There is a bug in the Plex app affecting Fire TV sticks. I have tested this on both a 4K Max and Firestick 3rd gen.
Many files with EAC3 audio are showing failed to direct play and have (copy) listed for both the video and audio under show info. I believe this means it is direct streaming.
The Fire devices are all capable of playing back EAC3 audio perfectly.
Backing out of the file and replaying and the file plays normally without direct streaming. It is also affecting some EAC3 files and not others.
This issue has been present for many months and I have tested it on different servers and on two different fire tv sticks.
A workaround that fixes this bug is setting the audio passthrough in settings to HDMI.
Can a dev look into this and hopefully a fix can be made.
Do you have auto adjust quality enabled? a direct stream does not change the audio it basically removes the streams from their container format the transcoder is the thing that does it but afaik it is not changing the individual streams
Not that auto adjust is the reason but the android logs should help determine the reason for the direct stream
I have all set to maximum under settings and all other files do not do this.
It is only EAC3 audio. It is definately a bug with the Plex app because the issue is happening on different servers and two different fire sticks. AAC or DTS audio never does this only files that have EAC3 audio. Firestick 4k max runs the newer os 7. The issue never occurred with my previous 4k fire stick running an older version of Android. The 3rd gen is also running os 7.
If I set passthrough to HDMI this does not happen. It looks like the Plex app is not detecting that the firestick can play back the files just fine and is forcing it to direct stream when it should be direct playing.
The bug has been present for a long time after many updates.
during this test all the files direct streamed showing (copy) for both audio and video in the info page.
here is what all files with EAC3 show in the info page. it is affecting only files with EAC3 audio only. AAC and DTS audio does not have this same issue.
If I back out and replay the file one or two times it then plays perfectly without showing this error. this would seem to show it is indeed a bug in the app rather than limitations of the device.
I did notice that one file also transcoded instead but this issue is less common than the first issue.
I have noticed the file which transcoded is reporting 0 as the bit rate for the audio stream for the file as can be seen from my screenshot below.
what is very strange is if I back out of the file and click the episode to play again it plays just fine without transcoding the same as the files that are direct streaming.
here is a file with EAC3 that was showing the error before but after backing out and playing again it showed no error.
the only fix I have found is to turn passthrough on set to HDMI in the settings. this fixes both issues and all files play instantly using direct play.
I am happy to provide any more assistance as I have time and wish these two bugs to be fixed for Fire TV users in a future app update.
Did you manage to view the log file and have any luck with this?
Also can you tell me which APK file I should be downloading from the updates forum thread here.
There are two. Amazon app store APK and fire OS devices APK.
There also seems to be a but because the app is quite outdated on the Amazon store. Version 8.31 is the last update last updated on 30th March and many have happened since then.
