Why is watching plex on browser worse than FireTV?

Plex Media Server
1

Server Version#:4.147.1
Player Version#:146.0.1 (64-Bit) Firefox

System:

i5 - 11600
16GB

Hi everyone,

I am having some issues when I use plex via browser. I wanted to know whats the difference between using a TV-Stick vs. Browser without additional settings or plugins.

I usually dont play 4k Videos, because I preffer most of my films in a smaller size .h265 format.
Nethertheless I still have a handful of movies in 4k around 20GB I sometimes play on another monitor in the background while tinkering.

What I experience:

  • Preroll Intro videos not working in browser
    I see the title of the preroll video that’s 6 seconds long. I only see the loading symbol and then after 6 seconds it skips to the movie. On FireTV stick, absolutely butter smooth.

  • Watching 4k videos in browser maxes out the CPU to 90% and buffers the video every 15 seconds. I haven’t compared the CPU utilization while watching via TV, but it runs buttersmooth there.

  • I always keep using the “automatic-conversion”. I neither have a 4k TV or an Monitor. Except 1 4k TV I never really use.

    Screenshot_2026-01-04_20-20-45
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Do I always have to fiddle around with the quality settings to manually lower it? Even if I do manually lower the quality, the preroll’s still dont show up. Why is it performing so badly on Firefox? I have no idea how other browsers work, but thats my daily driver.
Overall I am satisfied if I just keep watching 1080p movies, but I always wondered why the TV stick works better than my i7 CPU on my notebook.

2

Browsers have limited playback capabilities. Use Plex Desktop instead. It is a much more capable client. It direct plays more video/audio/subtitle formats than Plex Web.

That is the version of Plex Web. Look in the server settings section for the version of Plex Media Server (scroll down).

The current PMS public version is 1.42.2.10156.

Ensure hardware accelerated transcoding and tone mapping are enabled.

If running Plex Media Server using Docker, you will have to passthrough the GPU to the docker container.

Settings → Transcoder

  • Enable: Enable HDR tone mapping
  • Tonemapping Algorithm = Hable (default, can change if desired)
  • Enable: Use hardware acceleration when available
  • Enable: Use hardware-accelerated video encoding
  • Disable: Enable HEVC video Encoding. Places additional load on the GPU. Experiment with it enabled / disabled to see what gives best results.
  • Hardware transcoding device: Pick the iGPU in the i5. Do not use Auto.

Monitor playback via Plex Dashboard → Now Watching + Expanded View. It will show if the video is transcoding and if using hardware acceleration. When transcoding video, you should see two (hw), one after the decode and one after the encode. Audio transcoding always uses the CPU.

dashboard
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