https://forums.plex.tv/t/2026-20-0-beta-ios-and-tvos-4k-dovi-hdr10-won-t-play-infinite-spinning-circle/943966/92

I don't know what's happening, it's the first time I encounter this issue. I simply cannot read any 4k file. I have no problems watching 1080p content, but if it's 4k it buffers constantly (though sometimes I get only sounds, but no picture). If I switch the picture quality to 720p it reads the file though...

Picture quality is set to Original, I've restarted my Apple TV 4k 3rd gen, my router (the wifi is strong, no issues there).

I just don't get it, it doesn't work. The app auto-updates on my Apple TV, was there a recent update that broke the 4k content on PleX? Anyone else facing this issue?

I watched the show once with no problem. Now only going from episode 1 to episode 2 it doesn't auto play. Doesn't even show the counter or that there is a next episode. The first time it played fine between these episodes. I haven't turned off any settings like the skip credits which is google's go to answer it seems.

Could it be my naming even though it worked the first time?

Over the Garden Wall [2014] - s01 e01 - The Old Grist Mill

Over the Garden Wall [2014] - s01 e02 - Hard Times at the Huskin' Bee

My setup has been working for such a long time. Years actually. Server and client apps were updated but no transcoding issue. A week ago out of the blue, transcoding for only live tv kicked in with it’s problem. HDHomeRun Flex 4k is either 1080i transcoded to (MPEG2VIDEO) 1080p or 480i to 480p by Plex. I have read so many posts and potential fixes - tried a bunch. I think I just have to dig deeper into logs. Recorded content is fine with no playback issues.

Using a RPi4 for basically TV DVR, not a full-up setup like folks out there. The 4 core Arm processor is working and keeping up but it’s not delivering smoothly - probably a delay in the pipeline within the server. Network is gigabit but may have 100mb cable worst case, and if so, should be more than enough for HD content. SSD should be good.

So I see posts on Reddit and the web for this issue going back 10 years. Why hasn’t this been better managed with a solution by now? For example, select direct stream and it should just feed the video to the client as-is and not transcode content. Why isn’t it this simple?

Hi everyone,

I'm having a strange issue with Plex and was wondering if anyone knows how to fix it.

Whenever I add a movie to my library, Plex automatically creates an additional entry for a movie collection (film series) associated with that movie.

For example:

I add Movie A to my library.

Plex displays Movie A as expected.

At the same time, Plex also creates a separate collection entry named after the movie or its associated collection, even though I only have a single movie.

This happens with individual movies, not just with movies that are part of a larger franchise or series.

Is there a setting that causes Plex to automatically create these collections? Ideally, I would like Plex to display collections only when I actually want them, rather than automatically creating one for every movie.

Has anyone experienced this issue or knows how to prevent it?

Thanks in advance!

I was watching a show I have hosted locally, paused to go make lunch, came back and Plex now wants me to pay $3.99/mo to play files hosted locally while on my own network? When did this happen?

AI CONTENT DISCLOSURE

Dusk is built with heavy use of AI coding agents, and I want to be upfront about exactly how:

• Code: most of the code is written by AI coding agents, mainly Claude Code and OpenAI Codex, often several running in parallel on separate tasks. I decide what gets built and how it's architected, review the changes, and steer or reject what doesn't fit. I am a professional Software Engiener though and have been for about 7 years, so I wouldn't say I don't know what's going on.
• Tests: the unit tests in the repo are mostly written by the agents too. (check) Real testing happens by me on my own devices (iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV) against my own Plex server.
• Documentation: the internal developer docs in the repo (architecture notes, agent instructions) are largely AI-written and kept up to date by the agents.
• App Store text and release notes: mostly written by myself with occasional spell checking by AI.
• Website (getdusk.app): Web components built by AI, text written (mostly) by me.
• This post: written by me. AI was used for spell checking
• In the app: Dusk itself has no generative AI.

