4k hevc media that was direct playing is now automatically transcoding to 1080p after update

For me, 4k hevc media on android devices will not play and receive an error saying “an error occurred trying to play…”. Seemed to start right after and update as one fire tv worked and another didn’t then after I restarted the fire tv it starting receiving this same error.

Works great on iOS

Using VLC fire tv app and plex DLNA works perfectly

Back to 7.27. It works for me too

Greetings. :wink:

how do you roll back? I updated from the browswer

here explains how to

Greetings. :wink:

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Still no fix on this issue ??

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I’ll give it a few more days, but I think I will have to put my Roku Ultra back in place. I really did like the Fire TV4K.

What baffles my mind is we can’t even get an update. Just some simple feedback to let us know they are working on it would be nice. I’d love some details but at this point I’d just take some acknowledgement of the issue.

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Same issues here - new Fire TV Cube, h.264 “recommended” at 1.0, and forced transcoding on all 4K content. Switched back to my Xbox One X and was able to play 4K just fine via Plex on that device.

Here’s an update from when I posted…

Maybe @BigWheel can provide another update seeing as it’s been a week, I check the new Plex server update two-three times a day to see if there’s an update, but nope. Last one still Feb 27!

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This issue might be fixed in 7.29 Plex for Android
Since I did a rollback to 7.27, didn´t tried that update yet.

Yes 7.29 has a change to the recent fix for Live TV/DVR to make sure that it only applies to Live TV/DVR

  • Ensure only Live TV interlaced content is force transcoded on Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K.

I dont use live TV a lot with Plex, but does this change affect all interlaced content

As far as i am aware the issue on the 4K stick is only for HD channels, SD channels/content get de-interlaced correctly on the stick

This is in the UK, might not be the same for other countries

I believe the changes only apply to the Amazon Fire 4K stick

Thanks, is this all interlaced content on the 4K?

eg
001 BBC1 (SD) - This plays fine without transcoding (there where issues with this but Amazon fixed it last year), this should direct play
101 BBC1 (HD) - This has issues and needs to be transcoded (similar issue to the above but not yet fixed by Amazon), this is they type of content discussed in many threads

Yes - so our changes should for now resolve the issue on BBC1 HD and the real solution will be the fixes that come out as part the work by Amazon here https://github.com/amzn/exoplayer-amazon-port/issues/94

Who wants to be the guinea pig lol?

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How is this Amazon’s fault? Everything works fine in 7.27 and all prior releases. Things only broke in 7.28+, to which the codebase is entirely within Plex’s control. As noted (a dozen plus times), Plex now attempts to transcode all 4K content, irrespective of being progressive or interlaced.