I’ve addressed the areas where my contributions are extraneous. Can you speak to the long delays in acknowledging this issue and the general lack of updates since assigning Google blame?
1 Like
I acknowledged the issue 3 days after it was posted here, so I don’t think that’s a particularly long delay. We investigated it, and after some fairly intensive investigation, we came to the conclusion that the issue was with ExoPlayer, and not directly from us. We then filed with the ExoPlayer team (who have acknowledged it’s an issue on their side), and have worked with them to provide everything we can. There is a public issue which people can follow to track public progress and will be able to see if/when the issue is resolved. As I’d already linked to that and explained that there isn’t anything we can directly do in the interim, I haven’t been providing further updates, because I don’t have anything new to add.
1 Like
Thanks. Don’t imagine it’s easy to be the actual Plex rep in this mix. I also don’t think that the actions you’ve shared in this response have been properly communicated to the user base (this issue should actually be noted on Blog | Plex). Maybe minus that, even where you’re waiting on Google, you could simply say that via a weekly update as the issue extends through another month?
I may be a bit more vocal here but understand that there are a lot of users sitting around thinking the same things I’m speaking to. Simple actions like this help us understand that the company actually cares about this because it has frankly felt like you AND Google have treated this with simple shrugs to date. Dismissing your user base is dangerous stuff.
1 Like
I have never dismissed this issue, and have advocated for it, and followed up on, and popped in to provide an update on here whenever someone has asked, even if I don’t have anything to share. However, I feel like my time is much better spent doing other tasks (I’m a test engineer) than posting weekly updates with nothing to report in the myriad of threads that I follow or am involved in. We’ve never treated this as “simple shrugs”, and I’m sorry if you feel like that is the case. Also, don’t assume that because there is nothing shown in public bug trackers that no work is being done or investigated.
1 Like
I work in a similar but different space. As used to having EVERYBODY complaining. Please review the suggestions offered here. This is not YOUR fault but you represent an org that has done a very poor job in handling this.
2 Likes
Latest info from the ExoPlayer GitHub page …
The internal issue was routed to the SOC manufacturer, who was unable to reproduce the issue and routed it back to the Google TV team. It’s currently on the Google TV team pending next steps. We’re continuing to escalate the issue with that team to try and get some more movement on it.
3 Likes
Hi, does music work on that build?
I have downgraded to 8.15.2 but with the last plex server update it seems to not be working with music. Whenever I click on a song it says “an error occurred while playing” but when I upgrade to the latest version, music works fine. But then I’m stuck with this crashing and not being able to play two episodes of a show in a row. So I have to pick what annoys me least haha
Since they were talking about the SOC manufacturer, I wonder if anyone in that thread has mentioned that previous versions of the ExoPlayer didn’t have the issue.
I guess it could be that newer ExoPlayer updates are trying to access different parts of the SOC drivers and therefore exposing a new bug, but it makes me think they are actually just chasing a squirrel with that line of troubleshooting.
Do the Google developers know that ExoPlayer v 2.10 and maybe v2.12 (based on Emby not having the problem) didn’t seem to have the problem?
Yep, it’s down to 20 bucks now and uses the same SOC as this Chromecast. It’s a really capable, cheap device but has multiple problems with Plex right now since I don’t think they’ve tested it.
I’m kind of waiting for a bunch of people to purchase it over the holidays, then complain here when it doesn’t work with Plex. I documented out a number of solvable problems (beyond the video-stretching here) but can’t get any replies from the devs.
1 Like
To be honest this is more of a “Stick it to Google” thing for me. At least Plex has brave souls like @DaveBinM to stand up for their efforts. Appreciate him, as an Engineer, dealing with these PR/Comms issues.
3 Likes
Thank you @DaveBinM for keeping us informed to the best that you are able with the knowledge you have when you have it! I know this post is not adding to the technical solution or describing the issue better but I wanted to thank you! I think what you are experiencing in the thread is the frustration of users who have not seen much movement on this issue. In my experience this is generally my experiences with massive companies like Google. Thank you again for your work!
1 Like
Why hasn’t Plex downgraded the version of ExoPlayer used by the app to a working version? Why was this not tested?
1 Like
They said a couple months back that it was too much work due to how many changes they have made which depend on features or code in the newer ExoPlayer.
2 Likes
“Working” should take priority over whatever new features are being worked on. The fact is that there are things that could be done by Plex, but they are choosing not to. I shouldn’t have to disable automatic updates at a system level, sideload an old version, and manually update every other app to make it work. If ExoPlayer really is that bad Plex should be developing an alternative.
8 Likes
Hi all, apologies for not reading all previous 250+ comments but I thought I’d give my info/issue here as well.
Generally speaking playback is fine for me (plex pass user with hardware accelerated encoding for that 4K/HDR goodness). Problems arise, though, when enabling, disabling or changing subtitles. Doing so crashes and restarts the whole Chromecast (with Google TV) 9 out of 10 attempts (but not always). Interestingly, the Ethernet connection does not work when the device has restarted. To make that work, I have to manually reset it (unplug, wait ten second, plug back in).
Android TV OS build: QTS1. 210311.008.7350836
Plex app version: 8.24.1.28493
Hope this information is useful for anyone out there to help solve the problem.
Same thing happening to me with subtitles. All related to H.265 content…I don’t recall getting this issue with H.264
Just noting this thread has passed the 6 month mark
3 Likes
With information from Google and the SOC manufacturer we’ve found the issue is down to the tunnelling decoder for HEVC on the Chromecast with Google TV device.
Here’s a build that should provide stable HEVC playback with no device reboots or image stretches, it will land in the v8.26 beta should be out next week.
21 Likes
Thank you so much!!! I know there has been a lot of work going on in the background on this topic and this thread has gotten heated at times. But truly! Thank you! I am excited to hear how this goes with people testing this APK!
1 Like
That’s awesome, thanks for the speedy fix release once google found the root cause.
I’ve updated to the APK provided, and have not been able to reproduce the issue any more since! Hooray for having autoplay back.
And well done everyone for giving it more visibility on github. I’m sure we were annoying, but no doubt it was a factor in the speed of resolution!
