I’m still mostly using Windows on my main PC. I’ve got a few jobs to finish before I switch, but the main one is scanning old photos from the 80s and 90s. I’ve tried lots of different scanning software on Linux, but I can’t find anything that works as well as the Epson software that was bundled with the scanner.

It’s got a few one click fixes for bad exposures that work really well too, so things like that orangey reddish cast that some photos have is fixed almost automatically. It can all be done easily in other software, but the time saved by doing it in the scanner software is massive.

“The sky above the port was blue, with a grey rectangular box with writing saying ‘No signal found.’”

Yeah, this is how I understand it too. From the end user’s point of view, there’s just one wifi network throughout the building or property. It doesn’t matter if there’s a cable running between the access points, that’s all invisible to the user.

Nope. It does it with random videos every now and then, and with no obvious pattern. It’s not lasting for a set amount of time either, so it’s not like something’s running in the background and slowing it down for a while.

In the past I’ve shut down everything I can think of on the server to stop something from taking priority, but it still happens. On those occasions it’s happened for half an hour or more, but other times it might last for a few minutes, or just affect one episode.

I just checked the episode through Plex, and it’s direct playing. I didn’t get any stuttering while I was skipping around though. I think it’s Plex itself, either the server or the player.

My physical server is a bit old now, it’s a Haswell i5, so if this was an ultra HD bluray rip I could understand it, but it’s been playing HD and 4k videos without issues for years now.

I use Radarr to process my videos, and I’m sure I’ve got a plugin or script somewhere to download subtitles. I’d forgotten all about it since I’ve been using Plex, so I’ll have to try to remember what it is.

I’ve checked the file. It’s a bog standard h264 mkv and the video bitrate is only 10Mbps. There’s nothing that the fire stick shouldn’t be able to handle on its own. I’ll try playing it on the fire stick again and see if it’s trying to do something weird, but I can’t see it being that.

Nothing unusual about it, and it plays perfectly on my PC. I’ve tried randomly skipping backwards and forwards, but still no issues. It’s a bog standard h264 mkv file too, so nothing that would need to be transcoded

I hadn’t heard of that. I’ll check it out, thanks :)

Oh, definitely! I had major issues with the networking in my old house, and just couldn’t narrow it down. I eventually figured out that it was a network switch, but when I tested them, all three had intermittent faults. I could plug my laptop into a port on one and have it lose connection, but plugging something else in would work. Plugging my laptop into a different switch with the same cable would work, but a few hours later would fail. That was a nightmare to track down.

I’ll give that a try, thanks :)

That’s a good point. I’ll check the file and see if there’s anything unusual compared to the others 🙂

You might be slightly overestimating my coding abilities 😁

I thought it could be something like that, but the fire stick wasn’t used for at least 15 hours before, and after the first crash I rebooted and restarted the Plex server software. I would have thought that would clear any memory or cache issues.

I used to run Kodi, but I moved away from it a few years ago. I can’t remember why off the top of my head, so I’ll have to look into it and see what turned me off it.

All I need to do now is actually remember to set Jellyfin up 🙈

If I was having problems with anything else, I would blame the fire stick. It’s cheaply made Amazon crap that’s designed to fail. I regularly stream to it from other sources though, and don’t get any issues. In this case, I skipped back once, so ten seconds, and that was too much for Plex to handle 🤷🏻‍♂️

I just watched an episode of a different show, and while it didn’t completely crash, it still stuttered and paused randomly.

I know it’s not the server itself, as it’s handling more intense tasks regularly with no issues, and the network works on every other device too. I stream higher quality with higher bit rates to the fire stick regularly too, with no issues.

I’m tempted to get a different box for the TV, but everything else runs perfectly. I’ve been looking into switching to Jellyfin too, but I’ve been trying out Stremio for a little while, and it works much better than Plex. It’s missing a few features like easy user switching, and it can’t organise and play my family videos as far as I know, but it would mean not having to store loads of media.

I’ve been holding off switching to Jellyfin for a while because I paid for a Plex pass, but I’m getting to the point where that’s not going to stop me from swapping.