Getting hassled by my son again this morning, spinning circle, plays nothing on his Sony Android TV.
In out in out shake it all about sometimes makes it work, but then it starts moaning it doesn’t have enough bandwidth and transcodes down to SD.
Of course 15Mbps stuff plays fine in 4k from Netflix.
And 50Mbps 4k stuff plays fine on Kodi.
Of course…
Not wanting to jinx anything but my Sony app is playing back 4k content flawlessly this past fortnight. Server running on Synology dsm7, completely new install and connection to TV is ethernet not wifi. Files are all encoded to 265 HEVC, and audio nd video set to passthrough. Currently working flawlessly whie the Windows app and HTPC beta app are not
I have had some hiccups with up next, autoplay unfortunately. Thought it was all fine, but still failing occasionally. Still working but much better than before.
I think the problem is that there’s not much consistency when the playback problems arise. These test builds have definitely gotten better, but the occasional refusals to play still happen. It doesn’t appear to be bitrate-related at all. A 4k movies plays no problem, but some standard HD h.264 file wont? The only thing I noticed is that it’s often files with EAC3 5.1 audio that appear to throw a wrench into the gears. Although not with any consistency either.
The most baffling thing to me however are the autoplay next episode problems. When I turn it off and just hit the play button in the “up next” screen myself it almost always works fine. When I turn it on (which is ostensibly the same thing, except that the player “hits” the button itself) it’s nothing but problems. What could possibly be the difference in me hitting play or the player doing it itself? I don’t get it.
264 files have profiles and levels, I don’t know what they all mean and don’t know if or why they matter to plex but, as there is a recommended max level I’m wondering if that makes a difference
Yeah, I thought it was pretty good, but I am still getting the problems quite a bit.
I have those issues too on a 55’ 9500G Bravia.
The issues made Plex unusable when the version that totally phased out the old player got released.
A few weeks later, issues have gotten way less. There are still problems when playing episodes of a tv series in a row. And beginning playing stuff still takes way more time than my phone app.
Anyway, the same way the support on this thread is occasional and unreliable (404 everywhere without updates or a sticky post …), the same way I have given up on the plex support over the years for any issue.
To be fair(er), issues do get fixed, eventually, over a couple of years, while some other stuff just breaks and the cycle goes on.
It is what it is.
My Bravia X900H has been having more and more issues ever since they forced the new player and disabled the option for the old. Playing episodes in a row always errors out and I have to go back to the series and manually choose the next episode. Even if the current episode is ending and I manually go down and click next, I get the same error as when auto-play kicks in. It has been like that since the summer! And ever since the new player, which really seems like it was a beta project that they got tired of, so rather than trash it, they just said, “Here’s the new player, it’s buggy as hell…deal with it…” My separate server that serves out 4K content, which is not transcoded, no longer even works! For years, I could click a movie from the server and it would start playing withing 1 second, and ever since this new player, I start a movie and it just spins…infinitely…OR, on very rare occassions, it plays just the audio. But if I check the network traffic, even when it’s just the spinning circle, that device is pulling 25MB+ to it. I connected to the exact same 4K plex server with Stremio, hit play, and it instantly started streaming, so it’s absolutely the new player that they forced down our throats, that never should’ve made it out of beta. And before anyone chimes in defending these guys, I’ve been a plex user since the beginning, so I’ve been through it all. I have watched the product and support consistenly decline over the past few years…especially the support! Yes, they have done a couple things well, but rather than introducing new features and options, FIX THE ONES THAT ALREADY EXIST! It’s like quantity over quality with them anymore.
I would absolutely jump ship at this point if there were any other options that checked all the boxes for me, but unfortunately Emby and Stremio don’t do everything I need. With that said, with the increasing issues and lack of support Plex has been demonstrating, I’m about to cut my losses and move to one of those options because even though they might not check all the boxes I need, at least the boxes that they do check, actually freaking work
While I can appreciate that there was an effort, and it should’ve corrected it…it didn’t.
Potential Temporary Resolution
So I have had the same issues with my Sony TV everyone is mentioning. It looks like the playback quality is not updating automatically, even when selected. I went into the show playback settings and selected “Play Original Quality” and let it start playing again. As soon as it starts to try and play(it will, but not properly) go the the show playback settings and select “Update Automatically” and it should start playing just fine. Let me know if this works for you so others will know.
Sixones, can you have a look at our thread here? We have all different brands experiencing the same issues.
https://forums.plex.tv/t/android-tv-up-next-wont-play/717572/30
Here’s a fresh build to try to see how it behaves on the Sony TVs with problems, unfortunately the Sony TVs we have access too don’t show the same problematic behaviour as this thread mentions, hopefully this build sheds some light on the problems.
This version includes the latest ExoPlayer version, a new and more robust demuxer implementation, improvements to the way track selection is implemented, and new handling for rendering to a surface. During video playback when the UI is visible numerous debug statistics will be displayed on the top. Our network cache still has some issues in this build, as such badly muxed videos may constantly buffer or play with artefacts / robotic sound - iOS video recordings from older iOS builds and AVI files might struggle to play smoothly.
If your still facing issues after trying this build, please can you fetch the client logs from this version, a screenshot of the player with the UI (and debug stats) visible and describe the problems you are experiencing.
EDIT: Nevermind, something else might be going on. I’ll report back
Erm that’s odd, I’m guessing you are using resolution switching and your TV is reporting the resolution?
If your looking at the debug overlay, that will show 1080p as that is the maximum resolution that the Android UI can render at, the video itself is played at 4K but the UI that’s on top of the video is resized from 1080p to 4K.
Right, that’s what I was thinking first. But my 4k content really didn’t look very good… i’ll keep testing, nevermind my comment for now.
On a related note, that debug overlay is actually really useful, we should have that in regular builds, too!
A little feedback: So far playback seems to work pretty well. I had one 4k movie where the infamous “not enough bandwith” message kept popping up (plenty of bandwith available though), but otherwhise no issues yet apart from a few stutters. Switching to “automatically converted” works again, thanks!
There is however one very weird new behaviour: apparently my TV now won’t recognise a plex playback as “activity” anymore and will switch to standby after half an hour with no useer input. Quite annoying when watching a movie.
When plex is playing trailers at different resolutions or audio codecs…it reports errors
Tested further, and yes, half an hour without user input and my TV just turns off the screen. There’s also lots of minor new bugs, like the progress bar in the UI just stopping or the play/pause button not changing and the like…
Going back to an earlier version, I’ve had enough. I’ve spent sooo much time testing these test builds over the last months, I feel like I would have to send plex a bill to keep doing this. I’m still a customer, not an unpayed intern…
Here is a new log from one of my users:
827 Sony Android Logs Fail Playback Start.txt (4,3 MB)
Unfortunately, it still runs very badly. 90% of all files do not start.
Please have a look at this. There must be an error somewhere.
I have also tested something with myself. Certain things run perfectly. Still others only if one triggers them, respectively briefly 30 seconds forward and back again, then suddenly they start.
Ohhhh, I’m glad this isn’t just me! I was investigating investing in a roku or something. Will be watching this thread.
I’d like to try one of the beta apks, but none of the links are active. Could they be posted again please. Cheers!
