roku plex media server does not show played movies

it's running on a pretty old laptop (10 years old) so it couldn't cope with transcoding on the fly. It would appear that it was trying to transcode everything even though they didn't need it, the bit rate was set to maximum so I don't know why it was doing it. I thought I was going to have to do it for each movie but there is a setting to apply it as a blanket setting. I had to turn on 'Force direct play' in the Roku Plex app settings. Typically 10 minutes after I posted I think I solved the problem. Yes it's connecting to the 5GHz which is a separate SSID If you are only seeing 37 Mbps from the hard drive, that's really low. Note the capital 'B', because it changes the actual speed tremendously. Assuming you wrote that correctly, a USB 2.0 hard drive should be able to transfer data 30–42 MB/s, which is 240-340 Mbps. You are correct that 37 Mbps from the hard drive should be enough, although this seems a low transfer rate from the HD. Have you checked the settings in the Plex server to see what bitrate it's set to? Perhaps it's too low, forcing the computer to transcode and reducing performance.

I'm suspicious of either the Plex app/channel on the Stick, or the Plex server itself. But I can stream HD video from my DLNA server, with bitstreams exceeding 30 Mbps, without a problem. It's mainly for connecting to my home media when I'm traveling. While I have Plex, I don't use it on my home network. But the one Roku that I do run wireless (Insignia TV) doesn't have any issues with wireless streaming. I don't have the Stick+, and it's supposed to have improved wireless capabilities. I use different SSIDs to ensure I know which I'm connected to.

Do you have different SSIDs for your different wireless bands? If you're only connecting to the 2.4 GHz radio, then you aren't getting.

Roku plex media server does not show played movies