as I said, via remote access I run into a lot of frustrations. ( And since I’m now spending a lot of time off-site, caring for a senior person, this is a problem. )

I most commonly get the error “Neither direct play nor conversion is available” This is typically when using either of my 4k AppleTVs.

The content is a wide spectrum of video files (mostly MKV) of various resolutions and bitrates. I often download 2 or 3 versions of the same movie or episode, so that I have different source files to try. Switching to another version in Plex sometimes allows me to watch the program (but it’s not a guaranteed solution). If I want to turn on closed captioning, I get even worse results.

Frequently I get the error “Neither direct play nor conversion is available” but sometimes no error, but there are hiccups in the playback. I’ve also gotten the error “Couldn’t retrieve the play queue for this item. Please try again.” And sometimes I get pop-up message in the upper right saying either the server can’t keep up, or the network can’t. That’s nonsense, because the server is fine on-site. And the WAN throughput is sufficient for the job. Speed tests regularly show that I’m getting 500+Mbps down and 40Mbps up. I have Plex server set to limit the outgoing throughput to 10Mbps (to accommodate other traffic on the network, but there isn’t that much, I’m just providing plenty of cushion).

I’m on the current version of Plex server for Mac. But these have been ongoing issues for me (and so not related to a certain version). The server is a M1 Mac mini 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD and the machine does little else but run Plex. The computer itself is responsive and performs well. I have hardware transcoding enabled and when I look at activity monitor while Plex is streaming video, the system is not being pushed to its limits. And this is a Mac with Apple Silicon processor, which should be more than up to this job!

My media files are on a NAS with 5 drives and SSD cache. The Mac server and the NAS are linked with gigabit ethernet. Every time I test the NAS throughput it’s consistently great. At the remote site, my download throughput is at least 200Mbps and often more. When I play the video in the Plex app on my Mac laptop (at remote site), I get slightly better results, but still sometimes have issues.

Two important pieces of information:
At the remote site…
(1) I can play from a friend’s Plex server just fine on my AppleTv. No issues.
(2) I have no issues streaming from a variety of services on the AppleTV (YouTube, appletv+, Netflix, including 4k)

What is cursing my server?

Logs attached
Plex Media Server Logs_2025-06-11_11-00-41.zip (5.2 MB)

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No one else?

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I think Christian‘s assessment is probably right.
Even a super-low bitrate 4K video will likely peak above those 10 Mbps.
You could — for the fun of it — remove this remote bitrate restriction to see if things work out better with the 40 Mbps max upload.

1 Like
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What good is the setting in Plex Server to limit the bandwidth, if it can’t do what it leads you to believe that it should do?

Why are the options for various throughputs even provided?

What if someone’s bandwidth is limited to 10Mb/sec? What would they do then?

Is creating optimized versions of everything what would be required? (And use additional storage to do it)

As a test, I have set the throughput limit to 20Mb/sec and have had good results so far.

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Hi there, chiming in on this discussion. I have 1000/50 connection and have Internet Up set at 40 with no apparent streaming issues. My Speedtest shows a constant 930/46.

In my view increase your Up setting is a good move.

One question, do you share your connection or use a VPN?

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Also… you can stream videos at bitrates below 10 Mbps.
Though that’s probably not high-quality (=high-bitrate) 4K videos.

If your bandwidth can’t handle the required bitrate, there is also the option to transcode to a lower resolution/quality (all contributing to decreasing the bitrate). Though, the higher quality we’re talking about, the more CPU power this will need (unless you can offload it to a supported GPU/iGPU)

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So far, since raising the bandwidth allotment to 20Mb/sec, I’ve not had hiccups. I haven’t yet seen what will happen yet when a friend tries to play from my server at the same time I’m playing.

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