Hey all,
Been loving the PLEX app for quite some time, however recently my user's have started complaining about inconsistent performance issues (streaming hiccups). My build is in my signature.
Its been starting to happen a bit more frequently recently and I can't seem to pinpoint the location of the bottleneck, but I have a guess. Our guess is that it may be at the connections speed. After testing with http://internethealthtest.org, the speeds that I'm getting on average is 100mbps Down/ 8.5mbps Up (marketed as 20mbps from ISP but yeah...that's another story I guess).
At any one time, I seem to get a maximum of 3 users who request at one time. What I'm not sure about is why all of a sudden these user's are having problems. Am I right to assume that technically at 1080p settings, this request would probably need 30mbps Up if the videos were transcoded at 10mbits? And what of the container? Does PLEX automatically switch to transcode mode instead of direct play if the file is an mkv instead of an mp4 (all in H.264 btw)?
Is there anyway to increase buffer speeds for these users, or to allow a stream ahead option? I'm pretty sure my server can handle such a process.
Lastly, 4K...err, if I'm having 1080p problems with users atm, then I'm pretty sure 4k is going to be a nightmare. But what I'm curious about is why I was getting lag on a local playback through both the web and home theater app of a 4K file? My guess; it was encoded in H.265 and my local CLIENT hardware doesn't natively support H.265 hardware decoding (that system is still using a GTX 670...I know, getting a 1070 in October ok!?!) ? Or does that make a difference?
Sorry for the winded post, but just trying to get an idea of what I can try to do to improve the user experience on my end.
Cheers and Thanks!