I feel bad you wasted all this time on this amazing post.
It’s not that they don’t know what the issue is, they don’t care enough to fix it anytime soon (3 1/2 years and running…)
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I am currently facing this issue and have been for at least an year. I have an Apple TV 4k using the new video player, Denon Receiver, and Samsung TV. There is a noticeable audio sync issue when using the “Match Frame Rate” setting on the Apple TV. This issue is only present on Plex and no other app. Disabling frame rate matching causes other issues on my end, so that is not an ideal option.
I would really appreciate if this issue could be given priority. As a lifetime Plex Pass subscriber, I’m feeling pretty burned that I paid over $100, and I can’t watch my content on my primary streaming device without issues. Especially because this issue has been present for over 3 years now.
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My gut says that it’s a bigger/deeper issue than they want to admit or explain, and fixing it will require major code refactoring for tvOS.
Or, I could be wrong and it is just a low priority for whatever reason. Maybe those who are not the biggest Apple fans at the helm? We do know they don’t even employ the newest ATV hardware for testing.
Unfortunately, if it is a low priority issue, it’s eventually going to hurt the brand and bottom line as the Apple TV isn’t some one-off china box.
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After 3 1/2 years there is no excuse for not addressing a fundamental flaw with their software.
Get Infuse.
The core of the matter is quite simple.
Plex took years to even acknowledge the issue reported hundreds of times.
Plex then took months and months, or was it years again, with saying they couldn’t reproduce the issue.
The fact is that for the last 4 years this issue was always reproducible with less than 10 minute effort. It was then, and still is.
Literally there are only 2 options here.
a) Plex never even tried to reproduce the issue.
b) Plex didn’t have the competence to reproduce the issue that everyone else could.
These same people are now the ones that “don’t-even-promise” a fix, but “kinda-promise” a limited* ‘workaround’, but do not even promise any timelines for this workaround.
- Personally I classify this limited workaround as absolutely useless since many different file types have different sync offsets. So it’s not enough to set -120ms, because the next file is -40ms, or +80ms.
Set your expectations appropriately.
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And the worst part is, they happily accept your money when you buy the lifetime Plex pass, but then they don’t own up to their issues and fix them in a timely manner. Look at this thread, and the unhappy customers in it!!!
3 1/2 years is so far out of the realm of any sort of customer service expectation. It’s beyond sad. Beyond frustrating.
I want my money back, Plex. RIGHT NOW.
Refund my lifetime pass money and I’ll leave you and your worthless non-functional product alone forever.
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just start reporting the app in the app store for being broken
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Maybe we should let Linus know about this drama as well. Exposure is what we need, so maybe they will finally care.
@Havohej - Linus already stopped working with Plex because of all the issues he was experiencing - though not specifically the audio sync issue.
https://youtu.be/bbY3PNZUMVg
So released a new version but still no fix
Was just a face palm moment when I saw that release.
I think the trustpilot score (1.6 out of 5) speaks very loudly to the the current state of Plex. Plex Reviews | Read Customer Service Reviews of plex.tv
3 1/2 years and counting for no public fix of a pretty urgent app breaking bug is just not acceptable at all. Which is why I’m likely in the process of moving away from Plex entirely. If a company can’t respect users enough to fix an app breaking bug like this in 3 1/2 years and counting, I don’t want to support that company or be apart of that user base.
Jellyfin is open source and free so I installed a server for that today just to see what my options are, and it performs to my suprise better than Plex does on ATV4K, iOS and Android/Google TV.
Also worth noting that Live TV and ad supported Plex Movies and TV shows don’t have any lip sync issues on the AppleTV4K…I’m no conspiracy theorist but sure seems like a pretty genius move to make AppleTV users have lip sync issues for 3 1/2 years and counting, forcing them to watch ad supported movies and TV shows offered by plex rather than they’re own media library. At this point I would not be surprised if this is what’s really going on…
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Lifetime subscription here, am thinking it’s time to switch to Jellyfin. Plex developers have just let us all down; obvious bugs that haven’t been fixed for 3-4 years aside, the direction the company is heading does not mesh with the community.
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I’m also a lifetime Plex Pass holder and have started fiddling with Jellyfin because of this issue. My family is over it.
Sadly, the Jellyfin client for Apple TV is pretty barebones and I’d likely just end up using Infuse anyway, which has reduced the likelihood that I’ll make a switch, at least now.
Hopefully Jellyfin’s client improves or Plex finally gets around to fixing this problem. It continues to baffle me that they aren’t going all hands on deck to solve this.
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The fact that across the website, downloads, etc, Plex is still referencing ‘OS X’ instead of macOS tells me they may not be the biggest Apple fans, thus the lethargy around this issue.
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That may trigger Elan. 
About 15(?) years ago Plex began as a Mac only port of XBMC. (OSXMBC).
I agree about the lethargy though. It’s been almost 4 months (6 Plex ATV releases) since the following posts. I’m not sure if we’re supposed to assume that:
A) The work was incorrect and was scuttled for a different approach
B) The work is still being refined and it should still be coming “soon”
C) There are other issues blocking release of the work
D) ???
The silence and delay (pun intended) are the killers here…
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Hi all, I was about to make a seperate post about this until I found some posts on Reddit.
I recently bought a lifetime pass (don’t know why after skimming through this thread) since I was planning on creating a mini-homelab with an Intel Nuc and wanted to give Plex a good crack.
We’ll I’ve made the homelab with proxmox, ubuntu server vm with plex as a docker container… and just realised that I have nothing but audio lip sync issues when streaming to my Apple TV’s.
Looks like this has been going on for years? I suppose I’ll continue to use Infuse which has no issues streaming the same content from the same source.
See if you can refund it and use Jellyfin
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Unfortunately as lifetime subscribers they don’t care about us because we’re no longer making them money. It was an easy way to bring in capital early on and now we’re just a nuisance apparently. Very disappointed with Plex, it seems like every platform I switch to has these longstanding mission critical bugs for basic playback. But the stupid streaming content I don’t want is present and accounted for!
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I found a temporary solution, change the audio on de Apple TV menu to dolby digital. No sync problems at the moment.
