Plex quality

[lyle]

Hi, there. I've recently started getting very poor quality from my Roku Plex app. I actually have three of these setups in my house, all showing poor quality. I've used Plex/Roku/Freenas for years successfully and this poor quality has just happened recently. Last year I upgraded to Freenas 11, but also last year Plex had a major upgrade. One of these things maybe?

I noticed in Freenas 11 I cannot see the Plex plugin in the new graphical UI. I have to open the Legacy UI to see the plugin. Would that have an effect? I don't see many settings within the plugin itself, and I have tried all the different settings in the Roku Plex app itself to no effect.

My Roku is hardwired to my network, so no wireless issues. If I take the movie file and put it on a USB, then plug the USB into my Roku and play directly, the quality is pefect (all my videos are 1080p btw). And the quality on the Plex web interface is also perfect. So I really feel like my problem is either the Roku Plex app or the Freenas Plex plugin.

Any suggestions? My wife is really beating the drum on this one now after being relatively patient. Trekking back and forth between my server and TV with a USB drive is NOT my idea of fun!!!

Many thanks, Lyle

 

[nojohnny101]

I would first check serve settings to see if any limits are placed there (settings could have gotten reset or something wonky during an upgrade). Next I would test by streaming from your Plex server to a different client (laptop, mobile device, etc.). If you get the same poor quality, and verified settings on that device are to play full quality, then that would point to the roku being the problem. However if you have even poor quality playing media through plex.tv then it is most likely your server.

Do some additional testing with different configurations, clients, etc to eliminate factors then you'll get closer to identifying the problem.

 

[Machster]

Hi, there. I've recently started getting very poor quality from my Roku Plex app. I actually have three of these setups in my house, all showing poor quality. I've used Plex/Roku/Freenas for years successfully and this poor quality has just happened recently. Last year I upgraded to Freenas 11, but also last year Plex had a major upgrade. One of these things maybe?

I noticed in Freenas 11 I cannot see the Plex plugin in the new graphical UI. I have to open the Legacy UI to see the plugin. Would that have an effect? I don't see many settings within the plugin itself, and I have tried all the different settings in the Roku Plex app itself to no effect.

My Roku is hardwired to my network, so no wireless issues. If I take the movie file and put it on a USB, then plug the USB into my Roku and play directly, the quality is pefect (all my videos are 1080p btw). And the quality on the Plex web interface is also perfect. So I really feel like my problem is either the Roku Plex app or the Freenas Plex plugin.

Any suggestions? My wife is really beating the drum on this one now after being relatively patient. Trekking back and forth between my server and TV with a USB drive is NOT my idea of fun!!!

Many thanks, Lyle

I have also experienced poor playback with my Roku. I have set the throughput to full output on the Plex server and the image quality is still poor. I also have an Apple TV and the image quality is excellent. The Roku is very dull looking. I don't think this is a plex issue. I think the Roku is the culprit.

 

[lyle]

Thanks for the troubleshooting tips, very helpful. I had good quality from my main ethernet-connected desktop computer, so I assumed it was either a Roku or Freenas issue. However, when I tried with a laptop via wireless, Plex spit out a warning that my laptop was connecting to my server through a "relay" so quality would suffer. Somehow it couldn't connect directly to my server so was pulling the data from the cloud resulting in low quality. I found this link helpful:

https://support.plex.tv/articles/216766168-accessing-a-server-through-relay/

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how I fixed it, but I played around with the server settings on the laptop client interface and restarted the plex plugin in freenas. Some combination fixed the issue and now the roku plex app is direct connected again and all is good = wife is happy! There's not many settings available in the roku plex app, so I think the key was using a wireless windows client to troubleshoot.