The whole project is open source (MIT), so you can read every line and the agent instructions yourself: github.com/marvinvr/dusk-player

---

Anyway, hey all, first time posting Dusk here :)

I've used Plex for years, but the official app on my Apple devices always felt like it got in the way of my own library. So I started building the client I wanted: Dusk, a native Plex app for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV.

What it does:

• Plays pretty much everything: AVPlayer for what Apple handles natively, VLC under the hood for the rest, direct play first
• Offline downloads, skip intro/credits, PiP
• Live TV with a full guide
• AirPlay while Dusk stays the remote
• Plex Home user switching with PIN
• Seerr: request stuff right from search
• Upscaling for low-res content

New in 1.6

• SharePlay: watch together over FaceTime
• Apple TV Improvements: now matches frame rate and dynamic range to the content, and multichannel audio is fixed
• Subtitles: font size setting and OpenSubtitles download via Plex

It's free and open source (MIT), no ads, no tracking, no promoted content, and every feature is available to everyone.

If something is broken or feels off, tell me here or on GitHub. I read all of it.

getdusk.app · App Store · GitHub

AI disclosure :

• Code: a large part of Aether is written with AI coding agents (mainly Claude Code, Codex and Grok), often several running in parallel. I decide what gets built and how it's architected, review every change, and test everything myself on my own iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac and Vision Pro against my own servers.

• Tests and internal docs: mostly written by the agents.

• This post and the App Store text drafted by me, polished by AI.

• In the app: the optional "Ask Aether" recommendations run on-device with Apple Intelligence.

------

Hey all!

With all the frustration around the recent Plex app updates, I wanted to share what I’ve been building: Aether, a native player for your own media on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac and Vision Pro.

One app, all your sources

• Plex, Jellyfin, Silo and Emby (several servers at once), plus SMB and WebDAV shares and files on the device, and yes, you can browse one library at a time, pick a few, or see them all merged into one.

• One Home, one Continue Watching and one search across all of them, including Trakt

• Big libraries are fine. Aether keeps its own on-device index, so browsing, filtering and search stay instant and work offline. I test with libraries of 80,000+ films.

Vision Pro: a real cinema 🎬

• Watch in your own immersive cinema: a dark screening room, or an IMAX auditorium where the screen is the whole front wall, with raked seating and adjustable screen size

• Real 3D films: side-by-side, over-under, MVC and .mk3d copies are detected from the file itself, play in 3D with one tap, can swap eyes, and each title remembers your choice

• Spatial videos play as 3D Spatial, subtitles stay on the screen, and Skip Intro/Credits work right in the cinema

Playback: this is where most of the work went

Aether has its own playback engine, PrismCore. It repackages MKV and other files on the device into something Apple's native player plays perfectly, so there's no server transcode and no VLC-style software rendering:

• Dolby Vision (profile 7 → 8.1 conversion on the device), HDR10 and HLG, with display frame-rate and dynamic-range matching

• Lossless audio: TrueHD, DTS-HD MA and PCM up to 7.1 (experimental)

• TrueHD Atmos with height channels rendered on the device (experimental). Receivers switch to Dolby Atmos.

• Image subtitles (PGS, VobSub) turned into text on the device, so they stay sharp and styleable

• 5.1/7.1 as spatial surround on AirPods

• Direct play first. If a server refuses to stream something, Aether plays the original file.

• And for everything else there's a fallback player built on mpv, so even exotic codecs, old AVI/WMV rips and styled ASS subtitles play, with no server transcode needed.

