I replaced my Sharp Roku tv with a TCL google tv. Plex on the Roku platform works perfectly, but on the google tv platform won’t play some content. When I play a higher resolution movie or tv show a yellow wheel spins for a while, roughly 60 seconds then stops. A frozen image loads on the screen and that’s the furthest it gets. It won’t play. Please help.
That isn’t particularly high res. Just 1080p but a pretty large nitrate for that. Is the TV wired or on wifi? Is refresh/display rate switching enabled.
Also those look like server logs ,not the android logs. Do you know if server is transcoding or is client direct playing? Can the TV play DTS MA natively?
Refresh Rate switching is off. I left the settings as they were. The tv is on Wi-Fi but had the same issue even when wired. Seems to get higher speeds on Wi-Fi at least 120 Mb compared to 80 Mb when wired.
How do I enable direct play? Is this done on the server (computer) or player (TV app)? Is there an automatic selection option?
Per TCL specs, this particular TV (TCL MODEL 55S546) can passthrough: Dolby Atmos / Dolby Digital Plus / Dolby Digital so I’m almost certain that it can play DTS MA natively.
What’s really odd is that I have an older: Toshiba Fire TV, a Sharp Roku TV & Samsung Tizen TV which play the same exact file flawlessly. All are on the same Wi-Fi network. Makes me wonder if the Google TV platform is the problem.
Here are the android logs:
android logs.txt (99.5 KB)
Those logs don’t appear to have the app start up where it should show what codecs the device is saying is supported. Possible to force quit app and reload (so you see the Plex logo animation) then get logs again. We think possibly the device is saying it supports DTS when it actually doesn’t so the server is not transcoding to somethign compatible. When we looked up that model TV the device specs don’t list DTS support.
Here are the updated logs:
Logs.txt (183.2 KB)
Do you have anything with regular DTS or even DTSHD (just not DTS MA) you can try to play
Very strange!! The Plex app won’t play DTS tracks. I said Plex app because Kodi and VLC can play the same tracks on the same TV with no issues. In the end, I believe Google TV platform is the culprit.
I even plugged in an old 2018, 1080p Roku Streaming stick and that version of Plex played the same track pictured above, but at a very lower resolution, of course.
Is there a way to work around the Google TV Plex version, Kodi & VLC don’t even come close to organizing content and Plex does.
Shouldn’t Plex Automatically adjust the audio track to match the TV?
The TV is telling the app that is can play DTS but it actually can’t is the problem. Generally TVs or devices would have their own settings to say what it supports or not for various devices.
VLC/Kodi are open source and can do whatever they want in their app to do what the TV can’t. We need to follow licensing for legal reasons else we will be sued to oblivion.
The only possible work around if the TV does not have settings to disable DTS is to set the passthough in the app to Optical then there will be another setting that appears to enable AC3 (aka - dolby digital) or DTS and just select AC3. So it has everything converted to Dolby. But I have only personally used that workaround on separate devices like the Google TV which also does not support DTS, not a TV itself.
Switching to Optical AC3 did the trick. I bought this TV 11/18/22 and ever since I’ve not been able to enjoy it. Thank you kindly for your help.
