Live TV has worked on my phone for years, until this year when Plex broke it with the so-called Experience update on iPhone. Live TV works on Apple TV and via every browser in my WiFi network. Just not my iPhone. The Plex iPhone app throws the error: “Error Occurred: a server with the specified host name could not be found”
Since every other device on my WiFi network finds the specified host, it CAN BE FOUND. The old Plex app on my iPhone had NO PROBLEM streaming live TV.
When is Plex going to fix this? It’s reported all over the internet. When is Plex going to honor the the fee I pay for Live TV?
Thank you for your reply, Fluamsler. I went a step further and deleted the Plex app from my iPhone. Went to PMS and removed every authorized device (except my desktop browser). Re-installed the Plex app on my iPhone. The app sees my libraries and plays my videos, but live TV still throws the error a server with the specified host name could not be found . . . even though the HomeHD app on the same phone has NO PROBELM with streaming live TV.
Same issue here. Multiple iOS devices, all are hardly usable for Live TV/DVR due to this and other issues. the issues started with the experience update.
I have an iOS (26.3) and Android device (16), both running latest version of Plex (2025.31.1, 966828619), both failed to start Live TV. When I launched Plex and switch to Live TV tab, within seconds of the spinning wheel (~5s), I get “Uh oh… Something’s not right” screen, can’t do anything other than download logs and force close the app.
If I switch to “What’s on” or “Favorite Channels” then I won’t get the “Uh oh” screen, but I can’t watch any channel either. Switching back to “Guide” tab and I get the same uh oh screen.
The logs attached are from my Android device (Galaxy Fold7). Also did reset cache and re-login with device removed from Plex account. LG TV app and Desktop app works fine, including browser player. I had to resort to using web browser to view live TV on mobile devices since the app does not work. Same issue can be observed on iPadOS (26.3)
Same issue here. iPad plex client, just got a HDHomerun which is awesome for local stations, LiveTV works fine on my TVs and web clients, but it will not work on my iPad using the plex client, works fine in the web client on the iPad.
However, I used ChatGPT (I know, I know….but it worked)! I have a fairly advanced home network, all Unifi equipment but use PiHole with UBound on a VM as my local DNS server/recursive resolver. AI said this issue with the dreaded “can’t find a server with that name” error was due to DNS rebinding. It had me apply two small configuration tweaks to allow “plex.direct” rebinding. One for PiHole and one for Ubound. After creating these two files per below, I rebooted my pinhole server and I’m good to go now on my iPhone and iPad! Hope this helps someone…
# 1) Pi-hole (dnsmasq/FTL): allow rebinding for plex.direct
sudo tee /etc/dnsmasq.d/99-plex-direct.conf >/dev/null <<'EOF'
rebind-domain-ok=/plex.direct/
EOF
# 2) Unbound: treat plex.direct as a private-domain (allow private IP answers)
sudo tee /etc/unbound/unbound.conf.d/99-plex-direct.conf >/dev/null <<'EOF'
server:
private-domain: "plex.direct"
EOF
why would a particular quirk about your network be the root cause of something that is impacting almost all users I have a feeling this is just unrelated
Just here to say this is happening to me too. The desktop app works fine, but the iphone app says “A server with the specified hostname could not be found” when trying to watch live TV. Movies play fine from the same server.
I’ve been monitoring this issue for months. I stream OTA TV through a Plex server on an Nvidia Shield with an Hdhomerun Flex. Just like everyone else, live OTA TV stopped working on my iPhone and iPad Plex clients months ago although it continued to work on all other devices [Windows computer, Android tablets, web apps, Google TV and Roku TV]. I read one thread after another and tried one fix after another to no avail and finally concluded it must be my Shield. The problem kinda jacked me up because OTA TV was why I purchased that lifetime Plex pass.
Today, I conducted an interesting experiment that maybe shed some light on this issue although it still left me suspecting my Shield. Just for the record, the Plex client I am running on my iPhone is client version 2026.5.0 (1635), on platform version 26.3.1. I installed a test Plex server on a Windows 11 laptop and connected this server only to my Hdhomerun and nothing else. No libraries, no services, just OTA TV. And it didn’t work! So I read more threads and found one guy who recommended disabling IPV6 on the network adapter of the device running the server. So I did that on the Windows 11 laptop and, BOOM, I had OTA TV on my iPhone again for the first time in over a year!
