Thanks for the clarification. What seems to be the issue getting all of these defects resolved? This has been in production for almost two years. Apple has released three major iOS updates in that period of time. Why is this software company so bad at developing software?
2025.29 update, with eac3 still goes swirl swirl swirl lost in limbo
I think it is shameful that Plex is forcing users to pay for a Plex Pass or Remote Watch Pass to continue to use Plex on a Roku Device.
The current Plex App for Roku is a debacle. The UI issues aside, it takes up to 30 - 60 seconds to load the home page. The announcement says that this requirement will soon be rolled out to AppleTV, Fire TV and Android TV. Though in principle I don’t disagree with charging a fee for this capability, I think it takes big brass ones to implement this change before any of these apps are ready for prime time. This stinks of a desperate cash grab.
Not as bad as the AppleTV one will be if they ship it with broken DD+ audio.
Just to clarify, this is only when used remotely. If it’s in your own home it doesn’t matter. If you, as server admin, have a plex pass, anybody connecting to your server remotely doesn’t need to pay anything.
Not defending anything here just clarifying it because charging for just using a client device would be super bad move for Plex but it could read that way. Plex is not good at communication (they always communicate like every user\customer should already know everything).
It’s a profits decision for sure but Emby does the same thing; if you wanna use their servers for authentication\connection services you pay for it. Emby does give you the option to do it yourself using local accounts (and an extra remote access step), but Plex doesn’t.
I think the mobile roll out was 100% alpha release with bad decisions all around and just a disaster but the Roku release was handled better. I was really worried at first but it was mostly “fine” (v9 currently in beta is working better). I’d like more of the admin tools and it looks like a few of them are at least coming now… finally (clear logo and square artwork controls for example are in the server beta).
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I agree that the apps are definitely not ready for prime time, but weren’t you the one demanding to know when they would be released a few weeks ago?
Thank you for the clarification. That was not how I interpreted the message. Based on your response I’m completely confused. I was under the impression that remote streaming was always a Plex Pass only feature. So are they saying that if I try to use a Roku device outside of my house to connect to my Plex server then I can’t do that unless I have a Plex Pass or Remote Watch Pass?
What about remote streaming to a mobile device. Is that impacted?
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My original question was when they were going to release the updated version of the tvOS app to production. They still haven’t answered that question.
This goes back to the announcement they made in April. There was a third party article that came out the other day that was a bit fear mongering / clickbait that sort of set everyone off again. It’s been in effect on mobile devices since the New Experience clients launched in the spring. It is beginning to affect Roku clients now, and will soon affect tvOS and Android tv devices.
Here’s the breakdown:
You do not need a Plex Pass or Remote Watch Pass to watch content inside your own home on the same network as the server, doesn’t matter the device or app.
For Remote Watch:
If the server owner has plex pass, then any remote user can stream, those remote users don’t need plex pass. These users do not need to be in the same “plex home” account.
If the server owner does NOT have plex pass, then anyone who wants to remotely stream from that server needs EITHER a Plex Pass or Remote Watch Pass. Ie if they user has their own server and plex pass, they can remote stream from anyone’s remote server even if that owner does not have plex pass.
Does that make sense?
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That makes sense. I do have a lifetime plex pass, but just to ensure I understand this completely, I have a couple of scenarios for you:
- If I do not have a Plex Pass or Remote Watch Pass and I am staying in a hotel and I connect a Roku streamer to the hotel TV, will I be able to stream my content from my home server to that Roku device?
- If I do not have a Plex Pass or Remote Watch Pass and I’m outside of my home can I stream content from my home server to the Plex App on my iPad?
Thanks again for your help.
They need to fix all the common audio and video formats.
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I just learned that Infuse is not available for Roku. Does anyone know of a similar product that is available for Roku?
The answer to both is no.
Will this ever be out of beta? How is that we still have no timeline for release when this thread was started in March of 2024? The current production app hasn’t seen an update in nearly a year.
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It appears that Plex now is always in beta…
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Checking back on this thread after a year, it’s unfortunate there’s not yet a production release for Apple TV with native Metal support.
I’ve just gotten back into my 4k Plex library, and the Plex app still seems to be struggling with high bitrate 4k and Dolby Vision content in particular, with the Gen 3 Apple TV 4K just about burning up and causing issues.
Just in case this is helpful for others here - I’ve tested Vidhub, an alternative to Infuse, and it seems to be working great - native Metal support, and the Gen 3 Apple TV 4k remains cool as a cucumber when playing high bitrate 4k DV content and otherwise through Vidhub from my Plex server.
Lifetime subscription is great value (10 devices) - and they also have Android and Android / Google TV support, though they’re still working on this.
That was good enough for me to support them and purchase a lifetime license as I have a mix of Apple / Android & Google TV devices.
Best of luck to the Plex Dev team, hopefully you’ll have a win in 2026 on this one.
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Apple TV app also crashes a lot when playing high bitrate movies with DV, have to enable old audio engine for everything or audio drops after a few minutes, essentially plex has become rather terrible in the past couple years. Here’s to hoping the new app fixes these issues.
It has been radio silence from Plex since September when @BigWheel posted that he was deleting some posts that were “flagged.” However no update on a Production Release. I think Plex is abandoning their tvOS app.
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Thanks for the update. Just to clarify, are they referring to the iOS app or the tvOS app?
