Playback issues with Sony Bravia devices

Server Version#: 1.21.1.3876
Player Version#: 8.12.0.22562

Since the update to Plex for Android 8.12.0.22456-beta on or around January 12th my two Sony Bravia devices struggle to play most videos.

Content appears to load, but it stays on a blank black screen; playback controls are accessible - scrubbing does not work. Sometimes receive an error “An error occurred while attempting to play this video. Please check your connection and try again”. What is quite frustrating is that some content will indeed load and playback fine, but I can’t find a pattern of a codec or container that triggers the issue.

I thought initially it was related to audio, as it is most likely to happen with 5.1 content, but this is not consistent.

My other Plex clients work ok (browsers, Android and iOS phones and tablets), and both Plex for Kodi and Chromecast work perfectly on both Bravia TVs. So this seems specific to the Android Beta app.

Possibly related topics:
Sony TV not playing audio for some movies, - not playing at all for others - Plex Players / Smart TVs - Plex Forum
H264 movies do not play - General / General Discussions - Plex Forum

EDIT: I’ve added the logs from the Android app on my Bravia TV; I attempt to play several different episodes and movies which nearly all fail playback, and then mysteriously work again a few minutes later, demonstrating the fairly random nature of this issue. logging.txt (1.1 MB)

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For reference, my issue “Sony TV not playing audio for some movies, - not playing at all for others” is running the stable version of Plex and not the beta version.

Thanks, these issues may not be related so.

The issue is still persistent on my two Bravias; the 2015 model in particular can’t seem to play any video media the last few days, whereas the 2018 model seems to have better luck - its frustratingly inconsistent though.

Did you get the latest update for the Bravia from Sony?

I received an update for the 2018 Bravia about a week ago, but not for the 2015 model (which I don’t think will see any further updates).

Unfortunately I think the issue with Plex started shortly before the Bravia update. Since it impacts both Bravia TVs I don’t think it’s specific to a particular OS version

Hmm…

I’ve been experiencing issues with DTS audio since 8.12 released. Everything finally started working with the new Sony update (to android 9) with Plex 8.11 except DTS-HD MA now plays as stereo on my AVR but it’s better than not playing at all (like in the past before the firmware update).

As a workaround to the DTS playback issues (videos not starting) you can change the passthrough to optical and you can select both AC3 and DST and it’s still going to use you HDMI-ARC but the drawback is now EAC3 (DD+) gets transcoded.

Ah was using the same fix for the issues I was having

Damm, I knew there had to be a downside to that fix…

For now I have just downgraded to the previous release and turned off passthrough.

Doing that means at least the DTS and EAC3 files in my PMS are showing direct play and play both the audio and video, (my AV Receiver shows PCM during playback)

If I use the 8.12 release and set passthrough to off, then loads of films just fail to play

so I guess it must be the
Player: filter out unsupported streams in 8.12 that is getting a response from the TV that the audio is unsupported so halting the playback attempt.

But I do not recall seeing crashes on startup on my TV, which is what it supposed to fix…

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I just wanted to share that I am also experiencing problems playing any movie that contains DTS audio on my XBR-43X800D Sony TV running the latest firmware available (Android TV 9 (Pie)). I used to have no problems playing these movies, in the past. Also, I don’t have these problems, at all, on my newer XBR-65X950G. Both are running the latest Plex Beta 8.12.2.22756. I am getting the exact same AudioTrack init exceptions as OP, so I don’t think I need to share any additional logs.

I also confirmed on movies that have multiple audio tracks, I can change it to use a non-DTS track, and the movie plays fine.

But I do not recall seeing crashes on startup on my TV, which is what it supposed to fix…

Ditto.

A side question: When was the ability to turn off the “New Video Player” in settings removed? I’m not seeing it anymore.

Looks like it was removed in 8.12, as it’s still there in 8.11

Bummer…was hoping I could use that as a quick workaround.

This issue is still persistent across the two Bravia TVs - sometimes attempting playback a second or third time will kick it back into action.

Plex for Kodi is reliable 100% of the time - so not a server issue as best as I can tell.

I have a Chromecast for Google TV as well, and it has its own range of weird Plex issues such as Managed Users sometimes not visible, Main Hub sometimes resetting or acting weird. Local home movies crashing the app at times.

To be fair, the Android app at the moment is a bit of a dumpster fire.

I’ve said this before; if Plex wants to diversify its userbase and offer random other things like VR, Podcasts, streaming channels and TV, game emus etc then fine, but the MAIN FEATURE, which is local media playback, must be gold-standard and rock-solid. It is more often buggy and broken than not. In my experience it doesn’t appear that the public version of the android Plex app is more stable than the beta version.

I love that they introduce killer features like Skip Intro, but whats the point if playback is infuriating so much of the time?

EDIT the latest bug on the android plex client emerged last night when we were watching an episode (2nd playback attempt) and paused the show for a few minutes. Came back to find that it was not in fact truly paused but was very gradually playing back at about 0.05x speed… Bizarre

EDIT 2: Plex have removed the 8.12 update, having rolled it out already to every Android user. 8.11 appears to be stable. I thought the point of being a beta tester was to be the canary in the coalmine for issues such as this? Issues were being reported with the 8.12 beta 2 weeks ago.

For me, the issue is AC3 not playing any video or audio (black screen) on my Bravia 4K TV. I also had to reduce my max h.264 level to 4.1 for most videos to play. I’m not sure why this is.

The black screen issue has been around as far back as I can see. I sideloaded the Plex app all the way back to .9 and the problem was still there. I think the Sony TV has some issue decoding AC3 soundtracks correctly. I’m pretty sure this started after the last Sony update, but I could have just not noticed it.

All other videos worked fine, including DTS and AAC 5.1. Perhaps the TV reported it couldn’t handle DTS and it got transcoded by the server. I didn’t check since those were working, and it took a bit to figure out it was a audio problem and not the video encode.

The optical passthrough trick works for me, as it forces Plex server to transcode to MP3 audio. Dropping the max bandwidth to 2Mbps also made it work, but then the video looks terrible.

Since this is just a bedroom TV, I don’t care about 5.1 being passed. If this was my main TV in the living room, I’d be looking for something besides Plex. I use Kodi in there anyway, which always works perfectly. Even the Plex app on Kodi works for 5.1 direct play on my Anthem receiver, so this appears isolated to Android app or the Sony brand.

Would you be able to share logs from a recent build of Plex for Android (at least v8.13.1 or the current beta)?

Looking at the logs that are attached, the only playback error was attempting to use the AAC decoder. :thinking:

Are you asking me or the OP?

Do you still want some logs for this? I can help to troubleshoot.

Logs from anyone after reproducing issue using the current version of the app or beta would be appreciated.

Ok. I’ll pull some in the morning and post here. I’m still on a old app version because of the guide search bug, but I can load it back once I capture the log entries.

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