PMS 1.11.0.4666 + Plex (ATV 4K v1.23 (7860) = Black Screen

General Discussions
1

It seems the 4K direct play issue for Apple TV 4K has been resolved in a sense. With the most current build of PMS and the most current update through TestFlight for Plex Client on ATV 4K, I can see Direct Play is now functioning. However, I’m not getting any audio or video on the screen. It’s all black.

Any help?

Thanks

2

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Update Plex Media Server to 1.11.0.4666
  2. Update AppleTV Plex Client using TestFlight to 1.23 (7860)
  3. Load 4K MKV movie
  4. Black screen

I’ve confirmed Direct Stream works on both the audio and video streams. There’s no transcoding as long as I select the AC3 5.1 audio channel. As soon as I pick the TrueHD 7.1 audio channel, the audio stream transcodes. In either case, nothing appears on the screen. It’s just black with no audio or video.

My 4K MKV library is built using MakeMKV with my 4K UHD discs. I don’t use handbrake or any other conversion applications since I like to keep my media in lossless quality.

I’ve even modified the tvOS.xml file with the following update to the codec section:

<VideoProfile container="mp4" codec="h264,mpeg4,hevc,h265" audioCodec="aac,ac3,eac3" subtitleCodec="mov_text,tx3g,ttxt,text" />

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

3

Another update.

I downgraded Plex Media Server to the public release (1.10.1.4602). I now get video, but the 4K MKVs are being transcoded down to h264. I made the same change to the tvOS.xml file in my previous post, but that doesn’t seem to help. I still get buffering issues.

I’m still using the AppleTV Plex Client 1.23 (7860).

I feel like I’m seeing a lot of mixed information on how AppleTV handles MKV files. Event when I play regular 1080p MKV rips, Plex is transcoding. I didn’t realize it before because I never had any problems streaming. It only came to my attention after I ran into issues with 4K content.

Going back to other posts in the forum, users state you need to use MP4 containers instead of MKV for AppleTV to work properly. However, based on the Plex Server 1.11.0.4666 release, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Plex is able to stream both AC3 5.1 and 3840x2160 video using Direct Play. The only downside is nothing shows up on the screen.

From what I can gather, these are the following issues that still need to be resolved for AppleTV 4K:

  1. 4K lossless MKVs should be able to Direct Play / Direct Stream on AppleTV 4K as evidenced in the most current PlexPass build of PMS. The video and audio need to reappear since it’s just a black screen.
  2. Can the TrueHD 7.1 audio stream be Direct Played / Direct Streamed without transcoding?
  3. Subtitles are still hindering playback to the point it never stops buffering. These subtitles I’m referring to are PGS which come directly off the disc. I don’t use any SRT or external text files.

I’m sure there are many other folks experiencing the same issues as I am. Feel free to add to this if you have any suggestions or workarounds.

Thanks

4

You might want to post this in the ATV beta area…