Live TV

• Your own M3U/Xtream playlists, HDHomeRun, or your server's Live TV, with a full guide

• Build your own 24/7 channels from a series or your whole library

And also

• Play on Apple TV: browse on your iPhone or iPad and send the title straight to your Apple TV

• Live TV Multiview: watch several channels at once on Apple TV and iPad, swap and add channels from the guide

• Catch-up: watch what you missed, if your provider keeps an archive

• What's This Song?: Aether recognizes songs playing in a film (automatically for Supporters)

• Ask Aether: ask for recommendations in plain language, on-device with Apple Intelligence

• Up Next and Calendar: what you're watching, what airs next, and when your watchlist films become available

• Server Dashboard and Speed Test for each of your servers

• Wi-Fi Upload: drop files onto your device from any browser on the same network

• Poster Builder: badges for 4K, HDR, Dolby Vision, Atmos, 3D and more on your library posters

• Music with synced, word-by-word lyrics, a queue and a sleep timer

• Offline downloads, skip intro/credits, PiP, profiles with PINs and parental controls

• Seerr requests, OpenSubtitles, Trakt and Simkl

• 14 languages

• No ads and no analytics. Aether collects nothing.

Coming next: Sport 🏟️

A Sport section with live scores, leagues and tables, match events, and where each match is on your own channels, plus an optional Sport tab and a Home rail.

Pricing: all playback, library and server features are free. An optional Supporter subscription or lifetime purchase (with a 14-day trial) unlocks extras like the Observatory theme, app icons, Smart Downloads and song recognition, and keeps development going.

Aether is available now on the App Store for iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac and Apple Vision Pro.

Our Discord community is slowly growing. It's the best place for feedback, feature ideas and early news (like the Sport section). Come say hi!

What I’m building is the player I always wanted: Infuse-level playback, wrapped in a library that actually feels good to browse every evening.

Web: https://aetherplayer.com

TestFlight (newest features first): https://testflight.apple.com/join/uk1r915D

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/aether-player/id6775229911

Discord: https://discord.gg/MNqDfhGsdJ

I was one of the ones that didn’t update. My own bad.
1. How does this affect macOS? Or is this only a windows thing?
2. I’ve update my server app, am I safe?
3. As a Mac user how can I tell if the exploit is still there?

So I thought it might be fun to see how people arrived at Plex. In my case I was happily doing my thing with Amazon Music, back in they days where you could upload mp3s to their cloud, which made up for the problem of particular streaming services missing particular tracks, and gig recordings etc being largely impossible to play on stream. I started to notice that away from my cloud uploads things were starting to randomly disappear, presumably as rights expired.

I could cope with this mostly by uploading things to the cloud. And then they stopped uploads before retiring that service entirely. Needless to say I was furious. So, it was time to find an alternative. None of the cloud offerings gave me freedom to own my music - if I bought flac music files I couldn't play them anywhere.

So I looked around the internet, scouring high and low, and found some things around Kodi that just didn't cut it, Emby was a bit of a usability challenge, finally I found Plex with all the slickness of a cloud offering and yet I could host my own files and be assured that I was in charge of what I could and couldn't play, and given how censorship was starting to come for so many things on video that made the choice even easier.

So here I am, on Plex. 8 years later, sure I think we all have gripes about the way it's going, but it did a great job of making this kind of setup available to anyone who wanted it.

End of ramble. I look forward to hearing what pushed others over the edge.

I've suddenly found that my container was eating up my CPU and looked into it, found this

which seems to be something like XMRig but I'm not sure.
Using linuxserver/plex image. killed the container for now.

Anyone else noticed something like this?

Idk what happened but the new UI update lags so much on my TV that I had to abandon Plex all together.

It's a shame, I like the update to see all the Plex servers on the overview page (I use 3) but playing video basically freezes the UI. Combined with having to set "I want subtitles" for every single episode makes the experience unbearable 🥲

Dear Plex,
I've been with you since the real beginning: a scrappy XBMC fork on a Mac, with Elan and his dog steering the ship. You took a mess of badly named .avi files and turned them into a proper cinema. I told my friends about you. I bought the lifetime pass back when "lifetime" was a sentiment, not a pricing tier.

Then you changed. A Discover tab nobody asked for. Ad-supported movies parked next to my own library like a timeshare salesman at a wedding. A redesign that made finding my own media feel like a scavenger hunt. Emails telling my friends what I'd been watching.

