I grabbed one of the Amazon Fire TV Sticks when Amazon.com discounted them pre-order last year knowing that we’d be moving to Berlin and that it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have an easily portable way to watch some Netflix here.
For streaming services it has worked great, but I also wanted to try to get Plex running on it to watch some of my own video content.
A month ago I gave up after a few days of fiddling would not solve a persistent stuttering issue.
Yesterday I tried again and eventually distilled a fix to two steps:
I can live with the compromises I’ve made here because I certainly didn’t buy a $20 HDMI dongle expecting videophile quality. I can actually watch a movie without the video hiccuping every few seconds.
To change the device profile, go to Settings → Device media profile → Media profile → Force Direct Play.
To change the video quality, go to Settings → Video → Quality over local network → 2.0 Mbps 720p.