If you are not using the 9.01+ hotfix this is expected behavior.
The biggest change in that fix was:
You can either get the hotfix or wait until the next full release. Until then there is nothing that the plex team can do for you.
Thanks for the reply - so by applying the 9.01 + hotfix, will i need to be reinstalling PMS? It seems people are having issues during the reinstall of PMS.
PMS is already installed before and after the hotfix.
I’m not sure what people are trying to do when they say they are reinstalling PMS.
I did a factory reset of Shield. Started new PMS server, and didn’t use any backups from previous server. Running latest Experience + hotfix. Have video preview thumbnail generating turned off. And STILL, I have to pull the plug in the morning because Plex does not play files, on the Shield or any where else. Can’t even access STORAGE in settings before pulling plug.
Now what?
The only issue with the latest PMS 1.25.6.5577 is that if I have two Live TV streams running and try and start a third (my tuner can only support two) then it crashes the whole PMS rather than asking the question if I’d like to stop or cancel playback of a particular stream. Anyone else seeing this? I’ve created a seperate thread so will be interesting if anyone could add their voice into that as well.
After my morning plug-pull reboot the Shield was humming, and Plex was fast. By mid-afternoon, Plex clients could no longer connect. I could access Shield settings, but not storage setting. The more I clicked through menus, the more the Shield slowed until eventually all I had was a black screen. No response….just like this thread.
With all that effort you’d have been better off downgrading Shield to the previous version, then doing everything you did with PMS v1.23, the last best known version. Everything has been more sucky from that version on.
Unfortunately, server isue with users having external SSD for Plex data isn’t solved.
After some of the users confirmed to me few days ago that this isuue is solved, I decided to redo my Shield from scratch.
So: Shield restored to factory settings and external drive formatted as removable storage (before that it was adopted storage). I did Plex server setup, created default libraries and added only Movies and Tv Shows (skipped photos and personal videos, just to make it easier for Plex).
Plex found and built library, about 1.5 GB. Restarted Shield and it was still working.
Since Shield internal storage is unusable (too small) for Plex, I opened Plex settings and decided to move Plex server storage to external removable storage. Waited almost an hour and it didn’t finish (it should be complete in less that 5 or 10 minutes), so I rebooted my Shield again. After that, I was at the point from 2 months ago: server dissapeared.
Very, very frustrating.
Edit: also noticed that Plex server still has issues getting file permissions (need to set “Allow” multiple times until Shield accepts that). For example, after installation it displays “Don’t allow”. When I enter that setting to choose other option, “Allow all the time” is already selected. Then I click “ok”, popoup asks again if I should allow and i choose allow. Then, I exit to previous screen where it says (again) “Don’t allow” (below Files and Media"). I found woraround, you need to choose some other option, exit from that setting and than go back and choose “allow”. After that, settings sould display “Allow” below Files and media settings.
EDIT2: I did some more research, I’m sure it is a problem with external storage. Uninstalled Plex and Plex server after I had this issue today and reinstalled. Created only default libraries, restarted and Plex server dissapeared. It seems that now Plex server data can’t be on external storage (this is the thing breaking Plex server in my case). That was workig very well before the unfortunate Android 11 upgrade. So, is there an option to have Plex server on internal storage and not to run into “low storage space” issue? I think Plex needs some storage to transcode files for playback, is it possible to use external drive for transcoding purposes?
Same issues, it’s causing my high bitrate MKV’s to stop playing and buffering. I’ve noticed with the latest hot fix that the shield also has unstable playback in apps while transferring files through the network to the adopted storage.
Something seems to be sucking resources between PMS, Adopted Storage, and Shield Hot Fix 2.
It’s kinda of crazy were past two months and issues still haven’t been identified or a timetable for fixes. I guess this weekend I’ll be dealing with downgrading to Android 9 and PMS 1.23.
@anon18523487 would sending logs help here for these new performance issues on the hot fix, or do they just tell you its buffering and not why? I could send my log after the failed playback of some test files.
Having this same issue on my shield with high bitrade UHD content.
