Why Your 1080p and 4K movies run slow. A Sad Discovery

[tom80H]

Wow… that post definitely deserves a TL;DR summary.
There’s a guide on how to overcome obstacles of 4K.

[INFO] Plex, 4k, transcoding, and you - aka the rules of 4k

NOTE: for 2022 – Plex has come a long way since this FAQ was originally written, HW transcoding has become more available and more stable, and tone mapping was recently added to address the hdr/sdr color conversion issues. The first 4 ‘rules’ generally are no longer as important as they once were, but may still be a good thing to bear in mind. Dolby Vision, is an entirely other mess. THIS thread/FAQ is NOT about DV. DV work is still in progress, and there are no perfect TV’s or external devic…

To be super open – playing 4K over WIFI is definitely going to be a gamble in any setup. At least if you’re dealing with a halfway decent bitrate. There’s way too many roadblocks and and pitfalls when it comes to WIFI playback… that’s by the way not specific to 4K but can already happen with Blu-Ray quality 1080p content.