Fire TV does not play most VC1 content

Plex Players Streaming Devices
,
1

Server Version#: 1.25.7.5604
Player Version#: 8.31.1.31487
PMS: Synology DS920+

Client
• Adjust automatically: Off
• Video Quality → Home streaming: Maximum

When attempting to play most VC1 HD movies on a Fire TV Stick 4K or Max device, all I see is a spinner and the Plex Dashboard doesn’t show anything in Now Playing. Those that fail to play on my Fire TV devices, play fine on my less powerful Roku Streaming Stick 4K.

It seems to be related to the size throughput, as those with 19.1Mbps cause a problem.

Fails to play

  • Gone with the Wind (Size 20.7Mbps, Video 18.4Mbps)
  • Heatbreak Ridge (Size 32.4Mbps, Video 26.6Mbps)
  • Inception (Size 25.8Mbps, Video 20.5Mbps)
  • Jurrasic Park (Size 35.3Mbps, Video 28.2Mbps)
    *The Lord of the Rings_ The Fellowship of the Ring (Size 29.1Mbps, Video 23.3Mbps)
    *The Lord of the Rings_ The Return of the King (Size 28.3Mbps, Video 22.7Mbps)
    *The Lord of the Rings_ The Two Towers (Size 24.9Mbps, Video 19.2Mbps)
  • The Blind Side (Size 31Mbps, Video 27.9Mbps)
  • The Last Sumurai (Size 19.1Mbps, Video 18.2Mbps)
  • The Rundown (Size 23.2Mbps, Video 17Mbps)
  • The Scorpion King (Size 31.12Mbps, Video 24.9Mbps)
  • The Wizard of Oz (Size 25.5Mbps, Video 23Mbps)

Successfully plays

  • Bullitt (Size 17.6Mbps, Video 17.1Mbps)
  • Outbreak (Size 15Mbps, Video 18Mbps)

Fire TV does not play most VC1 content log snippet.txt (24.9 KB)

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I don’t think the Fire TV supports VC1. That matches what’s in the small log snippet you shared -

Unable to Direct Play as VC1 is not supported on this device

- and matches what’s on Amazon’s site -

Device Specifications: Fire TV Streaming Media Player | Amazon Fire TV

So there’s probably a transcoding failure.

During successful playback of a show that works, what does the Plex Dashboard show?

I can’t help w/ a DS920+ transcoding issue, but I assume you’ll be asked to provide server logs.

Do you see any difference in the Media Info XML File between examples that do and don’t work?

I’m sure it’s not a satisfying answer, but you might be happier just avoiding the problem … Optimize them in Plex, or use a different tool to transcode them to H.264 or H.265 in advance.

1 Like
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I agree with you about the lack of VC1 support on the Fire TV devices and that Plex should transcode VC1 on the fly and play the movie. The problem now is it freezes and doesn’t play anything.

The only thing I saw that stood out, was the throughput rates as to why one movie plays fine and one doesn’t.

Great minds think alike, as I have optimized all of them for Original Quality (mp4) as a workaround.

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I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I finally gave up on reliable VC1 playback across my devices.

I didn’t have a huge amount of stuff in VC1, so I used my favorite encoder to make a high-quality transcode to 10-bit HEVC with AC3. I happily don’t think about those movies anymore, they just play. I keep the originals on a backup disk in case I want to restore them, or re-encode them to something like AV1 in the future.

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