Player: 8.31.0.31215
PMS: 1.25.7.5604 and 5577
Shield: 9.0.2(33.1.0.301 HF#2)
Is the stream being transcoded. If so, my guess is the issue is due to hardware transcoding not working and the CPU isn’t powerful enough to handle the high bitrate source file. You can check your PMS logs for “speed=” and see of the number after that is <1 which means it isn’t keeping up in real-time.
@anon18523487 - Asked this in the other thread a couple of times, but awaiting a reply.
Is there any ETA to fix the PMS 1.25.x hardware transcoding issues ?
Hardware transcoding is one of the reasons (among other benefits) that I upgraded to Plex Pass Lifetime during the last promotion.
I am not impacted now (intentionally stayed on Shield Experience 8 and PMS 1.23.x when a family member warned me of the issues with Shield Experience 9.0); however, I would like to start looking to upgrade once the HW transcoding is fixed (and Shield file transfer speeds are fully back to normal Pre-Android 11 levels - there is some debate to that on the nVidia forums; many users are still seeing speeds lower than pre-SE 9.0.x even after the 3/2 or 3/3 additional hotfix).
No, this is direct play on the Shield to a LGC9 OLED over HDMI. Was working fine before last/latest update. Seems joining the beta for PMS also caused the player client to update with a know bug.
This response in another thread indicates its has to do with Atmos/TrueHD now being broken:
Sure enough, anything with a True HD track is skipping.
DTS is fine. Vision with DTS is fine. HDR10 or Dolby Visions with TrueHD causes buffering, network spikes, and seems to crash the server now and then.
Logs with the above testing if it helps.
True Romance - DTS fine
John Wick - TrueHD HDR10 buffering
Shining - DTS with Vision - fine
Last Night in Soho - Vision + TrueHD buffering then fails
Plex Media Server Logs_2022-03-10_16-01-45.zip (726.9 KB)
I will try to exit and downgrade from the beta player.
shields have HW transcoding without a plex pass fyi. comes with owning the shield. but you already have lifetime so no worries. enjoy.
@anon18523487 , Reverting to Plex 8.30.2.31202 fixed the issue…
So it is an issue with the beta 8.31.0.31215 and TrueHD handling on shield.
Can you point me to directions to downgrade Shield Experience?
Disregard….found it……clusterf**k.
Thanks, you learn something new every day. 
I have a Shield TV Pro for PMS usage. For Plex streaming playback, I use other devices, such as 3 Roku Ultras (Android TVs as backup), 1 Roku Premiere and older Roku 3 units for some other TVs, less frequently on an Android tablet, Android mobile phone and Windows laptops).
So, just to confirm, the Shield TV Pro, by default (without Plex Pass), supports HW transcoding out of the box and the HW transcoding option (checkbox) setting in Plex settings (via web app page) has no impact and HW transcoding works on my non-Shield playback clients w/o Plex Pass?
Just trying to confirm I understand the implementation of the Plex HW transcoding functionality IF one has a Shield TV Pro and non-Shield playback clients.
Why are we discussing transcoding issues, on a thread about server that dissappears?
Because they were both issues that happened to occur around the same time as the Android 11 Update.
I did further testing about server issues, and it seems that Plex server is working fine if I leave Plex data on internal storage. It has been working few days now and reboots didn’t break server, like they did before.
I am worried though that I’ll run out of storage on my Shield, because Plex library can grow large, and if I understand how it works, some storage is needed to play / transcode videos.
So, my question is, is it possible to configure Plex to use external drive for cache/temporary files, if it is not possible to move server completely to external drive?
I don’t know what your setup is but mine is the following:
Experience 9, latest official release without any hotfixes installed ever. Latest version PMS, I believe it’s 1.25.6.5577. I have 2 identical external NTFS formatted HDDs - PMS data is on the first HDD, media is split between both. My Plex broke just like everyone else’s with the initial Experience update. With the version I’ve listed above my server has been working without any issues non-stop for the past couple of weeks. At no point was my database destroyed and I never had to rebuild it from scratch. I did have a few overnight freezes before that but since the last one about two weeks have passed. I have all automatic scanning disabled. Each time I add/remove media I trigger a manual scan only in the respective library. I hope this helps.
