Since 2012, I've been running Plex as our media server to handle movies and TV only. For most of that time, Plex was running on an ancient 2007-vintage Mac Mini setup with no issues. Streamed to multiple clients simultaneously, large files or small files, no issues. I couldn't upgrade beyond the 0.9.8 PMS versions because of transcoder issues (detailed in this thread if you're curious), which meant no mobile apps.
Recently, however, I decided it was time. We picked up a refurbished 2014 Mac Mini direct from Apple and dropped the latest Plex media server on it.
To my great surprise, the performance of Plex has gotten a lot worse. I thought with hardware that was seven years younger and the latest (1.1.4) Plex drop, our experience would be substantially improved. Instead, we have a range of issues.
- Navigating the apps via the web, Roku or mobile clients has become painfully slower (sometimes browsing particular letters in the movie section remains blank for thirty seconds or more). Navigation was never an issue prior.
- Video buffers constantly and we constantly get a ""Your connection to the server is not fast enough to stream this video. Check your Network." error. Again, this is entirely new.
- Plex frequently won't load the media the first try ("Unable to Play Media") and sometimes second times, then will work without issue. Never an issue for 0.9.8.
Nor are we alone in having these kinds of issues from what I can tell after browsing these forums.
This is a surprise, because apart from the upgraded hardware, nothing in our setup has changed. The Mac Mini, the Synology which houses are media and the Roku which delivers it to the TV are all on ethernet, not wireless connections. The only thing that has changed is the Mac Mini, which is much more powerful than it used to be, and the Plex Media Server software.
Without getting into why the software has gotten worse not better, I'm curious as to what versions other people are on that they've found to be stable and perform reasonably. I had to downgrade in the past back to 0.9.8 to get a version that worked with our hardware, and I'm happy to do that again. I just need to know what to downgrade to.