I have a video that is in Dolby Vision. When I try to watch it on my computer using the app, it says the color space is not supported. I can, however, go down to my TV and stream it through Plex to my TV just fine. Why will it stream through Plex but not play on my computer. Also, why doesn’t it recognize the video as HDR?
Because the “app” likely doesn’t support DoVi. So the Plex server has to convert it, but isn’t allowed to do so since Plex doesn’t have a DoVi license.
So you can play this file only on client types which do support DoVi by themselves, without requiring conversion by Plex server. (called “Direct Play”)
That is only possible if the video stream actually contains compatibility data for HDR.
If this is a DoVi stream which was pirated from some online streaming service, it does likely not contain such compatibility data.
And even if it contains HDR compatiblity, you’ll need a relatively powerful CPU in your server and you’ll need to enable video stream transcoding as well as “HDR Tone Mapping”.
The server as such doesn’t play. It only serves to players.
So I assume you are using the web app. As this is running inside a web browser, it is restricted by the abilities of the web browser. So far I haven’t heard of any web browser with support for DoVi.