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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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Plex remote access - low quality even with gigabit fiber (self.selfhosted)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by triptrapper to c/selfhosted

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Hey all, I'm very new to self-hosting and have no background in anything computer-related. I'll explain in as much detail as I can. I'm running Plex on a Synology DS220+. I'm using the Plex app, i.e. not using Docker (see note below).

The issue: I can watch Plex on my local network in 4K, but outside my local network it barely makes it to 720p. I thought it was an issue with my upload speed, but I got gigabit last week and it hasn't fixed the issue. I have remote access enabled in Plex through a manually-specified port. The issue persists with my own account and any friends who have access to my library.

I appreciate any advice, links or questions you can offer!

NOTE: I understand the benefits of Docker and I promise to transition in the future. I spent many hours learning and troubleshooting, and it was even functional at times, but eventually I needed something that just worked.

EDIT: You all have been so helpful and supportive. Thanks for meeting me where I'm at and sharing some potential issues.

EDIT2: I found the culprit by accident. I had UPnP enabled on my router. I turned it off and my local speeds increased significantly, and my Plex library is available remotely. I don't know how or why UPnP is related, but that's what the solution was for me. Thanks again for all your input and support.

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[–] tehgersh 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

One thing I haven't seen called out that could be a contributing factor is the hardware capabilities of the playback device. Depending on the codecs used in your media, there may not be hardware accelerated decoding support if the playback device is a smartphone. This may cause the plex to decide to transcode your media into a format that is supported by your playback device.

Also, hardware accelerated transcoding is a subscription based feature. Without plex pass active, the transcode will be CPU based only. The dual core CPU will almost certainly not have enough oomph to transcode anything beyond 720p, but the CPU has Intel QSV support so plex should be smart enough to use that.

[–] triptrapper 1 points 2 months ago

This is good to look into. I've tried remote streaming on several different devices. Before I bought the NAS I was sure it could handle a few streams, but maybe I was wrong.