There have been a lot of threads on the Plex and NVidia forums regarding a Plex update that broke external storage access from Nvidia Shield Plex servers. I haven’t seen any solutions yet, but I stumbled on a workaround that works for me that I’m documenting here so others can benefit (maybe it will help the Plex team to figure out a solution for the root problem).
Problem statement: NVIDIA Shield Plex server is unable to access content from my LAN (some content stored on NAS, some on a Windows PC). Plex shows “No items to display, This directory appears to be empty”. Running “Scan library files” from the Plex client on the TV or the web client doesn’t populate the items. Reinstalling the Plex app doesn’t help. Note - NVIDIA Shield accessing my existing Plex server on my LAN works fine, but I want to switch to using the server on the Shield as it should be faster.
Workaround:
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On the NVIDIA Shield TV, go to SETTINGS/STORAGE and turn on TRANSFER FILES OVER LOCAL NETWORK. This allows you to access your network content via SMB. For some reason, you can’t access network libraries in the normal manner (ex. [\server\share](file:///\server\share)), it has to be through SMB which looks like /storage/server/share.
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Choose MOUNT NETWORK STORAGE. Select an item from the available network storage and hit enter. It will prompt you to enter in credentials to access that resource on your network. Repeat this process for each network storage point you want to access.
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On your PC, go into the PLEX web client, select a media library (ex. Movies) and click on the three vertical dots to the right. Choose manage library/edit. Choose add folders, click on the browse for media folder button. In addition to the default SDCARD choice you should now see choices for the network storage you made available in step 2. Choose one and the appropriate media share on it, then click Add. Repeat this process for each of your media libraries.
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Using the NVIDIA Shield Plex app, go to the line with your Username (should be right above HOME). Click the middle button to bring up SETTINGS. You should see the choices “Switch user” and “Settings”. Choose settings.
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Scroll down to the PLEX MEDIA Server setting. Turn the server off, then back on.
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On your PC, go into the PLEX web client, select a media library (ex. Movies) and click on the three vertical dots to the left of it. Choose SCAN LIBRARY FILES.
Click on the activity icon on the top right of the screen (looks like an EKG blip) you’ll see it scanning through the items in that library. Once all the items have been scanned, you’ll be able to see them in the NVIDIA Shield Plex library.
- IMPORTANT - Repeat steps 4-6 on each media library (for some reason you can’t just repeat step 6. It will give you the queuing scan message, but it doesn’t actually kick off the scan until you stop and restart the server.
Final comment: This * workaround * is intended to help you get your libraries populated with their initial content. Hopefully Plex will soon have a fix that renders it unnecessary. One issue:
Plex uses the location of the folders in your libraries as the default for Live TV and DVR. This is a problem because Live TV and DVR doesn’t recognize the SMB share format (/storage/server/mytv) and gives a misleading error “There was not enough free space to start the recording” when in fact the DVR is pointing to a location it doesn’t recognize (it works fine when I use my PC plex server DVR when the location is pointed at normal fileshare D:\mytv). This wouldn’t be a problem if the location string was editable, but it is not. My workaround for the moment is to tape my shows on my PC plex server and watch them on my Nvidia Shield based server. L It would be great if Plex allowed the string to be edited.
Info on my system:
- NVIDIA Shield TV Pro (201* 9) V8.1.0 (32.7.301.32)
- NVIDIA Shield Plex server v1.18.4.2171
- NVIDIA Shield Plex client v 7.26.0.1.4578
