Oh man, your additions to this thread are truly helpful. Thank you. It for sure helped everybody experiencing problems to accept their fate or turn to you in order to receive guidance on how to change their lifes for the better and do as you do, don’t do what you don’t do and have the priorities that you have.
Thank you again. Or should I say…
Personally I’ve had to move to Infuse for Apple TV for 4k content because of the stuttering issue that has been with us for a number of years already. I have zero issues playing back any of my 4k content with this setup, however it does pain me to have to pay for another app, and put up with family complaints about using different apps (Live TV and other videos = Plex & stuff that doesn’t work use Infuse).
It is frustrating when other folks suggest to install to the Apple TV beta as the solution to a long standing issue, however I for one can’t find a beta that is available. The normal Testflight Beta for Plex doesn’t include Apple TV, the Experience Preview show as build removed & the other Testflight comes back as full (and always has for the past few years for me).
Hoping we can see some progress on this topic, many folks have been tracking this for a while and would love to have this content playing reliably.
Apple TV 4K (2nd generation) not in cabinet, not warm to the touch
tvOS 18.6
Details for example of file that stutters in Plex for Apple TV, 4K/2160 HDR HEVC E-AC3 5.1 11Mb 50 fps, file size 24.8 GB.
Stuttering starts immediately from the start of playback, so can’t see how this is a thermal issue. I can play back same file in Infuse immediately after without stutter.
It’s not the first time we’ve had rumors of audio “passthrough” but it’s first of all not going to be what people hope for. It’s not going to allow for bitstreamed audio.
Two, even if it does, ios gained api for atmos like 7 years ago with ios12… and Plex still hasn’t implemented it. Whatever new API, if you want it this decade, get an Infuse subscription.
I’ve deleted some posts here that were flagged and some replies to them since they would make no sense without it.
You can ignore someone so you don’t see any posts in your forum preferences at https://forums.plex.tv/my/preferences/users
Source for this other than “Trust me Bro!”
I’m well aware there is nothing definitive yet. But I haven’t seen a single comment anywhere except on this forum suggesting “it’s not what we’re hoping for.”
That said, if it DOES turn out to be what we’re hoping for I’m equally pessimistic about Plex implementing it.
Did that 4 years ago. It’s fine for movies but abysmal for navigating shows…and irrelevant without passthru if your first statement is correct. In which case I will be getting an ancient shield or a cube
Just for the sake of my sanity, just wanted to make sure I’m not missing something obvious about finding what is the current TestFlight for Apple TV Beta and how to install it?
Is the link for the normal iOS / iPadOS beta, current version 2025.25.0 (1245), updated last 9th of September. This works just fine, however doesn’t appear to offer an Apple TV version, just iOS, iPadOS & visionOS.
Is the link for the Plex Experience Preview, where builds have been removed, so is dormant at this time. This link is also on the main page that shows sign-up information for Apple TV (How to access the Plex Experience Preview (Android mobile, iOS, tvOS)) so is leading to quite a bit of confusion so might be something for Plex to consider updating or removing instructions that don’t work. The last version showing in this TestFlight for me is 2025.12.0 (1011) from 10th of April 2025.
(I’m in both of the above TestFlights, however no option on Apple TV TestFlight shows that Plex build is available, signed into the same account. Can see quite a few other people with same issue across a few different threads)
Thanks in advance for any pointers, or a simple it isn’t available currently to anyone.
ATV TestFlight tends to lag a week or more behind.
I think you guys use the ignore feature a lot so you can keep on ignoring the fact the appleTV player after 5 years is still completely broken.
Hello in Sep 2025. I am interested to know if hardware/Metal rendering was ever rolled out to the public build on Apple TV? If not, can someone add me to the TestFlight list? I have resorted to pasting 2 heat sinks on either side of my Apple TV just to get through movies.
Its quite full and buggy, some formats still dont work like the old app.
I dont know if metal is used, but in videos that previously chugged, it does perform better. You may just have other headaches.
Im sure itll progress out of beta soon
That sucks. I have heat sinks attached to my Apple TV because otherwise I can’t finish a movie and my guests laugh at it.
we primarily use Infuse and I check in with the testflight app when a new one is pushed 
but still pay for infuse.
I agree, infuse works well, but I have a complicated setup with Plex with multiple profiles for family members and Live TV and DVR which is simply not reproducible on Infuse.
From a media playback standpoint, I think the New Experience app is 90% of the way there. The only codec/playback issues I’ve seen recently is content with EAC3 7.1 audio. Everything else I’ve thrown at it has played fine. Yes, LiveTV still transcodes to H264 but I haven’t had any of the crashing, pinwheeling, and stuttering that was present in early betas. On AppleTV HD content is usually direct streamed/transcoded, but it is stable and smooth. I no longer see the issues with TrueHD or UHD content where stutter and sync existed on the legacy app.
That said, there’s still a number of UI and navigation bugs present in the New Experience.
We haven’t had a new tvOS beta in almost a month, focus has been on iOS, so maybe those have been corrected?
Also, they haven’t added back Music and Photos yet like they did with Roku.
Yes, I second what dklein has stated, the only other issues I have noticed still are DVR Guide past 24 hrs is a bit buggy. Along with repeated channel selection from guide.
Myself it’s not far from being a suitable Beta release. Maybe it has not meet Apple App store approval process guidelines as yet
If the new experience app is 90% then why wouldn’t it be released to the public. 90% sounds like an improvement over the current tvOS app. Also, why is the focus on IOS? The New Experience app has already been released on IOS. Why wouldn’t the focus shift to tvOS since it still doesn’t have the new experience?
I’m not one of the devs, but since the iOS New Experience has launched it has suffered from bugs and criticism. As it’s a public release with no easy way to revert, it makes sense to focus resources on it. That said, the fixes that have gone into iOS have been ported to tvOS in most cases, so hopefully when it does launch, it is in a much better place than the iOS client was.
The focus obviously lies on Roku for the moment.
However I absolutely cannot understand anybody who is looking forward to Plex rolling out that dumpster fire they call the new experience onto their devices.
How do you know?
Because the iOS app is already released to Public, and you can’t easily roll back a released app once it is updated, as an end-user. The tvOS app is available on TestFlight for adventurous people to try if they want, and for everyone else the normal public release app is still there, so folks have more of a choice. Since people with the iOS app are more “stuck” with it Plex is going to prioritize that app and resolving all the issues it has, because they didn’t wait until it was “90% of the way there” before they released it. 
