I’m really frustrated and my wife is back to the, “Stop using this program. It takes you more time to keep it running than we spend watching it” comments.
We are on Apple TV and I have the server running on Linux. Today we got on Plex to just watch some TV and chill after we both had a hard day. I have to wade through the, “This is new!” junk. Oh, so there’s been an update.
I go through to my library and try to watch a show. The connection with the server is gone - it can’t connect. But then how did it know about my video collections in the first place? They’re there, I can watch the videos with other programs and can watch it with Plex on my iPhone.
But the connection is not there. The update will NOT play. No message about something like server mismatch or anything else - just a simple no connection and retry or close.
How do I get this working? No diagnostic or useful error message here, just the vague one I mentioned.
I’m getting frustrated and am looking into alternatives. I’m not saying that as a threat, but I liked Plex when I started. Now I want to leave it. Plex treats my devices as “we’ll get around to them.” I have settings that won’t work. I’ve tried to turn off the nanny feature where Plex stops playing after 2 hours. Same with telling it to go to Collections in my libraries by default, but it doesn’t do either - the settings just don’t work. And now, I can’t even watch my video collection with a new version.
I really wish the devs would fix bugs and make things work smoothly than to mess with new features.
I just want to watch my TV shows, but sometimes it’s a struggle on Plex.
Thank you - I’ll try that when my wife goes to bed and I have a few minutes.
I don’t get how that helps, since my server is on my LAN and my LAN DNS forwards requests to 8.8.8.8 for non-LAN info. Does Plex need to phone home just to play my local videos? (That would be bad - since we’re in a rural area and often lose internet connectivity.)
Smarter people can prob give a better answer, but plex doesn’t connect to your server directly via ip. It uses a custom plex.direct url when making secure requests, that url is translated to the ip by the dns. Sometimes the dns servers trigger dns rebind protection and block the resolution /connection as it thinks it’s malicious.
When I’ve seen it happen in the past it blocks the initial connection to the server, but in this case it seems to be blocking folks when they try to stream.
It’s been happening to many people on the new app, you can search “can’t reach server” that’s the error folks are getting when they try to start a stream. You didn’t share what error you’re seeing when you try, so guessing it’s the same issue, but maybe it’s something else.
If you were trying Live TV, the server connection error is misleading. It is because the “new experience” app broke Direct Play when streaming. If your server is good enough, you can make it work again by going to Transcoder → Use hardware acceleration when available and unchecking it.
Per my last post, I have a better solution. You can re-enable “Use hardware acceleration when available” and instead, go to Settings in your Apple TV, then Video and Audio and Match Content and select Match Frame Rate and Live TV will work again.
First, for Plex Developers: THIS IS INEXCUSABLE! My apps won’t play and the error message is so vague I have no idea what’s wrong. Your update made Plex useless! My wife and I were tired and just wanted to watch a few episodes of Star Trek and we couldn’t because the update hosed things. Seriously, my wife and I are so irritated with the little things (that I’ve given up reporting on because so little ever gets fixed on Plex, especially for Apple TV users, that it’s not worth my time to file a report when I know nothing will happen - and a wise project manager would realize this shows users have a serious lack of faith in Plex’s ability to maintain their project) that I’m looking at other solutions (Emby, Infuse, and others) because Plex is becoming harder, not easier, to use. I’m under more and more pressure from my wife to just pay for streaming so we can watch our shows - even though that would be an issue during thunderstorms when internet is out.
For all those helping (seems to be volunteers and other users, not anyone from Plex): Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! BUT - one note: I am NOT streaming anything from off my LAN. All I’m doing is watching videos stored on the same server the Plex server is running on. Also, I’m sorry if I’m grouchy - I really do appreciate the help, but I feel that Plex has gotten really weak on making sure things don’t break between versions and I’m really angry at Plex.
First, I think we may be talking at cross purposes, since, at least in the past, I’ve had no trouble playing local videos from the NAS that runs Plex (which is the issue) when the internet is out. That’s one big reason we have Plex. We’re in a rural setting and when we moved here, there was only really crappy satellite internet, so we used local videos from TV shows to watch.
