Weird, I’m using the same thing. but I think it’s a wider plexHTPC issue, I did a clean install to 1.9 and now the video is very choppy and anything other than alt+f4 is extremely delayed as well (still no audio). The old PMP still seems to work fine, but I do love the new app’s features and overall look.
Weird huh as Plex HTPC continues to work flawlessly for me on our HTPC connected to out Denon AVR via HDMI and then to our TV.
The HTPC is an AMD Ryzen on Win 10. Nothing special in terms of hardware or software.
I’ve also never had any issue with jerkiness or stuttering in playback on any format incl high bitrate 4K.
I don’t use HW though as the AMD doesn’t do that well so using the CPU and software.
Oh wow, turning off HW decoding fixed it instantly! Thank you, I can’t believe I never tried that after screwing with audio settings five zillion times.
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Thanks for your detailed reply but i think you are overestimating what the user actually wants with external player support, I would imagine most would be happy if plex simply opened the external player allowing it to render on top,and passed a link and the external player handles the rest. in an ideal world plex would be notified of where playback had reached but not essential. then when external player is closed the user selects next file from within plex again.
plex does not need to render its own controls or anything else.
What do others think? what would you want from external player support?
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I personally never used the external players before and wouldn’t now. I don’t really see a huge difference and the main reason I use Plex over Kodi/jellyfin is the smooth, integrated experience. The picture when using the HTPC app and direct streaming always looks great (whoever put in support for weird/anime subtitles, thank you)
yep but the great thing is external player support would let others use it the way they like and you still could as you do now
It takes a huge amount of engineering effort and I think the point the devs are trying to make is that MPV (edit words are hard, madvr) doesn’t provide the API hooks required to even get started.
I looked at its integration with mpc-hc and at least one other. Not impressed with the API offerings.
This appears to be much of the experience that you get with other systems using external players. A fairly crappy experience if you ask me. There’s also the issue that if playback is stopped part of the way through it needs to know the play progress to report this to the server. Similar with changing subtitle/audio tracks (notice that if you change one of these in playback, it’s saved as a setting on the server so if you play it again it uses the same subtitle/audio you set last). Also if the client isn’t periodically informing the server of its playback progress (which requires the client to know where playback is currently), this can cause minor issues (which I’ll omit because it’s fairly entailed).
Additionally I have to wonder how well these would function with the AVOD (ad supported video on demand) content, the “live-tv” channels, and playing live TV off a tuner. Many players have had varying degrees of trouble with this content so I would expect an external player would have issues as well.
Most of that was in MPV for years but I forwarded your thanks on to the dev that has been supporting it on our side.
I presume that you didn’t mean MPV but rather madvr (and friends). Aside from that this is correct.
Though if someone out there integrated madvr with MPV that would be a different story. I doubt you’ll see that work from us but if someone else in the community were to do so you can imagine the possibilities. MPV already has the concept of different video outputs (vos) and often supports more than one on each platform; make this yet another one. The current HTPC requires the vo be libmpv on Windows but the layering work I talked about above eliminates this requirement (though Linux will still need it).
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I do wish AMD HW support could be addressed.
To take the load off my CPU.
I have an 8GB video card sitting there doing none of the hard work.
I’ve tried enabling it a few times but with really rubbish results for users (as mentioned by Plex themselves).
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Just open it!!! agree I think the user poll above kinda shows some of that point, we don’t necessary need all the same mirrored functions like the Roku or Shield etc. Just open the external player like other current options today.
So the plex server may not know the play progress of a file, that in all honesty is the only real draw back of an external player, but for myself it is not an issue as I don’t want to sacrifice video quality by using mpv, just so plexs know the play progress. the external play will always know play progress,
i have no issues with subtitles, audio selection, play progress, play version, live tv etc being remembered using external player, I just don’t have the plex UI, so all my displays can have the same interface, the home theater and gym i use alternate options.
AVOD seems to be odd topic, as we are talking about PLEX HTPC for UHD Blurays viewing.
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Depending you display type and just as importantly the size, the video quality of mpv compared to external player with madvr is a very different experiences…
I still seem to have issues with 4K HDR playback, apparently my NUC can’t handle it 
thankfully most of my library is 1080
Don’t know if this is an intended result or not but when I set the playback quality to normal or high (maximum just stutters) then while the colour blending and overall picture quality does look better the contrast is lost somewhat. I have an OLED TV so it’s pretty obvious when something is black or just grey but when I set the playback quality higher than low the blacks of title screens etc. just look like a dull grey rather than a high contrast black.
Anyone have a suggestion. Ideally I’d have the picture quality of high but the contrast and deep blacks of “low”… it’s a hard choice!
I agree. It’s a shame that support for AMD seems to be such a low priority, but fwiw it works excellent on my Asus PN50 with the Ryzen 5 4500U. On this particular AMD platform Plex HTPC have been mostly excellent since the first release.
One small nitpick I have is that I can’t exit the program from the user select screen. I have to log in with a user to exit the program.
Never had any issue on my AMD based HTPC either, as I have mentioned too many times in this thread.
However, it is my CPU dong the work, not the AMD GPU I have.
You lost me ?
I just hit the exit key on my remote and Plex HTPC exits.
its a supposedly “crappy” experience, I believe many of us your end users actually want.
it can be hard but in business its best to listen and not try and tell your users/customers what they actually want as we are all affected by our own desire and point of views that can inflence and distort our perception of what other want.
playback progress dosent matter much simply log the file as played when your done in plex.
subtitles/audio track best would be for the external player to choose the approriate track with it own logic by being passed an unaltered file stream,but worse case we could select track/subtitles before playback within plex before starting file and this would be fine.
I doubt many of us that take the time to use and tweak software like madvr with its many upscaling options and detailed options watch much in the way of the plex ad supported content, its mostly high bitrate and unaltered content,ad content support is more a plex management desirable thing not a user one, to many users this is just uneeded bloat and annoyance so disabled/ignored.
both plex web and plex for windows exist for low end users looking for a very easy user experience, why does plex htpc exist if it isnt going to differentiate itself and cater to the those with high end calibrated screens and systems or a picture quality is king mentality.
anyway i think ive covered my thoughts on this thank you for taking the time to listen gbooker02 i will let other users chime in with there thoughts now
A small hint for the UI team, there is still the small cosmetic bug, where DTS tracks are shown as DTS-HD on the movie overview page. (Plex HTPC feedback - #472 by Mitzsch) I know this is a very small thing, but it bugs me every time I see it. Would be awesome if this could be sent to the UI team!
I use the iGPU without issue.
It works everywhere except on the user select screen. 
Your earlier posts suggest otherwise but OK
I just exited without issue from the user selection screen
Maybe reinstall ?
No? Are you mixing me up with someone else?
