Playback drops mid-stream on NVIDIA Shield — Plex server reports “Removing idle session” while video

Plex Players Streaming Devices
1

Environment

  • Client: NVIDIA Shield TV (Model P2897)

    • Android TV 11

    • SHIELD Android TV SW: 9.2.2 (33.2.0.382)

  • Plex Client: Latest Plex for Android/Shield (fresh install after factory reset)

  • Server: Plex Media Server on Unraid (local LAN)

  • Playback mode: Mostly Direct Play (Dashboard confirms)

  • Connection type: Wired LAN

  • Secure connections: Preferred

Issue

During playback, after ~5–15 minutes:

  • The Shield continues playing video on screen

  • But on the Plex server dashboard, the session disappears / drops

  • After a short time, playback either fails with an error or reconnects

  • Sometimes I see the client reboot itself

This behavior repeats consistently.

Troubleshooting done so far

  • Factory reset Shield

  • Reinstalled Plex client (fresh install, no restored settings)

  • Disabled match refresh rate / frame-rate switching

  • Disabled hardware developer flags (HW overlays etc.)

  • Tested with:

    • Quality Suggestions off

    • Bandwidth cap lowered (20 Mbps)

    • Direct Play vs Transcode

  • Verified network is stable and wired

  • Other Shield apps (e.g., YouTube) do not crash or stop

  • Issue occurs with multiple different files

Same behavior occurs regardless of file or source.

Observed pattern

  • Playback starts normally

  • Bandwidth graph shows stable playback

  • After a period, server reports session idle and removes it

  • Client either:

    • Errors with “An error occurred while attempting to play this video”

    • Or playback freezes but resumes after pause / seek

2

Relevant Plex Server Logs near failure

Around the time the playback drops, the server logs repeatedly show:

[Now] Removing idle session for device ...
QueryParser: Invalid field 'joinedContentDirectoryID' found, ignoring
We didn’t receive a reply from the client, dropping connection
Connection dropped, stream truncated

Immediately after, the client reconnects and a new session is created.

Notes

  • This only affects Plex playback on the Shield

  • Other apps (e.g., YouTube) run continuously without interruption

  • Appears related to the Shield client going idle or terminating the session unexpectedly

3

coming up at a loss if anyone has any suggestions much appreciate i can proved logs and anything required. I bought a few of these for Christmas as gifts because i heard they are great and regretting that atm

4

solved

5

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