Whenever I want to play a film on my plex app on android tv I always get an error saying to check my connection. This only happens on the android tv app and nowhere else. The films are stored on an external hard drive (Western Digital My Cloud Home) and then plex accesses the films from there. No matter what film or format I get told to check my connection. Why is this happening and how do I fix it? I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling and I have tried clearing the cache.
I just had to disable secure connections via the network setting to resolve a similar problem. Seems to be an Android specific problem with certain older Plex server versions across all platforms. Mine is a WD My Cloud Home NAS as well. Via a web browser, I then could only connect using the local IP address 192.168… rather than via plex.tv but our Amazon Fire stick and Alexa devices could then playback movies, tv and music again. Before they could see the content (or see the server in the case of Alexa) but they could not play them.
As @richyh67 mentions, there is a problem with current versions of Android/Android TV apps and older versions of Plex Media Server. The Android apps are rejecting the security certificate from the server for some reason.
Users running Plex Media Server versions 1.18.x and 1.19.x are definitely affected. The problem may happen with other Plex Media Server versions (I don’t have a list of all affected releases).
The problem is visible in the Android client log: [FFmpeg] [ERROR] [tls @ 0xc35efba0] Peer certificate failed verification
Updating Plex Media Server to a current release fixes the problem.
If you cannot update Plex Media Server, such as some running Plex on WD & Netgear NAS, the workaround is to disable secure connections.
Note: You will lose Plex Web access via app.plex.tv, which uses https, when you make this change. You will have to connect to your Plex server via http://nas_ip_address:32400/web (ex: http://192.168.1.2:32400/web).
In the Android app: Settings → Advanced → Allow Insecure Connections = Always
The thread linked below also discusses the problem. A Plex Employee is on the thread and working to find a resolution. You may wish to follow it to track progress (scroll to bottom of thread, change Normal to Watching).
