Apologies if this question is in the wrong place or if the question has been asked before. I am finding this forum particularly confusing to know where anything is.
I’ve used Plex for a long time, usually via my PS4. It’s always been fine, but at some point recently Plex suddenly announced that I had to sign back in and in order to do this I had to type the code that appeared in front of me into another device that I signed into (I hope this is making sense to some people).
Anyway, if I logged in on the PC there was no visible place to enter the code as requested. I eventually just gave up and didn’t use Plex at all the last couple of weeks. Today I came back to is, got the same message, so this time I went to the Plex site on my phone and straight away a box popped up asking me to enter that code.
So I entered the code and finally managed to get back onto my Plex server and I realise at this point that it’s a whole new overhauled Plex, which I didn’t know was going to happen. I’m not keen so far and not sure why it needed overhauling, but that isn’t the problem.
The problem is that despite everything from my library and on my PC showing up, down to the things that are “on deck” and the things that I am part way through watching, I can no longer play any video file. Anything I try to start it just says “There was an unexpected error. Please visit our forums.”
So here I am. It seems there were a lot of unannounced changes on Plex. Changes which means nothing works any more for me. If anyone can offer any help or guidance I would be most grateful.
I’m having a similar issue with the latest app update on IOS. I cannot play any video file and it generates a “Plex could not create the playback session for this item” error. This happens on any IOS device that uses the latest version in the App Store. I have several devices that did not update yet and they do not have this issue.
I was a happy Plex user up until now. I’m seriously considering other alternatives at this point.
We have just got a plex pass ready for our new family thats on the way.
My main account works perfectly.
New managed user account works but wifes new account that was invited to the home can see library but cannot play anything.
Apparently the latest IOS app needs server version 1.14.0.5470 to be installed/running. I was on 1.13.9.something until I saw that the server update just arrived this evening. Installed it and my playback issues disappeared.
I would have thought that downloading the new app would automatically give you the correct version(?)
Regardless - I’m not running iOS. I’m on the Playstation. It simply says that it’s an unexpected error and I should come to the forum, which is such a cop out of an error message, i.e. “don’t talk to us, go and find some other users”.
Is there any way to roll back to the previous version, which was absolutely fine?
Just bumping this in the hopes that someone can help (particularly Plex staff as I’ve seen them lurking here and after all the software did direct me to this forum to get it resolved.)
As of now Plex just does not work. At all. Very soon I will need to find another media server so I guess my related question would be can anybody advise me of any other good media servers for PS4?
Or… is there a way to roll back to the previous version of Plex which was very good and worked perfectly?
Right… looks like I’m giving Emby a try. I’ve identified that as the nearest competitor and hopefully it works well. If it does I won’t be back to Plex.
I have never been so amazed that Plex don’t even give a **** about systems not even working - even when I ask staff members directly I don’t get a response. Awful company.
Sorry you haven’t gotten a response. There aren’t any specifically known issues around playing back video. There is a setting in the app that will log the app’s activity back to your server. Can you enable this setting, then try playing back a video and get the error, then go back to your server and pull the logs using Plex Web. Attach the entire zip file here for me to review. Let me know what you were trying to watch so I can find it in the log. Hopefully, it will say why the video didn’t play.
Unfortunately, no. The Playstation store, like most app stores, do not allow rolling back to a previous version.
Hi thanks for the message. A couple of things first:
You mention “video”… To reiterate, it is every single video out of thousands ( haven’t checked every single one!) but each one I click just gives me the “there has been an error. Visit the forum” message.
And most importantly - The rest of your message wholly confused me. I am going to go and try to work through what you’ve said to see if I can make sense of it and do it, but I may be back asking for a slower step by step. Also, is it going to give any kind of log when it doesn’t play videos at all? It’s not like it starts to play and something goes wrong. It just tells me to go to the forum whatever I click.
p.s. I have reinstalled the software completely a couple of times, before you ask that.
I got the log. Looking at it the first thing I notice is:
Plex Media Server v1.5.7.4016-25d94bad9
You are running a really old version of PMS. I would suggest updating to a more recent version just in case. I don’t see anything specific in the rest of your log. I do see lots of connection errors. This could be due to the older PMS or it could be something within your network. Maybe a DNS rebinding issue. That’s where devices on your network cannot interpret an internet access as being within your local network, so it goes out through the internet and back.
Update PMS first then if you still have issues, redo the steps above and get me new logs based on the newer PMS. Let me know what video you were trying top play back. I didn’t see anything in your log that you actually hit play on something.
Do you mean Plex Media Server?? If so, the problem only started when it made me download and install a new version. I don’t understand how this can be a “really old version”.
This gets more and more confusing.
To recap - I was using Plex happily without incident for a couple of years. Suddenly when I opened Plex (last October or so) it announced that it was installing a new version. This was the first time that I had encountered this revamped, overhauled version of Plex (the background had gone pale and it included all the new “content” that everyone hates so much) and from that moment it refused to play any video file and instead to give me the error message I keep getting. So I don’t know how this is a “really old version”. Besides which, it decided then to install itself a new version. Why would it not do so again?
I am not surprised you don’t see anything in the log because as I said before it doesn’t start movies and then encounter a problem. I get the “there has been a problem” message the instant I click on one - on any one.
I enabled the log activity option, I then went onto the Playstation and clicked on 6 or 7 movies at random and I then pulled off the activity log and sent it to you - that’s all that I did.
Yes, I am referring to Plex Media Server. You are running 1.5.7. The latest is 1.14.1. You are running the latest client on the PS4. My guess is that the new PS4 client does not work well with this older version of PMS.
So partly I’m feeling slightly stupid that I didn’t know that, but partly I’m also thinking - I wish somebody could’ve replied and said that back in November. I’ve not been able to use Plex at all for that long and longer. During that time I’ve encountered other people that have said that they’ve left because it doesn’t work any more… something to think about.
The other thing I think is - why would the Playstation demand that I update the system, but the PC version wouldn’t even mention that there’s a new version?.. I don’t know how many new versions. Even to the point where it is no longer at all compatible with the PS version running on the same network.
Anyway, the main thing is that it works now. I had kind of resigned myself to the fact that it would never work again. Thanks again.
