Screen resolution and auto subtitles on Samsung app

Plex Players Smart TVs
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Server Version#: latest as of Jan 23 2020
Player Version#: latest as of Jan 24 2020

Hello. I’ve installed the Plex app on a Samsung 2019 4K tv and it works well. My library is something a friend has shared. The server is with him. Anyway for all the shows on his side there are .srt files as subtitles. Yet on my smart TVs app I seem to have to manually select with the three dots menu on each episode or movie to play subtitles. In this menu the “unknown (external srt)” is always shown, but it doesn’t auto select. I have to select.

Isn’t this what auto selecting subtitles in settings is supposed to do?

Secondly for some old tv shows that are in 4:3 resolution, in VLC player I used to be able to change the resolution at run time. In Plex is there a way to force this? I checked on the TV settings for “Picture” and the option to change resolution is disabled while playing Plex. So I have to do this from Plex somehow.

Many thanks!

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Subtitle auto-selection

The issue at hand appears to be with the server of your friend. It seems he poorly named those external subtitle files. As a result Plex cannot determine what language they’re for and shows them as unknown.
Naming should be like this:

Movies
  Movie Name (Year)
    Movie Name (Year).ext <- movie file
    Movie Name (Year).[2 or 3 letter language code].srt

    e.g.
    Movie Name (Year).eng.srt
    Movie Name (Year).jap.srt
    Movie Name (Year).fr.srt


After fixing the names, he’ll have to re-scan his library for the change to take effect.

Independent of the above you can verify your own language / subtitle preferences to ensure there’s no additional mishap…
If you have properly set your language preferences and checked Automatically select audio and subtitle tracks via https://ninjas.plex.tv/desktop/master/index.html?#!/settings/account in Audio & subtitle settings, this should work fine.
Do you have:

  1. Automatically select audio and subtitle tracks checked?
  2. set a Preferred subtitle language
  3. set Auto-select subtitle mode to Always enabled? (or at least to Shown with foreign audio – this is used for “forced subtitles”)

Video aspect ratio

From what I’ve seen, Plex doesn’t offer a resolution switch in the TV apps. If you’re ok with a stretched video, you should be able to achieve that with the picture settings of your TV.

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Since the subtitle is identified as unknown it means your friend (Server owner) added subtitles without the proper language code.
Point him towards: https://support.plex.tv/articles/200471133-adding-local-subtitles-to-your-media/#toc-3

And since he didn’t add a language code, the Plex Client has no idea about what to select

Regarding your preferences, they can however be set by browsing towards:
https://app.plex.tv/desktop#!/settings/account

Sadly not

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Thank you very much. The SRT files were the same name as the movie, without the .en, but this works with the browser version and with VLC etc. Just not with the TV version of the app and with the iPad/iPhone version. We have to manually select. Not sure why. Anyway, thanks.

Sad about the inability to force screen resolution. All black and white old movies are then 4:3, which is hideous to watch on modern TVs with lots of black on left and right.

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A friend of mine built a set of curtains which he uses to over the black bars of his 4:3 content on the 16:9 display… makes it look a little like the curtains of a classic movie theater
I need to take a photo of it sometime :wink:

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