And then you decided that streaming *my own files*, from *my own server*, over *my own internet*, was a premium feature. That's when I knew you'd forgotten who we are. We're not your audience. We're the people who *built* your audience, answering "how do I set up Plex?" on forums for fifteen years, for free, because we believed in you.

You used to be a media server company. Now you're a streaming platform that tolerates media servers.

So I'm leaving, and taking my library with me.

**To everyone else:** keep an eye on the new projects in this space. One I'd especially recommend is **Silo** : free, open source, self-hosted, and built by people who seem to actually care. It reminds me of what early Plex felt like.

Goodbye, Plex. Thanks for the memories. Even the ones I had to pay to stream remotely.

TLDR: plex enshittified. Move to Silo.

AI CONTENT DISCLOSURE - This tool is 100% AI generated. The content of this post is not, despite the warning at the bottom of this page as I try to submit it.

WooSarr (or WoosArr) (no affiliation with the *Arr apps we know and love) is a Plex user library management system, and optional Discord bot.

You can manage user libraries manually through the web interface (Mass adding of libraries to users!!), or use Discord roles to manage library access dynamically. WooSarr can create the roles or use existing roles (such as ones used by a Patreon integration or other role management bots).

It also has an invite to plex feature, to streamline the Discord -> Plex workflow.

Finally, it has a Discord /request command pipeline to Seerr, because I was already linking Plex accounts, and quite literally my Requestrr server fell down as I was building this, and the current Requestrr is the 3rd repo I've had to deal with for a request bot, I said, "Why the heck not?" (Sorry VaultRequestrr, I didn't know you existed until later. You look excellent.) This integration uses your Discord->Plex linked accounts to identify who requested a show or movie. I specifically didn't use /tv and /movie or /request tv/movie because my users aren't the greatest at knowing which is which, and then complaining when the bot can't find a "show" that's actually a movie or vice versa. I wish I was kidding.

It's built for Docker and UnRAID.

It supports Proxies (nginx, etc), OIDC SSO, and a bunch of other stuff. It's got a useful dashboard that I actually like looking at, and pretty much every feature can be turned off, or has some level of control on it (because I like options).

It's 100% vibe-coded, so if you hate that, don't use it. I'm not a WebDev ¯_(ツ)_/¯.

You can find it here: https://github.com/WoosArr/woosarr

Just noticed that the docker image docker.io/plexinc/pms-docker:1.43.3.10828-00f62d37d starting hogging my CPU 100% and its a crypto miner.

I think plex has a vulnerability that allows attackers to launch the miner from outside.

I am very glad im separating everything very nicely so they only could have access to my media files read only and plex database configuration files.

Maybe that is the missing push into the direction of jellyfin?

Also very concerning: the mods at r/plex immediatly removed my post which had identical screenshot and text. i guess they dont want the plex users to know?

Hi everyone! Basically what the title says - both my phone (android) and the Plex app on my Chromecast won't play anything with audio listed as eac3 5.1. I don't get an error message or anything like that. Seemingly the file loads, the bar down the bottom and all of that loads with the correct episode/film duration and then all I get is a spinning buffer wheel forever. I've tried everything recommended in various forums - I feel like I've done every combination of Plex passthrough settings + Chromecast surround sound settings I possibly can and still nothing! We've never had surround sound but this is an issue that's only popped up since the last month or so. It's very frustrating! Playback works fine on my iPad and my laptop (HP), just not on TV or phone. I don't have access to the server so I'm limited to what I can do on my end. Is there anyone experiencing this issue as well? Or anyone with any further advice or suggestions? Short of just going out and buying a surround sound system.

I've been trying to get my Plex server media files into a more consistent naming structure. I really don't know what tools to use because it has basically been off for years or very low use.

I was big into music files. But now I'm moving into trying to get movies and series into a structure. I used to use an old software called Tag&Rename and others to use metadata first and then go to online DB sources if that didn't pull correctly. Then I'd commit the changes and ask it to build a file structure/path as well.

