Server Version#: 1.42.2.10156-f737b826c & 1.43.0.10231-ca3956848
Player Version#: 4.147.1 (plex web client firefox / chrome) & 2025.28.0 (1302) plex for iOS
Hi all,
Really hoping you can help me figure this issue out please - I’m running plex in the linuxserver docker container & if using the plex web client to either access my server internally (local LAN) or externally (NAT) I can view content with subtitles, different quality etc no issue
However if watching either via AppleTV or iOS App I only get the error “Failed to determine decision for content.“ On AppleTV, I can force the stream to start by disabling subtitles & then re-enabling them once the stream starts however on iOS App, it does not let me do this even
If using my iOS Device, I can even navigate using safari to the plex site & start a stream without issue - it’s only when using the plex app do I face the issue
I’ve attempted to view console logs while having a successful transcode & on the problematic devices however no luck - when successful it shows no issue i.e. “[Req#11e0/Transcode] Preparing driver imd for GPU Intel Alder Lake-UP3 GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics]“
However on a problematic device - it shows no entries, as if the client doesn’t even get so far as to make the request…
I saw that in the beta there was a major upgrade to FFMPEG & tried upgrading to the beta release today to see if any improvements were found however no luck unfortunately - exact same behaviour
I have attached PMS logs however I’m not sure on which file to start searching within as there’s quite a few files within!
Plex Media Server Logs_2025-11-17_16-11-25.zip (256.7 KB)
The error seems to be somewhat common with users running the current Beta release and iOS clients. There doesn’t appear to be one solution for all. The error is basically Plex saying that it can’t decide how to process the media so that it can stream to your device. I’ve seen some go into settings on the web client, go to Transcode, and Disable (Uncheck) “Use hardware accelerated video encoding” with some success. Or, you might consider rolling back to the current version for everyone.
Thanks for the response! This behaviour is on both PMS versions (stable and beta) unfortunately & it’s only the apps that show the behaviour..
Out of desperation I tried paying for infuse and it works without issue, I’d rather not have to tell others that’s necessary though
I have tried disabling “Use hardware accelerated video encoding” & adjusting the HEVC Settings to see if it makes any difference but the end result is always the same
You might benefit from reading thru this thread.
It looks to me that you need to find some way, in PMS or the clients, to disable hardware transcoding. It looks like they are still working thru issues with transcoding with newer gen Intel CPU/GPU. Kinda disappointing if you have a newer Intel chip and Plex isn’t up to speed yet with the drivers.
Addendum: Also, in Transcoding, disable (uncheck) “Use hardware acceleration when available.”
Sorry if I’m being silly on this - do the Plex apps do transcoding differently to the Plex web client?
on the web client - safari on iOS, chrome/firefox on windows - they all work no problem, SRT/ASS subtitles & different resolutions
I’ve gone through that thread and it’s an interesting read, double checked the cpu on the server and it’s a i5-1235U which is intel 12th gen so didn’t think that would be a “new” cpu as it’s from ‘22
The Plex apps do not do any transcoding. It’s done by the server. I must have missed the description you gave on how it is working on the web clients.
Another issue some have with running the iOS client is that “http://plex.tv” is not being resolved correctly. I would suggest that you go through this checklist, with Item #2 (and DNS Rebinding) possibly being important in your case. Also, review the notes in the follow-up post regarding IPv6.
