Getting Plex to Direct Play on the Apple TV 4K.
The Apple TV 4K is an excellent Plex client, and with recent updates, it is giving the NVIDIA SHIELD a run for it’s money. This guide is for the 4K model, but should work for recent generation Apple TV’s that have been updated to the latest version of tvOS. At the time this article was written, the latest version was 12.3.
On the home screen of the Plex app, click on your username in the top left hand corner.
Then click “Settings”.
Scroll down to the “Video Quality” settings and change the following settings:
- (Plex Pass Only) Use Enhanced Video Player – On
- Auto Adjust Quality – Off
- Home Streaming – Maximum
- Internet Streaming – Maximum
Under “Audio Quality” change:
- Internet Streaming – Original
Those are the key settings to enable direct play. The other settings can be left as default or changed to your liking.
If your internet connection isn’t able to keep up, you can drop the quality on the “Home Streaming” and “Internet Streaming” settings until you don’t experience any buffering.
The “Enhanced Video Player” is a recent addition and has really made the ATV4K a direct play power house. It requires you to have a Plex Pass, but well worth it if you are a heavy Plex user.
Direct Play Settings for Plex in a Web Browser
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Direct Play Settings for Plex on the NVIDIA SHIELD
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Hi all, Does anyone know whether it is possible to direct play 4K content from an iMac to Apple TV for playback on a 4K HDR TV? At the moment I m able to view the content (MKV) through Plex but this is having to be transcoded by the iMac prior to display which results in spinning wheels and messages about the iMac not being powerful enough to transcode. I know that MKV is just a container and assume that converting to mp4 might work, I haven t tried this yet, but was hoping someone might ve gotten it working with MKVs. Thanks.
Sorry, can’t say I know the answer to that. You might try the Datahoarding/Homelab Discord channel and see if they know. https://discord.gg/csvkPpH