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Help me understand my bottleneck (self.raspberrypi)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by madcaesar to c/[email protected]

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I'm running a raspberry pi 8GB version, as my plex entertainment center. I also ruin a pihole. The pie has an Ethernet connection.

I have two TV'S, a 2017 Samsung and a 2021 Hisense. Both with Ethernet connections.

My Samsung tv can't stream certain shows at all, they stutter like crazy I'm guessing it has something to do with the encoders? Yesterday I got a message color range not supported whatever the hell that is.

The Hisense TV does better on some shows, but still 4k content is unwatchable, it's constantly buffering.

So, is the problem with the pi? Is it not powerful enough for 4k shows, or some encoding problem or something?

Or is it the TVS, should I buy a Roku box instead, would that solve the streaming problems?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

While something I playing, go to the Plex dashboard for the server. It will show the video and audio stream format/codec. Under each it should say Direct Play. That means it's not transcoding.

[–] madcaesar 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So it should not be transcoding, is that the idea?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Exactly. I would expect a pi to struggle with transcoding. The quality of apps on a lot of smart tvs is poor (particularly older ones that aren't roku or android, and that Samsung is neither).

I bet it would work a lot better on the Samsung if you get an Android TV device (Onn 4k is a good inexpensive one) or roku, if you prefer that platform.

But first it's best to know if transcoding is the problem. It might be direct stream but having network problems.

[–] madcaesar 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So why does the pi transcode? What is the purpose of this? Is it detecting that my tv's can't handle the encoding, so it's changing it on the fly? So having an android box would eliminate the need for transcoding?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If the playback device (tv in this case) doesn't support the codec used for audio or video it must be transcoded for playback to work at all. If this is the cause it could be the tv doesn't have the right codecs and a standalone device may be better. It depends on the codecs you are using.

Also, if the network connection is slow, it will transcode so that that playback is smooth but lower resolution or quality.

In either case, if the Plex server isn't strong enough it will struggle. You can investigate this on the dashboard as well, it shows a live cpu usage graph.