Specific to today’s problem: I messaged one of the Plex devs. He said there had been a problem in their backend servers. They had already noticed & fixed it when we traded messages. Fully exiting and relaunching the app would resolve things.
There’s several ways to fully exit the app:
- Press the exit button to back out all the way (this was not working today on my LG).
- Power cycle the TV (remove from AC power, don’t just turn off)
- Launch other apps until the TV has to free up memory and dumps the Plex app (Laborious, but technically possible).
- Uninstall / reinstall
- Probably others (if the TV has a restart option, like rebooting a PC).
How the Plex LG app works (also applies to Samsung, Vizio, others):
When you install the Plex app from the LG store, it does not install the full app. It installs a bootloader version.
When you launch the Plex app, it checks in with servers at plex.tv. On first launch, it downloads the full version of the app. On subsequent launches, if there is an update, it automatically downloads the update.
The problem today was that the check-in process did not work, so the full app never launched.
After Plex cleared up things on their end, the app had to be fully exited on the TV. Doing so restarts the check-in process the next time the app is launched.
