Hi there. Long time plex pass user here.
I used to use the sync feature a lot back when I traveled regularly and before all the streaming services offered decent download options. It was always a bit of a struggle to get it to work but if I did it ahead of time I always just about managed to get things downloaded onto my phone.
A fair while back they updated the sync function to the new and now current download function and I remember it simply not working (for me at least) on release.
I recently updated my server and apps to the latest and assumed that by now most big bugs would have been ironed out and it would work. I queued up a few things to sync, the conversions started and I left the phone and server to do its thing. A couple of days later only one item downloaded, many of the title’s conversions stopped randomly and it was just a big old mess. Tried leaving the app open and restarting the downloads and all the old tricks to no avail. Server is on a M2 mac and phone is a 12 pro. Internal network and external networks are all fine and set up correctly.
Out of interest I installed emby server on the same machine, pointed at my library on the NAS and kicked off a few downloads on my phone. About an hour later they were all done and synced properly to my phone with no special sauced needed and converted perfectly as per the my settings in the app. Sure Emby isn’t quite as slick as plex for some things but I am now going to move over to it as it seems to just work.
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to support hardware encoding on apple silicone yet but the CPU encoding goes fast enough for my needs and I can happily stream a re-encoded HDR tone mapped 4k files no problem to remote and local clients (those apple chips are v good, especially with just passive cooling too).
Am I missing a trick with Plex, experiencing a rare situation/bug or is the download function that bad for you guys too? Just curious really! Cheers.
