Woohooo!!
Sign me up to test it!
PS: I’m wondering if this will enable the “reduce flashing lights” accessibility feature. The current version doesn’t support this (apps that use the built-in player all do). In our household, it has become necessary. 
Signed up to test the beta. Can I ask what the version number is? Just so I can tell when it’s been pushed to my devices.
Thanks a BUNCH for adding Metal support. Can’t wait to test it! 
Sent DM.
The setting for enabling the new audio player is gone in this build for some reason, so I can’t test if there’s any improvement in AirPlay 2 support with the new engine.
My Apple TV (1st gen 4K) has a fan, so I haven’t been able to tell if there’s a difference in video playback performance. I need to be in a really silent room to hear the fan kick in (which it did on occasion in the past with extremely high bitrate videos). The new thermal state parameter did change from ‘nominal’ to ‘fair’ to ‘serious’ after several minutes of playback with the couple of 4K Dolby Vision remuxes I’ve tried. I’ve also noticed some (< 40) dropped frames when it got hotter with one of the files, but not with the others.
Speaking of Dolby Vision support, it’s really lacking on this device. I noticed that the huge thread about it had been (automatically) closed because of inactivity, but nothing has really changed: P7 and P8 videos still play in fake DV (why?), and P5 videos make the player switch to the native AVPlayer and sometimes work, but with many files the app just shows the spinning wheel animation instead.
I mean, it’s good to have these performance upgrades, but how valuable are they if I have to switch to another app to play these videos with proper tone mapping anyway? I guess it would be good for standard HDR10 had Apple TV not had this little-known problem with incorrectly reporting HDR metadata that makes it ill-suited for HDR10 videos in general (and nothing can be done about it unless Apple fixes it). There’s also the less popular HDR10+ format that’s not supported either.
Anyway, I hope modern formats get properly supported on Apple TV someday to go along with these performance improvements; they’re quite ubiquitous now and are probably the main source of all the thermal throttling and video stuttering issues addressed by this update.
Here’s some of the files I am dealing with with Dolby Vision. If I can play them on my Apple TV (when I upgrade) my Shield is going to go into the trash.
I’m in the same situation but to be fair one of the Plex guys did say the initial release was solely aimed at the thermal throttling/stutter issues.
I guess we will just have to wait til they have made progress on that issue.
Glad to see some movement on the atv front, very much appreciated, thank you!
Is the new version supporting HDR+?
First one or two episodes of a show I’m watching seemed very promising, but sadly, again my device started to get pretty hot after that and I had a stutter every 30 seconds or so since then.
Gave it a break and returned after 30 minutes, it was fine again but didn’t take too long for the above to happen.
I immediately switched to Infuse and it was butter smooth. Don’t say this as discouragement or disrespect to the Plex team, just saying that something still feel off.
Apple TV 22/LG G2 Oled 55
I don’t even use ATV but this is why the subject is interesting.
I watched two movies today, using the new beta player 8.34 (build 8096). Both were plain old 1080p videos with H.264 encoding. Nothing as fancy as 4K or HDR.
The first one had a frame rate of 23.976 fps and stuttered now and then, all the way from the very beginning. So no time to heat up to cause thermal throttling.
The second had a frame rate of 25 fps and played smoothly.
Needless to say, both play flawlessly in Infuse.
It’s very similar to what I’m seeing too. Like I said in the thread about video stutters on the 3rd gen ATV 4K, playback is noticeably A LOT smoother when using this new beta build, but not perfect. I can still see light stuttering regularly. Of course, especially during panning scenes.
So far I tested mostly with files that were h264, 1080p, SDR, 23.976 fps.
And like you mentioned, everything is playing fine in Infuse (and for what it’s worth, everything was also playing fine in the Plex app before version 8.18).
I haven’t experienced desync or stuttering on ATV since I last watched 4K HDR content; after looking at this thread I’ll have to check again. Usually restarting the app fixed the problem for me, so I don’t think it was thermal throttling.
I submitted the beta testing form either way.
I filled out the form for the new beta 2 days ago, still no invite in testflight. Anything else i need to do?
I was slow to this and missed first wave 
still!
What To Test
We’re obviously interested in folks throwing everything they have at this. […]
What to test, what to expect:
1 and 2 are what’s being asked to be tested and that Plex require feedback on.
Even with 2 nothing has been changed and they require feedback on if anything has (coincidentally) changed as far as I’m aware.
3, 4 and 5 are additional features and not (yet) added.
Also there are additional things like complete audio dropouts for those using AirPlay devices like HomePods to be worked on before anything like Atmos and Dolby Vision get looked at.
Please read my post a couple of posts up from yours.
They are concentrating on the stuttering video and thermal throttling issues first.
This file still stutters for me on the TestFlight beta on my A2843 (3rd gen AppleTV 4K)
Which file are you referring, nothing here…
The offending File info would be helpful
Your Media Network setup: Network type, Server version, ATV to TV or AV Device, Sound Bar or something else?
The file is linked in the post they replied to.
