Solved, scroll to the end for the fix
Server Version#: v1.25.2.5319-c43dc0277 - Microsoft PC x64 - build: windows-x86 windows
Player Version#: platform=webOS, platformVersion=6.2.0, device=webOS 6.2.0, model=OLED55A1AUA
Hi,
Over the last two weeks Plex playback has become spottier and spottier playing on my local network from a local Plex Windows Server running current version.
If I use the web player from within the network, I can play anything.
If I use the Roku Plex app on a Roku TV, I can play anything.
However from the LG TV, a less than three month old tv it fails. As for the other hardware on the network, it’s an all gigabit network, media server is very high end Ryzen with all SSD Storage for no good reason.
I can browse the full library on the LG OLED TV but when I play a title, I see the error ‘An unexpected error occurred, unable to load title into playback queue’
Here’s the resulting logs from the server side.
Dec 25, 2021 20:21:12.938 [14196] DEBUG - Completed: [192.168.187.249:40282] 200 POST /playQueues?own=1&excludeElements=Actor%2CCollection%2CCountry%2CDirector%2CGenre%2CLabel%2CMood%2CPart%2CProducer%2CRole%2CSimilar%2CWriter%2CPhoto&excludeFields=file%2Ctagline&uri=server%3A%2F%2Fsynthetic-192-168-187-30-32400%2Fcom.plexapp.plugins.library%2Flibrary%2Fmetadata%2F1749&type=video&continuous=0&includeRelated=0&shuffle=0&repeat=0&extrasPrefixCount=0 (9 live) GZIP 3ms 658 bytes (pipelined: 3)
Dec 25, 2021 20:21:17.692 [1944] DEBUG - Request: [192.168.187.249:40282 (Subnet)] POST /log (9 live) GZIP
Dec 25, 2021 20:21:17.692 [1944] INFO - [Plex for LG] [null:l0d109q3d1rel7mo3m572l5o] Navigating to screen: VisualMediaPlaybackScreen
Dec 25, 2021 20:21:17.692 [1944] INFO - [Plex for LG] [null:l0d109q3d1rel7mo3m572l5o] [PlaybackMetrics] Attaching playback metrics to PlayerController
Dec 25, 2021 20:21:17.692 [1944] INFO - [Plex for LG] [null:l0d109q3d1rel7mo3m572l5o] [SubtitleConnectionManager] Subtitle connection ignored. App is not rendering subtitles.
Dec 25, 2021 20:21:17.692 [1944] INFO - [Plex for LG] [null:l0d109q3d1rel7mo3m572l5o] [ServerConnectionTestManager] Stopped
Dec 25, 2021 20:21:17.692 [1944] INFO - [Plex for LG] [null:l0d109q3d1rel7mo3m572l5o] Navigated to screen: VisualMediaPlaybackScreen
Dec 25, 2021 20:21:17.692 [1944] WARN - [Plex for LG] [null:l0d109q3d1rel7mo3m572l5o] _onOnPlayPauseInvokedChanged is not defined for @autoCallback property: onPlayPauseInvoked
Dec 25, 2021 20:21:17.692 [1944] WARN - [Plex for LG] [null:l0d109q3d1rel7mo3m572l5o] [PlaybackSessionController] could not initialize playback session!
Dec 25, 2021 20:21:17.692 [1944] ERROR - [Plex for LG] [null:l0d109q3d1rel7mo3m572l5o] Playback error occurred. Reason: FailedToCreateSession, Failed to create playback session!, Message: No data returned in network response
Dec 25, 2021 20:21:17.692 [1944] WARN - [Plex for LG] [null:l0d109q3d1rel7mo3m572l5o] [PlaybackSessionController] could not retry, reporting error
Dec 25, 2021 20:21:17.692 [1944] WARN - [Plex for LG] [null:l0d109q3d1rel7mo3m572l5o] [PlaybackMetrics] Player sent ready signal or closed but no player or playable provided!
Dec 25, 2021 20:21:17.692 [1944] INFO - [Plex for LG] [null:l0d109q3d1rel7mo3m572l5o] Opening modal: ActionsModal
Dec 25, 2021 20:21:17.692 [1944] INFO - [Plex for LG] [null:l0d109q3d1rel7mo3m572l5o] Opened modal: ActionsModal
Dec 25, 2021 20:21:17.692 [14196] DEBUG - Completed: [192.168.187.249:40282] 200 POST /log (9 live) GZIP 0ms 320 bytes (pipelined: 4)
Dec 25, 2021 20:21:20.646 [13284] DEBUG - Completed: [192.168.187.249:40096] 200 GET /player/proxy/poll?deviceClass=pc&protocolVersion=3&protocolCapabilities=timeline%2Cplayback%2Cnavigation%2Cplayqueues&timeout=1 (9 live) GZIP 20002ms 5 bytes (pipelined: 13)
Solved: after typing this out, I realized my playback issues began two weeks ago…right after I installed a PiHole on my whole network. I dug in a bit and found this interesting thread on reddit talking about unbond.config and how that works, and how, when you go to play a title on plex, it resolves to the server with a complex host name that looks like this:
192-168-187-30.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz012345.plex.direct
Which is frankly a really amusing and weird address. So, I decided to add a server level white list for plex. Which worked…then I experimented and found that just adding a wildcard entry to plex.direct was all I needed.
After adding the wild card entry, it just worked immediately.
