Playback issue Fire TV Stick 4K & Plex

mushtafa · 2 Jan 2019 at 15:20

I've always struggled to stream high bitrate UHD to my smart TV, so bought a Fire TV Stick.

I watched a UHD film last week and it worked fine, but attempting to watch something with higher bitrate is impossible. The audio plays, but the video freezes.

How can I diagnose if it's the fault of the Fire TV, the Plex app, or the Plex server on my PC?

The Fire TV is connected wirelessly on the 5ghz network - debating if the ethernet adaptor will fix this?

mushtafa · 2 Jan 2019 at 18:06

The smart TV is wired to the network. I've always had problems streaming UHD stuff via Plex, the odd film will play, but the majority won't. I put it down to poor hardware/software of the TV.

I've not checked network speed on the TV or Firestick. Not sure how to do that yet. Perhaps speedof.me will work in a browser?

I'll have another play with it tomorrow and see what Plex server says.

The file I tried is HEVC codec. Not sure on the total bitrate, but think it's 34919 kbps

mushtafa · 2 Jan 2019 at 20:45

barmyllama said:
The short answer is buy an Nvidia Shield and then it will direct play anything from your Plex server.

Any other streaming device will more often than not need transcoding via your server, even if it's just transcoding the audio stream.

And if you need the audio and video transcoding then you really need a high end CPU you do it via Plex. I have an i7 4770k @ 4ghz and transcoding a single 4K rip via Plex maxes it out.

Nvidia Shield is not an option unfortunately, too expensive at the moment

mushtafa · 3 Jan 2019 at 11:33

OK, so done some more testing and now it's working both on TV and FireStick. Makes me think it was the PC at fault.

Anyway, the TV is a LG 55UF850V

Speedtest of TV via Ethernet; 27 down & 18 up, and wireless; 25 down & 18 up. So very similar.
Speedtest of the FireTV wireless; 72 down & 19 up.

When playing through the TV Plex transcodes the video from HEVC to H264, and audio is direct. I have no option to play direct. I expect the codec isn't supported.
On the FireTv it plays Direct.

From these tests, would you agree I'd be better off watching via the FireTV?

mushtafa · 3 Jan 2019 at 15:20

I originally used the SmartShare app when I first bought the TV, but it failed to play a lot of media. Since using the Plex app, I've never revisited it again.

I wanted a Shield last year, but just couldn't justify the cost. I might keep an eye out for a second hand one though.

mushtafa · 3 Jan 2019 at 19:02

This is what is reported through Plex;
4K (HEVC Main 10 HDR)
DTS-HD MA 5.1 @ 3840 kbps - Blu-ray

Think I've sussed it. I managed to watch the entire episode. No freezing, no buffering, problem free.

Half way through episode 2 and I get problems again.

A warning on the FireTV popped up saying network speed issue.
Task manager was showing my media HDD at 100% active, but read & write speeds where all over the place.
HDD idled down on stopping playback, but again increased when attempted to continue.
Rebooting the PC didn't help.
I checked the SMART HDD data and it showed errors for 'UltraDMA CRC Errors'. Spot of research suggested a number of reasons, but I swapped out the SATA cable and it's working again now.
Task manager shows around 5%, and read speeds of average 3.9MB/s and peak 7MB/s.

I'll keep an eye on it, but looks to be an issue with the PC rather than network or Plex