I started getting the message File is Unplayable. DoVi (Profile 5) color space is not supported when trying to playback a file.
I usually watch on the AppleTV app, and on Wednesday (4th Dec) I got the error trying to watch an episode I’d download, which was the 4th episode of series I’m watching. I tried watching the previous episode, which I’d watched on Monday (2nd Dec) and got the same error.
So sometime between Monday and Wednesday something changed. I’ve tried watching on the AppleTV, an iPad and aniPhone, all of them are giving me the same error. I can playback the episodes on a Mac but the colours are “off”.
I’ve checked I’m running the latest available versions of the Plex apps and media server, which I usually let update automatically so not sure when they last updated.
So the question is did something change handling files with the DoVi Profile 5 color space recently, or is this a bug??
Having run into this numerous other times with various client apps on say the LG TVs and the like. It has always been the client app that is the problem, not the server. Multiple different server versions in this thread, all the same client version. Wish I had a way to roll back.
That makes sense, however I watched three episodes encoded the same way fine, then, after an app update, started getting the error message, including from the episodes I’d previously watched.
I know I’m not FordGuy61, but this is for sure a bug. Client app bug that is impacting all Apple iOS/tvOS/iPadOS devices from what I can tell. Each of these devices natively support dovi profiles, which is why Dolby Vision is the default highest thing that Apple offers via their TV app.
With no access to the code, and no experience with Plex development/architecture, it sounds like a check was recently added to the Plex Media Server to return an error when trying to transcode Dolby Vision Profile 5 encoded files, and the iOS/iPadOS/tvOS players are triggering it when attempting to Direct Play the file.
macOS & LG TV app doesn’t display the error, but don’t handle the colours correctly. The PS5 Plex app displays a similar message regarding the invalid colour profile.
It could also be that the iOS/tvOS/ipadOS & PS5 apps have had handling of DV Profile 5 removed, and the LG TV and macOS apps haven’t yet.
What I’m trying to find out is should I expect this to start working again when a bug gets fixed, or has the functionality been removed and I need to start check the files I’m trying to watch aren’t encoded this with DV profile 5.
That has been in Plex Media Server for quite some time.
My experience with my LG B7 OLED, is that LG TVs want DVp5 in a MP4 container. If using a MKV container, the media plays, but the colors are off (every thing is pink and green).
+1 I started to get the same issue a couple of days ago on Apple TV 4k 18.1. Episodes which I could watch normally are now failing to play on the official client. When watching them through infuse, colours are green so I wonder if it’s a mix of client, server and TvOs issues?
+1. Experiencing for a couple of weeks now, on two separate Apple TVs (newest gen and last gen 18.1 and 18.2) Files that would play before now shows that error on only dovi profile 5 files. DoVi remuxes direct plays fine.
My feeling is that likely Plex was using one of the many open-source libraries to handle DVp5 transcoding but as they try to legitimize they have to remove this stuff since it’s technically unlicensed. I think it’s far more likely this functionality has been intentionally removed rather than a bug (fwiw I’m experiencing it too—my parents have a Samsung TV that obvi doesn’t support DV, but we’ve never had any problem playing back P5 videos on the Apple TV hooked up to it until this Xmas).
Edit: I didn’t mean to say “transcoding” here rather I meant playback
