That would work on paper, but in my experience a sufficient amount of money can make any business fold like a knife.
Or maybe they have considered doing this and decided that itâs likely to degrade experience for some users without giving anything in return? I donât think Iâve seen a real scenario where this feature is necessary for anything.
In other words, how exactly would your viewing experience change, if you had this option? Your ears donât care which device decoded the audio, as long as itâs decoded correctly and synced to the video.
The root problem could be the AppleTV OS and the way it handles A/V sync internally, so fixing the native Plex app may not be as simple as you think. Infuse literally plays and decodes everything internally and even that app has A/V sync controls now because in the odd case Infuse doesnât sync the audio, itâs fixable by the user which is much better than waiting months (years in this case) for an update.
And no, the Plex player is NOT more advanced and intuitive than infuse. That is simply not true as the current Plex Player is incapable of playing a wide range of videos properly, and canât even handle Direct Playing most files. The Plex UI is prettier for sure, thatâs about it as far as the player goes though.
I think Plex is failing to pay the appropriate fees to properly decode all the audio and video codecs natively inside the player, so the native Plex app (across many devices) as a video player is severely handicapped because of this decision. The only reason Infuse has to keep being mentioned is because it does license and decode all the current audio/video formats natively inside of the app which makes transcoding obsolete.
I hope Plex listens to the users and really improves the player to natively handle and decode all the current audio and video formats.
1 Like
cant do atmos, dts-x or lossless sound in general either, has to downgrade/convert it. This problem, plex player being crap at DV and horrible advanced audio codec support are the reasons i am no longer a fan of plex. It just has not kept up AT ALL to modern times.
Now what would be good is if when pressing play in the Plex it will play using the infuse player. So plex does the interface (which is great and much better than infuse) and infuse plays the video (which infuse does very well and plex doesnât). Much like âopen withâ command on a desktop OS.
6 Likes
100% this - if you have paid for infuse and have plex pass give us the choice of players.
The infuse UI is terrible compared to the plex one. I usually use plex to browse etc, start a movie or episode, notice the bloody audio is still out of sync, whinge about it to my wife, wife rolls eyes and then I play the same file in infuse which just works.
6 Likes
Better than nothing but still not exactly ideal as weâd still have to pay for Infuse
Same process here as wellâŠ
Not being able to play lossless formats is not a failure of Plex. The Apple TV doesnât support them. Nothing Plex can do about that.
Infuse can
1 Like
Does Plex have an update on this issue? If you need more sample data/logs I can try and help
(& using an alternative player isnât a fix - yes I am using Infuse as a workaround)
1 Like
Just here to put my name down as someone affected by this. 2nd Gen Apple TV 4K has a 1-2 frame difference between audio/video. Itâs almost exclusively 4k/HDR content. Tried every single possible solution posted above but itâs still occurring. I canât watch anything because itâs just so noticeable 
Just adding our experience. Apple TV 4K, Sony Bravia, Yamaha Sound Bar. We primarily use Plex to serve up our years long collection of DVDs and Bluerays. We also use it as a DVR for a Hauppage PCI tuner. We donât have any 4K and higher content on the server. We were having the audio sync issue until I updated to the latest version recently and the problem went away and all is fine now.
Thinking of requesting a refund for my lifetime membership. Infuse, a 3rd party app, doing better job at the one thing this software is supposed to do, play video files.
Will test Jellyfin soon with the Swiftfin AppleTV app. If that works for my library, Iâll do the switch. This is ridiculous.
This really is quite extraordinary behaviour from Plex. Iâm now fully invested in using Infuse as it works. Synced audio, spatial audio, Atmos (eAC3). Plex dropped the ball on this years ago and seem uninterested in ever picking it up.
6 Likes
If enough people start hitting Plex up for refunds on their lifetime PlexPass, maybe that will get Plexâs attention more than a bunch of people sitting around complaining in a forum.
The fact that this Apple TV issue has gone on for this long makes it pretty clear that Plex is unwilling or unable to fix the issue.
Itâd be one thing if Plex NEVER worked properly on ATV. And if InFuse had the same sync issues now. Then you could say âitâs something Apple did.â
But Plex did work on Apple TV, and InFuse continues to work on ATV.
And Plex canât (or wonât) figure out why. THAT is whatâs so frustrating!
3 Likes
I guess I worded my response wrongly. Infuse decodes the audio to LPCM and outputs it but it wonât output losless formats 1:1 i.e. TrueHD Atmos etc. So essentially youâre going to get LPCM 5.1 or 7.1 audio. Not really a solution and still a downgrade.
its a bit by bit conversion to PCM, no audio quality is lost, you just lose the metadata. not really a downgrade sound quality wise but immersion wise cause you lose the 3d audio metadata of each format.
1 Like
New to this thread because it just started to happen to me a week ago. I have Apple TV 4K (latest model), a HiSense short-throw projector, and Sonos surround system, including an Arc.
Short story - every App streams with perfect sync through the Apple TV EXCEPT Plex.
My temporary solution is fine - I installed the Android version of Plex directly on my HiSense, and it plays fine. But to have to bypass the Apple TV for one app (which represents the majority of my viewing) isnât optimal.
true. its the metadata Iâm missing. I have a 5.1.4 setup so no metadata is the key factor for me. Really wish it was possible on the ATV. I have a shield just for plex and hate it. Would love to have everything over my ATV.
