Same old story. After a period of relative calm and stability here we go again… decided to do Friday night movie night and could not get this damned software to play a single thing without buffering every 2 minutes. So annoying and puts you on edge as you’re just waiting for it. I ended up using Kodi again, ok no hdr but also no buffering. How the hell can an ancient untouched, not developed in years pos piece of free software do this better than the one I’m paying for!!!
Same thing for me, we go round and round in this endless cycle of them releasing updates that break it and then the next week updates that fix it. For the love of god I’d wish they’d just leave the damned thing alone or allow you to opt out of updates. I’d much rather live with stability than Tidal or some other cra**y feature they are trying to push on you. They ALWAYS screw it up on a Friday when people sit down to relax after a hard week at work. Really starting to hate these guys. Never mind the fact we’ve been ignored by support on this forum for like 3 years.
its beyond a jok that the tv app works with ac3 audio hdr no issues, kodi works no issues… we have an xbox one x system thats amazing for this app and it just doesnt work.
hopefully we can avoid this crap with the Series X version
And therein is the biggest travesty of all of this mess. The Xbox One X is a media playing beast. I would need to spend either £1.5k on a media pc or £400 on an Nvidia shield Pro to get the same capabilities from Plex (when it is working). Why should we have to buy additional devices when the only thing blocking us for using this (supported?) device are some lazy developers.
Testing a new app called Jellyfin recently released for Xbox. It has a vibrant community over on Reddit and it seems hopeful that the devs will get 4k, hdr hevc content working. Don’t buy that Nvidia shield just yet Link
Throwing out a hail mary here as I noticed @elan seems to be active on the forums at the moment! Would be really nice to get some traction on this issue.
No one from Plex will speak on this issue, @Moussa used to but he has not addressed the topic or DM’s of this issue in over 6 months
Yeah like I said, hail mary. Just happened to be online at the same time that @elan was responding to other threads and thought why not.
I chatted with @Moussa. The issue is currently in Microsoft engineer’s hands.
Can you give more info as to wtf is wrong and if there is anything we as users can do to have a semblance of usefulness from the app again?
To say it’s in M$ hands after months, if not longer of customer’s posting here for help, borders on disingenuous.
Tx
Just an update tried some other things since last month here’s what I’ve found. There’s also a good workaround (FireStick 4K which plays everything including HDR) which I’ll go into later in the post.
So first I heard that the Xbox Movies and TV app had recently been updated to support 4K HDR content from USB. This is NOT the media player app, though I tried that too and here’s what I found. Plugging an NTFS hard drive into the USB3 port, I was able to play several 4K HDR rips just fine using both apps as long as they did not have DTS. The media a player app refuses to play the file. The movies and tv app will play DTS files but with no sound. If the file has Dolby, both players worked fine with 4K HDR and dolby surround. My projector brings up a little notification when it switches to HDR mode and this came up on both apps. The bad news is that both apps will not switch to 24hz mode, they stay locked at 60hz. If you were willing to change all your DTS files to AC3 with a transcoder this might work ok but you’d need a hard drive plugged in, neither app will connect to network drives.
Next I have a Fire TV 4K which I normally leave plugged in to a very old TV in another room. Thought it was worth a try to see what it can do with Plex. Well it’s a lot better than the Xbox app. I tested several 4K HDR rips, even with DTS-MA sound. The fire stick played them all in HDR and with surround sound. It also swaps to 24hz mode just fine, this needs turning on in the Plex settings on the fire stick fist though. I checked on the Plex server when playing them. HEVC HDR was always played direct. Dolby-HD is transcoded by the server to E-AC3 (dolby plus) but DTS-MA and DTS play direct to the fire stick. The fire stick seems to have its own audio transcoder and it outputs a max of dolby plus (not HD) to my receiver. It might even just be using the basic DTS track from the DTS-MA perhaps before transcode but I’m not sure about this. I can be sure that the Plex server is deffo sending it the MA track whatever it does with it after that I’m not sure but its deffo mutli-channel surround as I can hear the rear surround, centre and sub channels just fine. HDR mode worked on the projector and there was zero buffering in any of the files, I left them running all day just to check. The highest bitrate one I had was around 60mbit. This is with a fast ethernet (not giga) link from Plex server upstairs to router in lounge. Then fire stick connected using 5GHz AC wifi which I was quite impressed with worked fine as not using a hard wire link. I know dolby plus is not HD, but its better than nothing and more importantly, I won’t have to mess with any of my video files with DTS/ Dolby-HD for them to play properly albeit with likely reduced quality. So this could be a cheaper option than the shield if you don’t find the HD audio a must, particularly if you already have a 4K fire stick somewhere. My old TV can only do 1080p anyway so I’m going to use my old 1080p fire stick on that TV now and this fix has cost me nothing maybe the Xbox app will get fixed sometime in the next 50 years. Also, this was with the “new” player on the fire stick. I didn’t test it with the old one, although that option is also available in the Plex fire stick settings.
