Plex Pass Upgrade breaks playing a 4k movie on a 1080p TV

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

Server Version#: Latest for Windows
Player Version#: Latest for Android TV (Shield TV 2019 not pro)
No Logs

I just upgraded to Plex Pass on 10/17/2023 because I tried to play a 4K Dolby Vision movie on a 1080p TV. Plex popped up a notice and said I needed a Plex Pass to tone map the HDR Dolby Vision. So I purchased a Plex Pass and now Plex just exits every time I try to play any 4k movie on a 1080p TV. At least before purchasing the Plex Pass it would down convert 4k to 1080p correctly. If I cant get Plex to play 4k Dolby Vision movies on a 1080p TV then I want my money back for the Lifetime Plex Pass. I made no changes to any settings.
Please advise!

2

I found the issue. I had to uncheck the box “Use hardware acceleration when available”. But, then the CPU usage went to 76%. So I opened up Jellyfin and played the same 4k Dolby Vision profile 5 movie and it used FFMPEG and HW acceleration. CPU usage w/ Jellyfin was negligible.

Is there a workaround for this bug? Or should I just get my money back? (Not much of a server if only one movie can be transcoded at a time)

3

Well Darnit! On closer inspection that trick above only works for some DV movies. I get that dreaded cant play this Video message box. Oh Well… Back to Jellyfin! It plays everything!

4

What hardware are you using? Also do you have the tone mapping inside Plex server settings checked?

I have played 4K DV movies on non HDR TVs at 1080p and the trans coding works for me.

5

Interesting! Yes, I had tone mapping on and off and every possible combination of HW transcoding, etc.! :slight_smile: Here is an example of a Video that will not play. The relevant line is
HDR format : Dolby Vision, Version 1.0, dvhe.05.06, BL+RPU

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : HEVC
Format/Info                              : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile                           : Main 10@L5@High
HDR format                               : Dolby Vision, Version 1.0, dvhe.05.06, BL+RPU
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Duration                                 : 21 min 54 s
Bit rate                                 : 16.1 Mb/s
Width                                    : 3 840 pixels
Height                                   : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 24.000 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 10 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.081
Stream size                              : 2.47 GiB (98%)
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No
Color range                              : Full
6

Plex can’t transcode DV because they don’t have the license. Profile 5 doesn’t have an HDR10 layer to fall back to

2 Likes
7

Thanks for the extra info. Does look like Jay is right in his response. Looks like profile 5 and doesn’t have the standard HDR10 injected in the file. Sorry man.

8

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.