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