Observation: The channel reception isn’t as good as the server running on the Shield and some channels buffer before and during play and I wouldn’t want to use the Windows computer as my primary Plex server. However, maybe we know more than we did!
The bad news is I immediately moved to disable IPV6 on my Shield but this did not work. Still no live OTA TV from my primary Plex server on iOS devices although everything else worked fine. I tend to think there are problems with both the Shield and the Plex Server and maybe the iOS client as well. I simply do not understand why Plex hasn’t fixed this. Surely there are lots of us who watch TV on iOS devices! server-nvidia-shieldios
Live TV is not working through the Plex app on my iPad. However, it is working whenever I access my Plex server (https://plex-server-ip:34200) in Safari on my iPad. Strange!
Live TV is working in the webbrowser and the Plex app on my Macbook.
Logs says: “downloadContainer: expected MediaContainer element, found html” whenever I try the app on the iPad. That made me thinking as I am utilizing OPNsense firewall and Unbound DNS:
Plex uses dynamic *.plex.direct hostnames (e.g. something.yourserver.plex.direct) that resolve to your local private IP. Unbound blocks these by default as a security feature (DNS rebinding protection).
The native iOS app is very strict about using these plex.direct names, while Safari (Plex Web) often falls back to direct IP or handles it more leniently — which is why Safari works and the app doesn’t.
How to fix it in OPNsense:
Log into your OPNsense web GUI.
Go to: Services → Unbound DNS → Advanced
Scroll down to the Private Domains field.
Add this line exactly (no quotes): plex.direct
Click Save at the bottom.
Click Apply Changes.
Restart Unbound to be safe: Go back to Services → Unbound DNS and click the Restart button (or just wait a minute).
That’s it — this tells Unbound to treat plex.direct (and all its subdomains) as a “private” domain, so it stops blocking the private IP responses.
Scheduling recordings for Live TV in iOS on iPhone is broken. I can schedule recordings on other devices, and on Web, but when I try in the iOS app on my iPhone the whole App crashes to the home screen. This has happened since the new user experience and has never been fixed. To replicate: Search for a show in the search bar, tap on the show which does not properly display in the first place, attempt to schedule a recording, crash.
Plex server 1.43.2.10687 running as snap on Ubuntu 24.04
HD Home Run Flex Duo
4 iOS devices running 2026.10.0 and 2026.11.0 on iOS (platform) 17.7.11 / 18.7.9 / 26.5
Plex for [windows, linux, macos] version 1.112.0.359-0d79a49f
Plex clients on Roku, Samsung TV, LG TV.
I’m having the same problem described by the OP. Live TV from the HD Home Run tuner did work on everything - until a few weeks ago, At that point it stopped working on all the iOS devices. Recorded TV and other media still works on iOS. (well except for the fact that HEIC is still not working in photos, and videos recorded on iPhones are still not rotated properly for playback. But we have known about that for nearly a decade.) I’m still looking for a solution.
I’m adding this post because I have done a little testing and have noticed the following:
On the iOS devices, name resolution seems to be broken. In my network the plex server is reachable as server.local and server.attlocal.net. If the URL https://server:32400 is used in a browser, it brings up the local plex media server with all the platforms other than iOS. On iOS devices I get the browser error: A server with the specified hostname could not be found (NSURLErrorDomain) That error raised an eyebrow because it is identical to the error I get when live TV fails in the iOS Plex app. I also notice that entering the URL using server.attlocal.net:32400 fails on iOS devices - but not on others.
NOTE that I have set the “Friendly name” of the plex media server to match the hostname of the computer that hosts it.
If I use the IP address of the server or if I use server.local:32400 in the URL, then the web app works correctly on the iOS devices and I can watch live TV. That is as close to a work-around as I have gotten. It’s a hassle, but at least I can watch live TV on an iPad.
I hope this might be helpful for the Plex folks (or maybe someone else) to skull out a fix or workaround.
BTW: I tried manually adding .local and .attlocal.net as default search domains in the iOS IP config screen. That did not solve the issue for me. But I did see a different error with a massive multi-page URL included. If someone at plex is interested, I can post a screen shot. The error did not allow selecting and copying the text.
