Firestick Max 4k Issues Playing .MP4 videos

Plex Players Streaming Devices
1

Server Version#: 4.125.1
Player Version#: Fire OS 7.6.6.9 (PS7669/4007)

Certain movies will start playing normally, but will randomly error out with the message “An error occurred while trying to play this video. Please check your connection and try again.” Sometimes I am able to resume playing the movie and get further, and other times it will just keep erroring in the same spot. Even if I’m able to get the movie to play further, it will throw an error every 3-5 minutes which is quite annoying.

I noticed a pattern where it only seems to happen on .MP4 videos, and only on Firestick (I’ve tested with 2 different Firestick devices). If I play the same video through the Plex app on my Android phone I have no issues. So I don’t think it’s a problem with the connection or the file itself.

I also recently created a new plex server on a new computer (with the same source libraries/directories) and am having the same issue, so it doesn’t seem to be my machine or an issue with the particular server. On both machines however, I am streaming from an external SSD connected via USB-C, in case that’s relevant at all.

Here are my logs. Any tips or ideas are much appreciated
Plex Media Server Logs_2024-04-09_11-38-47.zip (3.3 MB)

Edit: I also tried converting all of my MP4 files to MKV and am having the same issue. Maybe it’s the underlying encoding?

2

I had similar issues on my Gen2 4K Max FireTV’s where .mp4 videos would stop playing with a similar error message.

I also suspected there to be an underlying issue with the encoding of the files since re-encoding the files with Handbrake (to .mp4) after having a playback issue, would stop any playback issues on the FireTV.

The issue may have also been related to the file analysis by Plex though, since I also tried re-analysing some of the files and that helped sometimes as well.

I then updated the FireTV OS. After the update things improved and I no longer have an issue playing .mp4’s.

There may have been a Plex update on the FireTV as well, I recall checking for updates, but not sure if one was available or not.

HTH

3

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.