I’m having constant trouble with the Plex for Vizio app on my TV. I’ve tried every setting in the book and can’t get it to play properly. I get a pink screen once in a while, and most of the time it plays for about 10 seconds before the 3 dots appear on the screen and if I don’t pause and play before it stops, it freezes and the only way out is to hit exit and reload the app.
All videos are playing perfectly fine on my Sony Android Tablet, Sony Android Phone, AppleTV’s, Samsung Smart TV, Mac Mini’s, and even Desktop PC and MacBooks. The only place I’m having trouble is my primary 4K TV.
I’ve tried changing direct streaming, direct play, changed the H.264 level every level and even tried changing to a lower resolution and no matter what I do it just won’t play. It’s happened on multiple version of the server (running on an i7 6700k with 24 GB DDR4 memory on an SSD with the movie data on a dual gigabit Synology DS1815+ setup in RAID6.)
Any advice or ideas would be greatly appreciated. I’ve turned on logging on server and at the device so if anything is needed I can collect and submit.
Join the club! This is a problem that has been plaguing Vizio and other “smart tv” owners with Plex for a couple (few) months now.
I personally have tried everything as well – nothing works. Not even the “forum preview” 1.6.0.3720 and that hasn’t alleviated the problem.
Plex works fine on my Xbox 360 which sits just under my TV. The Xbox 360 came out in May 2005 – 12 years ago, and my New(ish) Vizio 4k television can’t play recorded shows like Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD or other shows encoded with SLIGHTLY elevated bitrates (3000). Programming encoded at bitrates below 2800 seem to play fine.
FYI Plex Media Server is “direct playing” the identical content on both devices.
@jfreiman said:
Join the club! This is a problem that has been plaguing Vizio and other “smart tv” owners with Plex for a couple (few) months now.
I personally have tried everything as well – nothing works. Not even the “forum preview” 1.6.0.3720 and that hasn’t alleviated the problem.
Plex works fine on my Xbox 360 which sits just under my TV. The Xbox 360 came out in May 2005 – 12 years ago, and my New(ish) Vizio 4k television can’t play recorded shows like Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD or other shows encoded with SLIGHTLY elevated bitrates (3000). Programming encoded at bitrates below 2800 seem to play fine.
FYI Plex Media Server is “direct playing” the identical content on both devices.
Thanks @jfreiman , I thought it was just me having issues and something with my TV, but as you stated, it sounds like this is a more universal issue. I hope Plex can address this very soon, because it makes it hard (and almost impossible for the new Plex Pro program) to really work if they can’t get the applications to run on TV’s that users are going to have in their houses.
FWIW it’s surprising it’s not working, because Netflix is having no trouble brilliantly displaying 4K content without a single glitch in surround sound. Now I know they offload alot onto their servers, but it just shows that the hardware is capable of at least direct playback, it’s just the Plex engine that needs to handle it for playback.
Will keep my ear to the ground and hope to see some updates!
The plex app on VIZIO seems to cycle between barely usable and completely broken between every update… There is no way to stay in on a specific version so we startup the old Xbox360 from time to time. The load times also go from slow to forever and back.
Seriously considering purchasing some ROKUs and being done with the built in functions which is a shame since Netflix works fine and so does the YouTube app built into the TB.
Don’t count on any Vizio TV’s with the V.I.A. Plus apps to be usable. After finding out Vizio used a third-party platform, YAHOO!, out of all platforms available, I decided to go with ROKU’s and be done. This 55’ tv is the LAST “SMART” tv I will buy as the software is lack luster at best. What’s worse is now that Yahoo has been acquired by Verizon will that mean my Vizio TV will even be updated? *Vizio updates the TV firmware, but that does not mean they have control over the apps or the future of the Yahoo! app platform. If Verizon decides to end application support for Vizio TV’s will every TV purchased be stuck on an old app version? Basically, 10 years from now my 55’ tv will be a brick. Here’s the policy with no guarantees. How the hell does this workout for the consumer when many of the apps, PLEX especially don’t get updated along with the other apps. The Yahoo! VIA platform on Vizio tv’s are leaving a bad taste in my mouth.
Looks like I’m a little late to the party. Just installed Plex which works great on my newer LG Smart TV. However, on my Vizio M60-C3 I have the same problem reported over two years ago: after about 10 - 15 seconds of video play the three dots appear in the middle of the screen and a few seconds after that the video stops and I get an error saying “There was a problem playing this item. The video did not start playing in time”. One difference from what Baldock88 reported is that I don’t have to exit the app. Instead, I select the “Go Back” button and it goes back to my Plex library listing. I can start the movie again, but the same thing happens. It doesn’t seem to matter if the video is high or low res, long or short (even happens on a 3 minute video clip). Has nothing ever been done fix this issue? Please help!