BUT - you can see, in my later comments on this post, that when I changed one setting, it tried to play a video, so it’s connecting to the local Plex server, which makes it seem like DNS is not the issue.
Actually I shared, without the exact wording, that ALL it says is it can’t connect to the server. I can retry or close. It gives NO useful information, such as why it can’t connect or what server it’s trying to connect to. It just can’t reach it.
I did login to that box to check and it’s running. I can reach it and play videos on it from my phone (via wifi to the LAN) and on a browser on my desktop, so the server is working. The clients aren’t.
I’m confused by this. As I mentioned, I’m watching videos on my local server - so that’s on an NAS with an SMB share. But - Plex also runs on that Linux server/NAS and the client gets the lists of shows I have from there and I can see the lists - just can’t watch the videos. Is this kind of setup what Plex means by “Direct Streaming?”
I’m using an older Apple TV. No other programs have issues - other video players have no problem playing back video from my NAS, but Plex has, in the past, a few times, complained about bandwidth issues on my LAN. I forget what speed I got in tests, but, as I said, ALL other software has no issue with bandwidth. Also, my non-mobile systems (like desktops, Apple TV, and NAS systems) use ethernet, not wifi.
Wanted to do this, can’t find it. I have to go to User->Settings and looked over Video & Audio, Advanced, and others. I can’t find ANY setting for Transcoder.
I did find an option to force direct play and turned it on and it started to play, then it just sat there, at 0:00 on the video (and this was a '70s cartoon - simple animation that should not use much bandwidth) and the screen was blank. It had the Play arrow/triangle on the lower left corner when I checked status. I hit Play on my remote, nothing changed. Pushed the main button (on an Apple TV remote), and nothing happened. It looks like it’s starting to play but does nothing and the screen is blank, unless I push “Down” ot see the status report.
Did this - separately from trying to Force Direct Play - and it did nothing.
Just to provide forewarning, Internet is required. Any configuration or settings you have done to work around no Internet should be reviewed and probably undone.
That’s a problem when you don’t have reliable internet and one big reason for using Plex is so you can watch videos on your NAS on the TV.
I don’t block out internet, but if Plex is going to phone home and not work properly when internet is out, that’s tough for people with inconsistent internet, but also poor programming. There is no logic in requiring a program to access the internet when it only needs local data.
How did you upgrade? Yesterday my Plex was working perfectly, no issues at all. Today, the app on my Apple TV has updated and is now preventing me from accessing the Plex server (which is on my local network on a NAS), as the new Plex app on the Apple TV is demanding a new version on my server. However when I try to get that new version, it says I have to do a manual install. There are zero instructions anywhere on how to do that!
That sounds like the same issue I’m having, except there was no demand for a new version on my server. Such an error at least makes sense and tells you what the problem is - but I upgraded and am now on the latest server version and still don’t get a useful error message.
Are you talking about a manual install on a Linux server? There are manual instructions for that. I don’t know about on other OSes:
Actually, earlier tonight, I had a page on how to update Plex on Debian Linux. The link above is for setting it up on Linux to use the Plex repositories. Sorry - if it’s on Mac or Windows, I’m not sure how to update it.
Thanks for this. I’ve since managed to update the server app within the control panel of my server. Then re-booted my server and Apple TV. Now it s all working again. Shouldn’t be that difficult to continue using a platform you’ve paid to use.
Right, I’m paying a subscription and even after updating the server, I can’t use it. If it takes days for Plex to fix it, I’ll be cancelling my subscription and asking why they didn’t pro-rate this month. Seems petty, but, as a programmer, I’ve seen what I consider some really crappy work in Plex, and that’d be the only way I can think of to actually get the attention of the devs to say, “This and other issues are rotten. Do something about them!”
Hope you get whatever the issue is resolved…suggest trying the dns change just to rule it out. LAN playback requires dns resolution due to the plex.direct url. If rebind is triggered it will fail.
It’s likely a bug, they had a similar issue with LiveTV that had to be fixed:
Suggest you take a picture of the exact error and grab logs. Long messages won’t really help, details like logs will.
