_PMS: 1.13.9.5456 // tvOS: 12.0.1 // ATV App: 1.35 // My server connection: Google Fiber FTTH (940Mb effective synchronous bandwidth) // Mikrotik hEX Router 6.43.4 - Direct TCP Port 32400 forward // PMS direct install on Synology DS918+ 4GB RAM 240GB NVMe Cache DSM 6.2.1-23824 Update 1
The TL;DR: various friends/family with Apple TV experience the spinning wheel of death starting a movie (after the preview and pre-roll have played). The wheel never times out, and pressing Play/Pause has no effect. Pressing menu brings you back to the movie details, but the movie will never play.
The Apple TV Plex client continues to be problematic - and has progressively gotten worse this year (assuming from automatic tvOS/Plex app updates). Before everyone asks redundant questions: these problems are specific only to Apple TV and not to any external network/bandwidth issues and doesn’t apply to any other Plex clients on the same external (client in question) network
Additional Details:
As I have cinema trailers enabled - the trailer and pre-roll 1080p video play perfectly (and fast) before each of these movies that experience the spinning wheel. The pre-roll video is obviously also on my server… but not indexed/analyzed with Metadata as the main movie library is. ** Disabling the trailers and pre-roll has no effect on the problem **
If Direct Play is disabled on the Apple TV client, the problem goes away - but this is not a solution and clients are then unable to Direct Play 1080p or 4K content thus increasing the load of the server. ** The video files are all quality MP4 that previously would Direct Play on said Apple TV clients with no problem **
Friends/Family with Apple TV that were previously working recently started reaching out saying they’re experiencing this issue now - with some noticing the blue dot under the Plex app on their home screen indicating it was automatically updated. During this time the Plex server was not upgraded or changed in any way, and the settings in their Plex app did not change.
The other Plex clients that experience no issues include Roku, FireTV, Plex Media Player, iOS, and Samsung - all of which have the same “Original/Max” for “Internet Quality” in their video/audio settings in their respective Plex app - Direct Play/Stream On - Auto Quality Disabled
I’ve even had friends uninstall the app, and reinstall/link with another account to test with no effect on the problem ** Of course this same account will stream fine from their iPhone or Samsung TV on the same network as the problematic Apple TV.
I agree Grey - hence why the problem seemed to get worse without many people knowing.
Another oddity - inside my local network I have two Apple TV’s that don’t exhibit the problem. Knowing this - I thought perhaps it was a DoS trigger on the router that only external Apple TV’s were triggering, which after disabling didn’t make a difference.
All of this troubleshooting was in attempt at a workaround knowing that all other players external to my network have no problem.
Unless folks can start posting some logs (from both the server and the Apple TV devices) and possibly include some media information, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to assist.
I’d hope that wouldn’t prevent them assisting.
Unfortunately the logs don’t show anything on the server side when the external Apple TV exhibits this problem - but I’ll post any relevant logs when I can.
Same exact issues on my AppleTV. All other devices play the same movies just fine. It’s so frustrating. It seems the AppleTV App have gotten worse and worse with no improvements. If I disable direct play, the movies play just fine, but I should be able to Direct Play. This is not a bandwidth issue.
I’ve just started using Plex on my ATV and I have this issue. I’ve spent ages transcoding videos to various different settings in the hope it will fix it, but some files, no matter what do, just won’t play.
They’re fine on my Shield, iPad, iPhone, PC, and even on the god awful Plex LG WebOS app. It’s only the Apple TV that won’t play them. I just can’t figure out why - they’re either 720p or 1080p MP4 files with AAC audio and converted using the standard Apple profile in handbrake.
Why won’t Plex ATV play them? I just get that infernal spinning circle forever.
Martin - I experience the same “connection not fast enough…” issue from time to time, but can live with that problem. It somewhat makes sense to me as other players can’t reference the movie indexes/thumbnails as fast as ATV can (because of the nature of the pause/slide remote interaction) - but yes an annoying bug and contributes to the overall problematic nature of the app. With so many other companies concentrating on high quality control for their Apple TV apps, I’m shocked at the history of substantial playback problems with PLEX on ATV.
In comparison - the Synology Apple TV apps are able to play all this same content problem free… and I used to consider PLEX the more mature platform.
Thanks for the Infuse recommendation - I’ll read up on it
I’ve had this problem for many months now. Everything plays great on my Samsung Smart TV client, even in beta status. Now Samsung is my “go-to” client. Its a shame since I like using the Apple remote to fast-forward, etc. I’ve learned to navigate using my TV smart remote now.
Wonder if this issue will ever get fixed. Every so often, I check to see for any improvement and I’m always disappointed.
Agreed the problem has gotten worse the past few months. Do you have an Apple TV 4K? And are you trying to play content on your own Plex server internal to your network? Curious your setup and any troubleshooting steps you’ve taken.
Yes, I have the Apple TV 4K, along with a few other original Apple 4 TVs. When I switched out (temporarily) the Apple TV 4K with the original 4, I had the same issue. I am running this off my HP computer (approximately 10 months old) - have my files saved on two external 4TB hard drives. The Samsung Tizen app is as smooth as silk. The Apple TV is extremely hit and miss. Often times (most of the time) the Apple TV Plex client won’t even find the server. For whatever reason, I don’t know. I just want to watch my media. Very disappointing.
@GreyAreaUK may be onto something with the iOS 12 comment - perhaps this issue correlates to it and Plex staff are able to find a solution. Unfortunately, I don’t have any tvOS 11.X ATV’s to test this theory.
@kitkat3709 can you try the workaround on those ATV’s by disabling direct play? Does that play the movie?
Just tried it (Apple client actually found my server!!!) and it seemed to work. I will continue to try to use this client. Sometimes I’m lucky and oftentimes not. I do like the Apple TV client UI better than the Samsung client UI, so this would be ideal. Thank you for the suggestion.
See attached for one of the ATV 4K players having issues external to my network. In this case - this one doesn’t even make it to my server to log a play attempt, but logs reflect the movie trying to play on the client side.
They then plugged in a new FireTV to the same TV/Network - and played the content just fine from my server.
Can confirm, disabling direct play works. One of my other ATV’s has a previous version of Plex running perfectly with direct play enabled so it’s definitely an issue with the updated app. Hopefully they fix this soon.
