I believe I’ve found a potential workaround for this crash. While I haven’t had time to watch an entire movie or episode yet, it looks promising so far.
The crash is occurring in the Google IMA (Interactive Media Ads) SDK. Until Plex and/or Google fixes this, technically inclined users can work around the crash by blocking access to the Google IMA server.
To do this, configure your network to block DNS lookups for imasdk.googleapis.com. In my case, I did this by adding the hostname to my NextDNS denylist, which causes lookups for that hostname to return 0.0.0.0. Something similar can be done for other routers or DNS resolvers though.
After blocking that hostname and restarting my Apple TV to clear its DNS cache, I’m now able to stream media that was previously causing the app to crash.
For further context, I’ve found reports of this crash occurring in older versions of the Google IMA SDK dating back to 2022. A fix was released in version 3.18.1 on October 2, 2022, and there doesn’t seem to be much more information about it since then. I’m not sure whether Plex is really using such an outdated version of the SDK or if the issue has resurfaced in a more recent version of the SDK. Either way, this workaround should hopefully help until the issue is resolved more appropriately.
(Also, I apologize for the quick successive replies to this thread. I’m not entirely sure whether I should be editing my previous replies or creating new ones. I’m mainly sharing updates as I learn more, and since the overall theme of each update has varied significantly, I figured it made more sense to post separate replies. The help text to the right of the editor telling me to avoid posting multiple replies is making me second-guess that, though… :P)