So, I've started with something called Filebot? And I can see that there is metadata. I definitely want to preserve the metadata because the groups that put together the rips obviously added even the Japanese character info in some sections.

What useful tools are people using these days to whip collections into place?

Running latest plex server on a windows PC.

Client is a nvdia Shield pro using wired ethernet connection.

After updating the latest UI last week, I'm unable to play a lot of my content

Clicking the "Watch" icon gives me a few seconds of a spinning white circle followed by a screen that says "Playback error" this item can't be played right now. Please try again,"

I have two options; retry and close.

Retry just gives me the same error, and close exits the player.

Changing the transcoding options doesn't seem to resolve the error (lowering the video quality).

Thoughts?

I run a Plex library with a lot of dubbed anime, and the thing that finally pushed me to build something was how unusable the existing subtitles are with a dub. The English track that ships with a file is a translation of the Japanese script, so the names and the lines do not match what the actors are saying. Separately, the translated signs, chapter cards and OP/ED lyrics are usually their own track, and Plex will not show two subtitle tracks at once.

DubTitlerr fixes both by building one track. Per episode it pulls the English dub audio, transcribes it with faster-whisper, fixes character names against a per-show glossary mined from your own files and verified against the show's wiki, repairs the low-confidence lines with a small LLM (local or a hosted API) anchored on the subtitles already in the video, throws out what Whisper hallucinates during music and silence, merges the positioned signs and lyrics into the same file, then muxes the whole thing back into the episode with the original MKV fonts, flagged as the default subtitle track, with English audio also set default.

The Plex-specific bits:

- It refreshes Plex per episode as each one finishes, rather than triggering one giant scan at the end of a season. Set your URL, token and library section and it handles it.

- The track lands inside the video file, named Dubtitles, flagged default, so there is no sidecar precedence to configure.

- Mp4 episodes are remuxed to mkv, since that is where the fonts and subtitle styling have to live. Test on a few files before pointing it at a whole library, because Plex sees it as a new file.

- Signs keep their original on-screen positioning, which renders properly on direct play. Burn-in behavior during transcode is Plex's own thing rather than something this controls.

New in 0.3.0, mostly making it operable rather than just runnable: a web UI on 8842 with accounts and roles, a first-run setup wizard, nine settings categories, named LLM connections with a Test button, a request queue with priority and a Runs page, plus Sonarr and Radarr webhooks with path mapping so a grab can trigger a run. There is also audio playback in the review queue, so you can hear the line before deciding whether the repair was right. Fix a line once and the verdict applies across every episode in the show, which is what makes clearing an OP worth doing.

Requirements: an NVIDIA GPU with CUDA for transcription (6 GB works for the default model at int8; CPU works but is far slower), Docker with the NVIDIA runtime, and an OpenAI-compatible endpoint for the repair pass, either a small GGUF model you serve or a hosted API (I use LongCat). Image is `ghcr.io/xenarathon/dubtitlerr:v0.3.0`, also `:latest`. GPL-3.0. Transcription runs on your own hardware. With a local repair model, the only outside calls are the show-wiki lookups for names; with a hosted API, the repair lines go to that provider.

It is still a beta, validated end to end on One Pace (the show I built it for), Sword Art Online and Digimon, and it is machine transcription, so plan on using the review queue. It is also not SDH: no speaker labels and no non-speech captioning. If your episode has a real SDH track, that one is better. This is for the ones that do not.

