Plex

[Mr.Clark]

Rather than clog up Dan's thread, I'll start a new one specifically for asking dumb questions about Plex.

What sort of network usage should it be doing from the server? Because mine mostly hovers at less than 1Mbps, but then lags, usage shoots up to 150Mbps, the playback stabilises, it's fine for another 5-10 mins, then repeat.

It's not CPU limited. The PC (unlike the Atom) is easily capable of doing the transcoding, it never goes above 14% and the RAM is constant at 19%.

[Tinlad]

I'm confused. What PC are you referring to? Is it a server or a client? if your Atom machine is your Plex server, then that's what has to do the transcoding, not the client.

The network usage sounds odd. Are the drives in the NAS set to spin-down after a set period of time? Wondering if it's filling a buffer, then the drives are spinning down before it has to ask for the next chunk of data, resulting in stuttering whilst the drives spin-up?

[Mr.Clark]

Ok. Forget the Atom. It is a red herring. It is no longer Plexing.

I have a Synology NAS, a regular i5 desktop PC and the Virgin Superhub all plugged into the same gigabit switch.

I'm running Plex server on the desktop; watching it, the CPU isn't being overly taxed so all the transcoding it's doing shouldn't be the bottleneck.

I'm trying to pick up films on the Amazon Fire TV Stick (mainly because using the phone or tablet as a remote is fricking awesome), connected to the Superhub over wifi.

The drives shouldn't have been spinning down unless they were unused for an hour. I've upped that to two, just to see if that helps. I've also changed the superhub to use 300Mbps instead of the 144Mbps it was on. I've changed it to 5GHz at the same time, because I'm doing Science wrong. (hoping I'll be able to change that back, simply because the Kindle can't connect at that frequency).

I guess I'll just have to watch more films for now and see how it goes... 'tis a hard life I lead

[Tinlad]

Unfortunately it looks like you're not alone. I did a quick Google and there're lots of folk experiencing stuttering playback on Plex on the Fire TV Stick.

One post in particular seemed to match your description of network traffic: clicky. There are a number of posts following showing the same pattern.

I've not read further to see if there's a resolution, because it's bedtime.

[RB]

Plex stutters for me on my Fire TV. I read that the app on the Amazon store is out of date and I should sideload either a more up to date version or sideload xbmc.

I couldn't be bothered to do either and just gave up.

[Mr.Clark]

According to this thread, I'm on the latest version. Which is a bit of a pisser.

I really like the TV Stick, and it's great for Netflix and Amazon Prime TV. I just wish I could get Plex working properly as well (since both Amazon and Netflix are limited in their libraries)

Still not sure if it's the Plex Server or not. I never had the network issues on the nettop, but that was CPU limited instead.

[Sam]

I have used a NOWTV box for over a year with Plex on it. I've never had a buffering problem with it even if the nowtv box is a locked down roku.

At first I did have a few issues with the NOWTV box, in that I had to keep it on it's own on the shelf (not on top of my sky box etc) and change the wifi channel then it was utterly perfect. Although I only play my stuff in 720p, and most of this is probably of not much use to you...

[kingweed]

Loved that last line