"eac3 is unsupported by platform" on Pixel phone with Plex app

Plex Players
1

Server Version#: 1.43.2.10687
Player Version#: 2026.9.0

Trying a video on my phone, I get a message stating Error occured Decoder: init failed. The video has no fancy audio:

Format : E-AC-3
Format/Info : Enhanced AC-3
Commercial name : Dolby Digital Plus
Codec ID : A_EAC3
Duration : 40 min 39 s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 224 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel layout : L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 65.1 MiB (2%)
Language : English
Service kind : Complete Main
Default : Yes
Forced : No

I downloaded the client logs and had a quick look into them and found the following:

05-20 22:37:27.299 i: 05/20/2026 22:37:21:555 [myusername-plexapp-android] subtitleStream: none
05-20 22:37:27.299 w: 05/20/2026 22:37:21:856 [myusername-plexapp-android] [Timeline] Not reporting progress for idle or stopped state.
05-20 22:37:27.299 i: 05/20/2026 22:37:21:858 [myusername-plexapp-android] [MDE][Audio] eac3 is unsupported by platform.
05-20 22:37:27.300 i: 05/20/2026 22:37:21:861 [myusername-plexapp-android] [MDE][Video] h264 is supported by platform.
05-20 22:37:27.300 i: 05/20/2026 22:37:21:862 [myusername-plexapp-android] [MediaInspector] Selected video quality as original.
05-20 22:37:27.300 i: 05/20/2026 22:37:21:863 [myusername-plexapp-android] [MediaInspector] Selected video quality as original, whilst session quality is original.
05-20 22:37:27.300 i: 05/20/2026 22:37:21:914 [myusername-plexapp-android] [MDE] Server decision, directPlay: false, directStreamVideo: true, directStreamAudio: false
05-20 22:37:27.300 i: 05/20/2026 22:37:21:914 [myusername-plexapp-android] reason: Direct play not available; Conversion OK.
05-20 22:37:27.300 i: 05/20/2026 22:37:21:914 [myusername-plexapp-android] videoStream: {

Toggling Allow Direct Play and Direct Stream settings in the app made no difference, also downloading the video to the phone which triggered the creatiion of a converted version didn’t help.

2
3

I get Access Denied when trying to follow your link :wink:

But I gathered as much from other forum posts, nether-the-less I’d prefer a solution to this, especially now that there’s a PMS build for QNAP again.

4

Don’t click the link in the embedded post. Click the title (Pixel 9 Pro can’t pay Dolby Digital…) to go to the thread. It seems the issue is with Dolby Atmos using DD+. Sounds like the Pixel does not support it, but at the time the transcoder update was needed as a first step to a fix.