Could we get increased bitrates?

[jlficken 3]

I have some 4K remuxes which are 130Mbps and I can’t play them on Emby since it’s limited to 110Mbps. 
 

Could that get fixed or can I remove the Mbps limit somehow?  I still need audio to transcode. 

[ebr 14927]

Hi.  What Roku device is able to handle that?  The published specs from Roku are only up to 40Mb/s.

[speechles 1920]

The ethernet port on the Roku is only 100Mb/sec.

To get higher than 110Mb/sec would require using WiFi on 802.11AC with a capable Roku model. It depends on how good that signal is as far as if this is going to provide a no buffering experience. It might be possible to go higher in the future but we would have to verify this wouldn't produce endless buffering hell since it relies on WiFi.

This is where it gets tricky. When users are using 802.11AC WiFi on their Roku we could detect that and allow some higher bitrate settings based upon that fact. That is entirely possible.

Once Roku adds Gigabit ports to their present Roku models it would make this easier to do without the tricks.

Edited May 17, 2023 by speechles

[ebr 14927]

1 hour ago, speechles said:

Once Roku adds Gigabit ports to their present Roku models it would make this easier to do without the tricks.

I doubt they will ever do that as it simply wouldn't be worth the cost.  Virtually no one is using wired networks in their homes anymore.

You also have to take into account the processing ability of the device to decode the content.  We can possibly add some higher bitrate settings on the chance that some devices in some networks will be able to handle it but we will keep our defaults at the Roku specs.

[Gilgamesh_48 944]

3 minutes ago, ebr said:

I doubt they will ever do that as it simply wouldn't be worth the cost.  Virtually no one is using wired networks in their homes anymore.

I think that "virtually no one" is an error. I know many many people with home networks (no, not all of the are old like me) and everyone save two have a mixture of wired and wireless like I do.

I think it would be better to say that  "few people are adding new devices to their networks that are wired." That is it is hard to find "new" wired devices.

I believe that over 80% of home networks have a wired portion and that could be even higher as I only know one person with a 100% wireless network.

I prefer "wired" most of the time unless I need to move around with a device that must stay connected.

But I will say that in a lot of cases the old saying that "wired is always better than wireless is becoming less true and sometimes it is the other way around.

BTW: I do not know of any reliable Emby or Plex installs where the server is wirelessly connected. But that could change as wireless is becoming rapidly more reliable.

If "wireless" ever becomes really reliable I would probably change to a totally wireless network but the interference issues are so pervasive that I do not see that happening any time soon.

BTW: I'll ask here but I will also make a separate post if needed. I am having a bit of a congestion issue on my wired network at times. I wonder if wireless has the same kind of issues during high usage? I sometimes am streaming something off the web and start a large local file transfer and suddenly my network stops passing data at all. If I switch to wireless for the devices involved in the transfer)s) will the congestion problems get better? That is does wireless really handle congestion better than wired or do I just have a router that needs upgrading?

[ebr 14927]

2 hours ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

BTW: I do not know of any reliable Emby or Plex installs where the server is wirelessly connected.

Yeah, a server is a different animal than a streaming box/stick.  I stick to virtually no one (which means the entire user base of these devices, not the small subset that run systems like ours) is using wired connections on those these days.  I think we're more likely to see complete elimination of the wired network port than an upgraded one on these streaming devices (in fact, most have eliminated it already).

IOW - from the perspective of the manufacturer of these devices (Roku in this case) it makes zero business sense to spend money on an upgraded wired network port.

[jlficken 3]

My Roku Ultra 4660X plays a 110Mbit stream with Direct Play (transcoding audio).

 

I guess if it only has a 100Mbps port though then nevermind.  I see that the web player shows 160Mbit for that video and plays direct so that works.

 

I'll do some more tinkering with the Roku tonight and make sure it's playing at what I think it is.  Everything in my house is wired that has an ethernet port.

[Gilgamesh_48 944]

42 minutes ago, ebr said:

Yeah, a server is a different animal than a streaming box/stick.  I stick to virtually no one (which means the entire user base of these devices, not the small subset that run systems like ours) is using wired connections on those these days.  I think we're more likely to see complete elimination of the wired network port than an upgraded one on these streaming devices (in fact, most have eliminated it already).

IOW - from the perspective of the manufacturer of these devices (Roku in this case) it makes zero business sense to spend money on an upgraded wired network port.

My most reliable streaming client is my Fire Stick which is wireless only. (it beats my Rokus only because of live TV which has little periodic glitches on my Rokus)

This has made me think a bit more and I wonder if the glitches on live TV on my main Roku would be reduced or eliminated by using the wireless connection? I have not tried that on my main Roku so it is something to try.

See, going off on a tangents sometimes produces ideas that would lie hidden otherwise.

[jlficken 3]

Here’s what my Roku shows. 

The highest allowed bitrate is 4K 110Mbs in the Quality Settings.
 

[tedfroop 33]

 

On 17/05/2023 at 07:46, ebr said:

Hi.  What Roku device is able to handle that?  The published specs from Roku are only up to 40Mb/s.

