New/Old Player crashes (Shield Tube) - 4K HDR (not DV)

Plex Players Player Betas
130

Hey,

I noticed Plex on the Shield TV 2019 (tube) was still (again?) stuttering when playing a high bitrate 4K file. Also:

  • the video takes a long time to start, buffering for around 10 seconds before finally launching
  • navigation on the player (pause/play, see stream details, etc.) is unresponsive or extremely laggy
  • when that happens it is sometimes impossible to exit Plex
  • When switching to another app, the whole Shield is way more laggy than it usually is
  • Happens with both the old and the new player

Everything direct play. Same file on the same server and same monitor works perfectly when played from the Plex Windows desktop app.

I believed these problems were fixed in 7.28. Either they werenā€™t and I did not notice or they were reintroduced in 7.29.

Is someone else in the same situation?

Will gladly provide details if it is needed.
Thanks for you help!

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131

Same here, exact of your description.

132

on the new player (eac3 dont work on movies)

133

What is the last version that works fine?

134

Hi,

I believe the problem was solved in 7.28.0 (but I am not positive and have no way to downgrade and check it)

135

It is resolved for me if using the old player. New player is still hot garbage.

136

Unfortunaly, changing player does not solve it for meā€¦ That very much sound like a RAM problem (file is a high bitrate H265 encode). Guess I should have bought the Shield Proā€¦

137

The 7.29 update appears to have broken the old playerā€™s ability to play 4K HDR HEVC. It stutters and crashes now, causing my Shield remote to not function for a short while. The new player however can play it just fine, but I still prefer the old player due to it displaying playback information in the top left - if the new player did this I would use it all the time.

Also, no matter which player I use now when playing 4K HDR HEVC, pressing the settings button is a death sentence. Completely freezes the Shield. All I want to do is see what refresh rate the video is playing at. Is that too much to ask?

138

Same behaviour here. Even opening the shield menu settings tend to crash Plex most of the timeā€¦

Plex team: are you investigating this (rather annoying) issue?

139

We are investigating the issues!

Same behaviour here. Even opening the shield menu settings tend to crash Plex most of the timeā€¦
Also, no matter which player I use now when playing 4K HDR HEVC, pressing the settings button is a death sentence. Completely freezes the Shield. All I want to do is see what refresh rate the video is playing at. Is that too much to ask?

Which SHIELD menu are you trying to access?

141

Which SHIELD menu are you trying to access?

The main menu settings, the one that open by default when pressing the top right button on the shield remote.

But anything I try to do when Plex is playing the file is either very slow or crashes the Plex app entirely. It seems to happens only with 4K high bitrate (>20ā€™000 kbps average) files.

Thank you for your help.

142

Would you be able to replicate the issue and then grab the client logs. Information on fetching them is available here: https://support.plex.tv/articles/201573117-android-android-tv-fire-tv-logs/

143

Here are the logs. The crash occured on last play of the file, but previous plays were very laggy.

Plex Shield Logs - crash.txt (656.1 KB)

Hope this helps!

144

Currently, 4K HDR videos with high bit rates and dolby true hd atmos, work again without problems on the shield tube :grinning:

1 Like
145

I can also confirm that Plex on my Shield Tube now seems okay with 4K HDR HEVC files, but only if their bitrate is around 10Mb/s. Any higher than that and it stutters with the old player and flatout crashes with the new player. I watched two 4K HDR HEVC movies recently (10.8Mb/s & 10.4Mb/s) and they played fine. Just finished watching another that was 17.8Mb/s and had to use Plex For Kodi instead - that played it without any issues.

I donā€™t know what it is about Kodi, but it handles 4K a lot better than Plex does.

146

Yep, problem is still present in 7.30.

@sixones any news? Thanks!

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147

@sixones Any update on this? still a problem. It happens for me when Iā€™m using subtitles.

1 Like
148

Would like to throw my hat in here as well and say that it is still happening on the beta Android TV version for me.

149

I would also like to weigh in. After having frustrations that my Roku Ultra was choking on high-bandwidth UHD videos due to the non-gigabit Ethernet port on it I finally bit the bullet and bought a Shield TV (tube) even though I like the Roku ecosystem.

Load up the same file that made me buy the Shield in the first place and it stutters a bit and then crashes Plex. Not a great first impression. Like others, if I play the exact same file directly via VLC app it works perfectly so it definitely appears to be an issue with Plex specifically. I am running 7.31 and the latest Shield firmware.

150

Hi,

This issue still exists in version 8.0ā€¦

As a workaround, I am now using the Plex for Kodi addon. Although it is not perfect (I sometimes have to relaunch the file or even restart the shield so the video isnā€™t lagging), it works way better than with the standard Plex app.

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