I have Plex server that services multiple devices remotely. iOS, windows, Apple TV, MacOS - without issues.
I have someone using a 2021 Sony Bravia Android TV, using the TV Plex app from Google play store.
My server is up to date
The TV is up to date
The TV Plex app is up to date (and has been uninstalled, reinstalled and cache cleared)
The app regularly crashes and restarts when trying to play a video. Some videos work reliably, many others don’t. Once it press play, the Plex circle comes up for a few seconds as if it is buffering, then the app opening Plex logo appears and kicked back to home.
Sometimes I can get the video to play if I go to a video that I know works fine, play that for a few seconds, then go back and play my failed video, and that occasionally works.
I’m convincing myself that it became more common when I started using H265 more but I’m starting think I’m deciding the problem and hoping that I can find an argument that fits.
Had a very similar problem across all my android devices (Sony A8H, Galaxy S22, Galaxy Tab s8+) and have boiled it down it down to my pre-roll.
If I have the pre-roll enabled, all movies and android devices that are using direct play with SRT subtitles simply won’t work. You would need to transcode either the video with PGS subtitles or use an unsupported audio format. The pre-roll used to work but looks like it broke in one of the recent updates.
For the mobile android devices specifically, the Plex Player simply won’t start movies with any sort of FLAC audio, you just get a crash and it suggest to clear cache. External players like VLC work just fine when selected from the options.
Thanks for the reply, I checked the settings and pre-roll videos were not enabled.
As an update, I’ve discovered a quirk that can be a work around.
For the sake of this thread, let’s assume episode 1 of something works, but when I try choose episode 2, Plex tried to load the video and then crashes back to restart.
However, if I let episode 1 finish and then continue the countdown to the next episode, then episode with play. Go figure.
So it’s a way to play a TV episode, but obviously still gives me a problem with movies.
