Can't play HEVC Files on Android TV app

Plex Players Streaming Devices
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Server Version#: 1.18.7.2457
Player Version#: 7.28.0.15501

Hey there, just set up plex and everything was going well, however I can’t get plex on my sony android tv to play these 1080p hevc/aac5.1 videos. It tells me to restart the app and the server. What I have tried:
-Restarting app and server
-Converting file from AAC to AC3 via ffmpeg
-Not using subtitles
-Fallback to old player
-Disabling HDMI Passthrough

Nothing has worked. I have no problems playing it on my android phone or laptop

Here’s the log for an already converted ac3 file from the sony android tv plex app. Same error as the aac files.

android tv log.txt (70.3 KB)

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Are you able to play 4K hevc files? You appear to have an older tv. It’s possible that it only supports 4k hevc and not 1080p hevc. I mean, it should work, but who knows. That’s why I’m curious if 4K works.

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Does it work in the Sony Media app?

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Hmmm. Yeah it doesn’t seem to work with the sony videos app, and it seems to stutter in kodi. I also downloaded a 4k HEVC file and it didn’t work. I guess my TV doesn’t support this then? Is there anyway to have the file transcoded by plex so that the tv can play it?

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Unfortunately, there isn’t an automatic way. If a devices supports 4k hevc, it should support 1080 hevc. There is no technical reason it shouldn’t. That’s just messed up if the mfg limited it for some odd reason.

The only way to get PMS to transcode would be to manually set the quality lower than the original file.

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Yeah the 4k HEVC file didn’t work either. It’s odd though as 4k Netflix and Amazon apps work. I would assume they’d be using HEVC

Also the tv is a 2015 Sony xbr 55x850c for anyone else that may have this issue

7

Are you on the latest firmware for that TV? https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/lcd-tvs-android-x85xxc-series/xbr-55x850c/downloads/00016190

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Yes I am. It’s weird as what I have found say the tv supports HEVC/h265

EDIT. I downloaded some sample HEVC files from http://jell.yfish.us/ and tried them out, and they work no problem on the tv, streaming through plex. It must just be the files, but I’m not sure what could be wrong with them as they work on everything else.

1 Like
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Well this has been bothering me a couple weeks ago… it seems that using an external video player it works, but this is not the desired way…

On my log I can only see the following messages:

Direct Playing due to no transcode profile
no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/hevc
no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/hevc/dca
no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/hevc/ac3
no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/hevc/dca

I wonder now if this is more related to a server issue rather than a client issue…

This is happening to me on:
Amazon Fire Stick 4K
Amazon Fire Stick
Sony Xperia Z5

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What I ended up doing was reconverting the files through handbrake, using there HEVC format, and it worked. Not sure what was wrong with the original files, but my tv didn’t like them for some reason. I don’t have any problems now.

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