Yea and I’ve been working with them for months uploading Xbox reports, of the issue and nothing has happened. Literally been in the middle of this issue for 2 years and both sides point fingers at each other saying it’s the other fault for the buffer problems.
The end result is this never gets fixed.
Plex needs to rewrite their video stack for the Xbox, Plex also needs to further pressure Xbox devs to fix it.
Me being an end user should not have to spent months and months talking with both sides and providing logs/sample videos and reports of the issue.
I’ve literally spent full time work hours on coordinating info between MS and Plex to nail down and fix this issue. Yet it never gets fixed.
Every since I got into 4k videos (maybe 8 months ago) I’ve had issues with Plex on my Xbox One X. I tried it again tonight and while it is better I can go 15 mins or so before it just buffers. Stopping and starting the movie again where it left off works for another 15 mins or so. When I first went to 4k I had worse buffering and stuttering issues and thought it was the wifi (even though Netflix and youtube on the xbox play 4k fine) so I spent a pile of time running network cable to hardwire the xbox. No change. Not Happy.
At the moment my work around is using the Plex App on the Samsung TV (wifi) which works just fine and I never have had an issue.
Not sure why this isn’t an obvious thing to fix especially with all the replies to this issue. Plex stop adding more stuff until the bugs are fixed with your current feature set. It’s a great app and I am sure you guys work hard on it but the ability to play 4k videos is a must these days.
BTW the video tonight was a 4K (HEVC Main 10) Direct Stream and AAC 7.1 audio being transcoded.
Microsoft says it’s an issue with Plex. Plex says it’s an issue with Microsoft. Is Plex not in control of their own app on Microsoft? Updates have been happening on the app the past few months, so who’s been responsible for those?
Very frustrating how both sides just keep passing the buck to other whereas the Plex app is nearly unusable on the world’s most popular gaming/media console.
I finally caved and bought a shield. I really really didn’t want to for so many reasons:
- Plex should fix their god damned product
- The Xbox is a beast of a machine and would make a much better streamer than the shield
- Xbox is supposed to be officially supported by Plex but isn’t
- I didn’t have space for another device or want the hassle of having one and all that goes with it. Using Xbox was such a simple solution.
- what if Plex breaks on the shield the same way as it does the Xbox?
The Nvidia Shield though, just wow. It’s night and day to the ridiculous Xbox app improvements so far:
- No and I mean no buffering, ever.
- I can finally pass through DTS and Atmos soundtracks to my amp. This is one of the biggest and most shocking things to me. I’m no audiophile but the difference is insane. It just sounds clearer and channels are better separated. No having to turn volume up and down depending on the scene!
- The picture looks soooo much sharper! I know there is some kind of AI upscaling going on but everything I play just makes the Xbox look like dog sh*t. I’ve got some nice looking 1080p remuxes that are a different world on the shield from the Xbox.
- It’s all butter smooth. Bl*ody Xbox always seems to trash what should be beautiful planning scene by jerking along and looking like it’s begging rendered on a ZX Spectrum
- I no longer turn into the Incredible Hulk on movie night and want to smash the hell out of the tv and get angry at Plex because the stupid thing is stuck in a buffering loop again
I’m really not trying to sound like a shield salesman and am the last person that wanted to be forced to get one (just look at my comments on this forum). But let’s face it Xbox One is NOT a supported Plex device and they should do the decent (maybe legal) thing and remove it from their website. For me £199 was worth the better picture, sound, smoothness, bug free experience and I can go back to enjoying movies with the family again. Plex never had any intention of fixing the issues with Xbox One.
Same experience here. Shield is great. I don’t think Plex will break on shield because the user base is much bigger and Plex cares about it more.
For the happy shield users, is it the shield TV or the shield TV pro that you would recommend? It looks like nvidia has done a major update to the device , the new shield TV is a tube. Is this the recommended model? https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/shield-tv/
Thanks!
Hi Jeff, I’ve heard of a few issues with the Shield TV (tube model). It seems the 1GB RAM less than the pro causes it some problems with high bit rate 4K. I just went straight in with the pro as after all the issues with Xbox One Plex I just didn’t want to take the risk.
Thanks for the reply! It looks like the Shield Pro is sold out everywhere. My content is mostly all 1080p, never dared to try high bitrate 4k with the buffering issues of the xbox one app. I’ll try the Shield TV (2019 tube) and hope that one day the xbox becomes viable.
Hi all. As Elan mentioned we’re still attempting to work with Microsoft’s engineers in order to diagnose and fix the problem. I understand the frustration for those affected, and it’s frustrating for us too that it hasn’t been fixed by now. Internally we’ve tried several approaches to fixing the issue, including implementing other player stacks, without success. We have reported bugs to Microsoft around the player buffer on the platform, and while some have been resolved there are obviously some that still remain. We’re still continuing to press Microsoft to help find a solution, we have definitely not forgotten about the issue, and will post updates here if any progress is made.
