Playback with direct play for all my 4K HDR movies is broken on the new Samsung client. The old one works fine. Audio keeps playing normally, video is a garbled mess. Looks like this:
All my 4K HDR movies have this issue, normal (SDR) 1080p movies work correctly.
Like I mentioned, all my 4K content is HDR, so I’m not sure if this happens with all 4K content or just HDR. I’ll try to grab a normal 4K HEVC video from somewhere and see whether it plays correctly.
Edit: I downloaded some 4K & HDR test videos from here https://4kmedia.org/ and they seem to play correctly, so seems like the issue is something more specific than just 4K HDR HEVC. I don’t think it’s an issue with the movies, they play correctly on all my other players, including the old samsung app. Not quite sure how to debug this further though.
Edit 2: Well this is getting even stranger, in some of these movies switching the audio track from TRUEHD 7.1 to AC3 5.1 fixes the issue with video corruption, even though audio was playing back just fine on TRUEHD 7.1 as well. In some of them switching audio track does not help.
Edit 3: Did some more digging with playback info enabled, from the looks of it this issue happens when audio needs to be transcoded. Actual direct play where everything can be played directly works correctly, but when audio needs to be transcoded the video gets corrupted.
Thanks for sleuthing! That narrows things down quite a bit. I’ve logged an issue to look at this and will let you know if we need more info or found a fix.
Any progress on this? I’ve just taken delivery of a new Samsung Q90T and have exactly this issue with it when trying to stream stuff with the Plex app. Any idea when it may be fixed?
Rauttis thanks for doing the leg work. I finally got around to testing streaming 4k content on my setup today. After spending a few hours trying to figure out what was wrong, I stumbled upon this. Can confirm, there’s something with the transcoding of audio that’s corrupting the video. In my case, specifically 4k HDR content with true audio where the audio is being transcoded to AAC.
My only 4k content is a HDR test file with true audio
My 1080p files with true audio transcode to AAC just fine
For me the Problem is That Movies are playing.
But my Samsung 90T are Not switching in HDR Mode.
The brightness/contrast are Not changing to 50/50 in hdr.
When you Start Netflix and Play a hdr Movie the brightness/contrast switching to 50/50 .
I think Plex is Not Sending hdr Information and the tv is Not changing.
Is this fixed yet? I’ve encountered the same problem with the new tizen app update. The old one was just better: not only hdr worked, but you were able to change the audio delay to sync the audio track. Now this new version doesnt have this option and some bad synced movies are unwatchable. Why remove options? i just dont get it
I’m experiencing the same issue on my Q95T. It sometimes happens after 30 minutes, sometimes straight away and only if the audio is transcoded. The video looks like the first post from Rauttis and the audio plays without problems. The solution is to convert the original file to AC3 but the the main reason I’m using plex is to avoid this
Same here, got a Q90T today and HDR 4K is blocky and broken on app on Plex Samsung tv app. Would like it fixed cause the Apple TV 4K can’t handle a lot of 4K bandwidth movies.
Seems like if I switch off truehd or master audio to eac 5.1 or ac3 5.1 it stops being blocky and plays normally…
Q60T here, it just straight up refuses to play HDR content. It tells me it is HDR and it says I need a plex pass to transcode it with fancy tone mapping into SDR, or just transcode into apparently washed out colour quality without the plex pass. Seems that the plex app on the TV does not do HDR at all and a plex pass just lets them transcode out the HDR content with better colours or something in SDR. Poo.
This is still an issue with my Q90T on latest firmware. Switching to 5.1 audio fixes my problem, but I have to manually do that for every movie.
It also happens if I use a rip from an original 4K blu-ray (no re-encoding, 50-60gb film. I have to compress it down to 1/3 the size for it to work properly. Tested with ethernet and wireless. Might be a RAM issue.)
I just finished installing our brand new Samsung Q60 (which we bought specially for plex usage) and when we finished setting everything up we were amazed to find out that plex does not support HDR on this TV and pops up a message that with a plex pass you can have a preview at the new HDR tonemapper… after the the movie plays but with washed out colors (no HDR support)…
This can’t be right? This TV is supposed to have good HDR support?!
I’ve got the same issue with the Plex Player app on a 2020 Samsung QLED TV. Like others, the video playback seems to be sensitive to the audio settings. There are some 4K HDR videos that will play if set to 5.1 audio (from 7.1). However, there are others that simply won’t begin to play (eternal buffering) even if they are set to 5.1 audio. I’d be glad to help with testing if that would be helpful. Thanks!