My Ultra 4802CA Wifi speed makes the ethernet redundant.  My Asus AX5700 reports WiFi connection speeds of 866.7 Mbps, though the device itself shows internet download speeds of 169Mbps

Specs say:

Networking	802.11ac dual-band MIMO Wi-Fi (2.4 GHz / 5 GHz) 10/100 Base-T Ethernet

[ebr 14927]

11 hours ago, tedfroop said:

 

My Ultra 4802CA Wifi speed makes the ethernet redundant.  My Asus AX5700 reports WiFi connection speeds of 866.7 Mbps, though the device itself shows internet download speeds of 169Mbps

Specs say:

Networking	802.11ac dual-band MIMO Wi-Fi (2.4 GHz / 5 GHz) 10/100 Base-T Ethernet

That is network speed.  That doesn't mean that the Roku device can handle that high of a bitrate (either on its network bus or its graphics processing).

I suspect the devices will handle bitrates much above what they publish as their max (40mb/s) but I'm not sure they go much over 100 but haven't really tested it. 

[jlficken 3]

The Emby Android app on my new TV (Sony A90J) let’s me set the max bitrate to 1000Mbps in the application settings even though it on has a 100Mbps NIC and WiFi 5 as an FYI.

 

Could we get the same manual setting in the Roku app?

[ebr 14927]

28 minutes ago, jlficken said:

The Emby Android app on my new TV (Sony A90J) let’s me set the max bitrate to 1000Mbps in the application settings even though it on has a 100Mbps NIC and WiFi 5 as an FYI.

There are a very wide range of Android devices with a wide range of capabilities but that option isn't going to do you a lot of good on that device is it?

29 minutes ago, jlficken said:

Could we get the same manual setting in the Roku app?

Possibly but only after we prove its possible to play anything at those kind of bitrates.  Not a fan of options that will only cause playback failures.

[jlficken 3]

2 minutes ago, ebr said:

There are a very wide range of Android devices with a wide range of capabilities but that option isn't going to do you a lot of good on that device is it?

Possibly but only after we prove its possible to play anything at those kind of bitrates.  Not a fan of options that will only cause playback failures.

I had to set it to 1000Mbps in order to get a movie with a 130Mbps bitrate to play without transcoding as the options jump from 80Mbps to 1000Mbps with nothing in between.  The TV handled it just fine just like the Roku was fine with 100Mbps content in my testing. 

[ebr 14927]

2 minutes ago, jlficken said:

as the options jump from 80Mbps to 1000Mbps with nothing in between

Hi.  There are a number of options between those...

[jlficken 3]

6 minutes ago, ebr said:

Hi.  There are a number of options between those...

Hmmm…those don’t appear during playback but sure enough they’re in the Max Streaming Bitrate setting. During playback it stops at 100Mbps (not 80Mbps I was mistaken).

Edited July 8, 2023 by jlficken

[jlficken 3]

The 1000Mbps wasn’t available until I set it in the Max Streaming Bitrate setting. Before that the options during playback stopped at 100Mbps. 
 

 

[ebr 14927]

12 minutes ago, jlficken said:

During playback it stops at 100Mbps

The during playback setting is temporary (for that one playback session) and is intelligent enough to know what settings make sense based on the item being played.  That item is 69Mb/s so any option over 100 (the first one greater than 69) are superfluous and irrelevant in this context.

However, something is wonky because the overall bitrate is reported at 130 but the video only 69.  Certainly, the audio bitrates are not that high...

[ebr 14927]

Oh, wait, I see it now.  The item is not really 130Mb.  It is about 74 (69.2 + 4).  But the logic when transcoding doubles the video bitrate for conversion from HEVC to H.264.  Your item isn't transcoding video, so that bitrate being reported there is erroneous.

[jlficken 3]

1 minute ago, ebr said:

Oh, wait, I see it now.  The item is not really 130Mb.  It is about 74 (69.2 + 4).  But the logic when transcoding doubles the video bitrate for conversion from HEVC to H.264.  Your item isn't transcoding video, so that bitrate being reported there is erroneous.

 

That would explain it as I've noticed it on other videos as well and didn't quite follow why it was being reported that way.

[ebr 14927]

Bottom line is the 100Mb setting is all that is required for this particular item to not transcode the video and the Roku already includes a 110 setting.  Is that not sufficient already?  Do you have a specific example of needing  a setting higher than that?

[jlficken 3]

Here’s a 165Mbps example on the A90J. 
 

 

[ebr 14927]

5 hours ago, jlficken said:

Here’s a 165Mbps example on the A90J.

If you put that on your Roku, does it play smoothly?

[jlficken 3]

On the Roku it forces transcoding since it’s over the maximum allowed bitrate in the app so there’s not really a way to test how it does with higher bitrates. 
 

I guess I can try to find something that has a 110Mbps bitrate and try that. 

[jlficken 3]

This is the highest I’ve got available currently at 95Mbps and it plays fine over WiFi.