Testing on more than one show paid off, because each one found a different kind of problem. My Digimon release carries the official subtitles for the English dub as image subtitles, so I OCR'd them into an answer key: across episodes 1 to 27, about 91% of DubTitlerr's words matched it (88 to 94% per episode). Most of the misses were character names, like Etemon coming out as "Edamon" or Gennai heard as "Jedi", which is exactly the list the per-show glossary exists to fix. Sword Art Online found bugs One Pace never could. One Pace has a hand-curated glossary, so nobody noticed that the automatic glossary miner had never worked: it passed ffprobe a flag ffprobe does not have and got back nothing, on every file. Fixing that exposed a timeout that could kill a whole run, and fixing that exposed the miner reading the signs-and-songs track as if it were dialogue.

https://github.com/XenaRathon/DubTitlerr

---

This is 100% vibe-coded slop. I wrote it with Claude driving. But I didn't just say "make the thing with no mistakes." The whole project has specs, epics and stories, adversarial reviews (had other models try to break it), and real test coverage. I've been project managing it like an actual engineering effort, not a prompt-and-pray. I'm sharing it because it fills a gap I couldn't find a solution for, and I thought it might be a useful accessibility tool for people who want dub-matched subtitles without waiting for an official SDH release. This isn't meant to replace human-transcribed SDH subtitle tracks. Those are always going to be better. It's for when they don't exist.

Hi everyone, indie dev here. A while ago I shared WatchBridge TV (it makes Google TV recommendations open in the player you actually use). Now there's a phone/tablet app too: WatchBridge Mobile.

What it does

- Recommendations based on what you've watched, plus "Surprise me", My list, history, and a release calendar with upcoming episodes

- Open any title directly in your player: Nuvio, Stremio, Plex, Jellyfin, WuPlay, Wholphin, etc.

- Send to TV: pick a movie, series or live channel on the phone and it opens on your TV (needs WatchBridge TV on the same email)

- IPTV player (bring your own M3U / Xtream list — no channels are included or sold): TV guide, favorites, program alerts and sports events from your guide with live scores

- Multiview: watch up to 3 channels at once on one screen (one big, two small), tap one to move the sound (your provider may limit how many streams it allows at the same time)

- Phones and tablets, portrait and landscape

It syncs with WatchBridge TV. Same email on both apps: history, My list and the licence are shared, so if you paid in one you don't pay again. (Play purchases: type your email in the app and it links the purchase to it.)

Price: free 2-day trial (no card), then a single €4.99 payment. No subscription. One payment covers both the TV and the phone app.

Where to get it — both apps have a Google Play version and an APK

📱 WatchBridge Mobile

- Google Play — it's in closed testing right now (that's why I need testers, see below): join the Google Group first, then open the store link and install.

- Group: [watchbridge-mobile@googlegroups.com](mailto:watchbridge-mobile@googlegroups.com)

- Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tunombre.tvbridge.mobile.play

- APK (no group needed, self-updating): https://github.com/Yushetf33/WatchBridge-Mobile/releases/latest

📺 WatchBridge TV (Google TV / Android TV)

- Google Play — public, no group needed: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tunombre.tvbridge.play

- APK (also Fire TV): https://github.com/Yushetf33/WatchBridge/releases

About the two versions: the Play and APK builds are the same app and the same licence. The Play version updates through Google (every update goes through their review, so it can be a few releases behind); the APK updates itself and gets features first.

Testers wanted: Google requires a closed test before a public release, so if you try the Play version and tell me what breaks, you're helping a lot. Staying opted in for a couple of weeks is what counts.

The video shows the phone app (my phone is set to Spanish, the app is in English and Spanish). I'm still building it — what would you want next?

Ik ben sinds vandaag overgestapt naar Ziggo. Ik maakte gebruik van een Plex server waarmee ik lokaal films kijk op mijn beamer vanuit mijn pc via de xbox. Nu ik ben overgestapt heb ik geen toegang meer tot mijn films, althans kan ze niet meer afspelen. Want dan krijg ik de melding "Remote Playback requires Remote Watch Pass". Ik had hier eerder nooit last van. Heb al veel geprobeerd en gelezen maar kom niet tot een concrete oplossing. Hopelijk is hier iemand die mij kan helpen.

Put them back where you found them!

Who decided burying the most common features three menus deep was a good idea? Refresh used to take two button presses now it’s like 40. Delete use to be at the top menu and now it’s also 30 button presses deep.

Do over and don’t let whatever moron decided that was a good idea anywhere near the UI again.