I am not all of a sudden able to view the video on my living room TV. I updated the Plex Media Server, we uninstalled the app on the Amazon Fire TV and reinstalled. I cleared cache and data and it still doesn’t work. We have another Amazon Fire TV in the bedroom and it’s working there. We didn’t recently change any settings or anything. Why did it stop working?
Device is a Element Amazon Fire TV with the Plex App installed. Just upgraded Plex Media Server to latest on yesterday.
What if you play something else in your FIre TV, does it work? This problem sounds like a codec problem.
Play something else like what? I didn’t make any changes and everything else on my TV is working fine. How would I fix a codex problem?
Are you saying that even movies that used to play aren’t playing anymore? Sometimes people download movies with codecs that are not supported by the player
Exactly, movies that played last week are not playing anymore. Just black screen but can the hear audio playing.
I see… Have you done elimination tests like:
Installing vlc and try to play your movies ? Just to make sure the problem is in plex app
I am seeing the same issues. As of today, Element Fire TV as well. Just black video playback, sound plays.
If tried all the usually uninstall/re-install, clear cache, clear data. Adjust video playback settings to the lowest possible. My internet speed is a solid 100MB/S.
Does your TV tell you when the last update was?
It doesn’t give a date but the version is 7.25.2.14287.
Also to answer the last question. The movies play on other devices in my home including a Toshiba Fire TV, and a Samsung Galaxy Tab. The movies are fine. They also play on Plex Web on my PC just fine. It’s just on this one Element Fire TV where I started seeing this issue. I’ve never had a issue before that restarting the app didn’t fix until now.
Glad someone else is reporting this issue. I’m thinking it’s a bug in the App on this device.
I didn’t realize that Element Fire TV was actually a TV model. What if you install VLC on your TV, does it play the movies?
I can’t find any info on the latest update - Fire TV doesn’t have that and I searched all over the plex app.
I re-installed again so should be the latest version. It continues to happen tho. When I look at the “news” tab -that plays, FWIW.
Definitley seeing the same issue on my Elements Fire TV Edition.
It always did this initially, started playing with blank screen and audio, but if you stopped and restarted the video it worked fine.
Now there is now way to get it working, there are almost no settings to tweak (apart from original quality), and I had to resort to usinging a Fire TV Stick 4K in an HDMI port to watch the video (1080p).
But that eliminates screen, internet, media fire or plex server as the issues.
This is certainly a problem with the TV’s Amazon app
following with my new Forum account
Same here. You have to disable the new player in the settings > advance area to get it to work.
That worked for me. Thank you for finding the solution. I guess this new video player doesn’t work with the Element Fire TV’s at this time and was automatically switched on.
This is what I did… on the TV app, I found “settings” under my User. I went down to the Advanced section and found “Enable New Video Player” and it I switched it to Off. Then when I went to play a video it asked me if I wanted to use the new player. I then selected Disable. The movies now play after that.
I’ve been having this same problem ever since the update came out and the new video player was released. I’m also watching on Element TV with FireTV built in. With the new video player all movies either in MKV or MP4 have black screens, but do have sound. When I disabled the new video player and then attempted to play a video from my library, I opted out of using the new player again, and now I get the message “unable to play media”. This has been going on for weeks and I was hoping a new update would solve the problem, but nothing has been released. If I uninstall the app and redownload it, it gets the current version from the app store, and I’m back to where I was before.
I’m running Plex on 3 different systems (all FireTV) and since I refused to upgrade the others, they still work. Unfortunately the one broken is in the bedroom.
Any other ideas on solving this problem?
I’m unsure, disabling the player worked for me. I made sure everything else about the app and my web server was updated to the latest version. The issue didn’t effect any of my other players or fire TV’s just the Element one. Maybe try updating the app and web server and try again.
THANK YOU for sharing this. I’ve gotten ours to work finally with your instructions. 
Much appreciated and happy new year!
I also have an Element Amazon Fire TV and had the same issue with the new player. Disabling the new player worked. Hope they push an update to the Fire TV because all my other Amazon devices play Plex just fine.
