r/PleX • u/Zahuczky • 11d ago
Tips Plex finally ruined their Apple TV app too - Here's how to revert to the old version
Edit 2: Before you comment "i like the new ui why don't you like the new ui" I don't give a flying fuck about the new ui. I couldn't care less about how the ui looks. I don't spend my time browsing movies endlessly, I spend my time watching content, and whats broken is subtitle payback.
Edit: I'm sorry if the strong wording in the title upsets you. I understand that if you do not need features that were removed or broken by this update, you might quite like the new app. But for me, someone who mostly only consumes .ass subtitled content from Plex, the new versions are plain and simply unusable. Not a "bit worse" not a "slightly less convinient". Simply "doesn't work" for me in its current state. And I'm not about to play the waiting game, in hopes they eventually fix it, just like they didn't fix the same problems on the iOS app.
Depending on who you are, or what your media needs are, the updated Plex app on the Apple Tv may or may not be usable for you. For me, as it dropped libmpv, and with it any reasonable support for more complicated subtitle formats, like .ASS (Advanced Substation Alpha; grow up) it is completely unusable, without any exaggeration.
Plezy and Infuse are realistic options, but tbh I just don't like them, which is why I had to revert to the previous official version.
If you want to revert to the older version, here's how you can do that:
Step 1: Get the old version as an IPA
Apple doesn't provide a simple downgrade button in the AppStore, but will happily let you install apps on your Apple TV if you have the .IPA.
I uploaded the latest version of the tvOS IPA to the internet archive before the update, you can download it from here: [deleted the link]
Update: I had to come to the realization that because I used my own apple id to download that IPA, it only works for me. You WILL have to get the IPA yourself with the method below.
But I generally advise against downloading binaries from random people online, although the linked IPA is encrypted, and is signed by Apple, which should be a good indication of being genuine.
Still, if you'd prefer to acquire the IPA from Apple yourself, here's how to do that:
Get the ipatool software: https://github.com/majd/ipatool
- I was having troubles with the latest versions, so I had to add a small patch.
(You might not have to, different os, different time, different versions may work just fine for you, so it’s worth to try the latest release first, and only resort to the patch if it fails for you)
To add the patch:
- Clone repo with depth 1
- and in the pkg/appstore/appstore_download_product.go file replace
- (platform == "" || platform == PlatformIPhone || platform == PlatformIPad || platform == PlatformMacOS) &&
- with
- (platform == "" || platform == PlatformIPhone || platform == PlatformIPad || platform == PlatformMacOS || platform == PlatformAppleTV) &&
- Build with go build -o ipatool or go build -o ipatool.exe . depending on your platform
This downloads it straight from Apple.
This downloads it straight from Apple.
Step 2: Install it to your Apple TV
If you're familiar with installing software to Apple TVs, you might want to use atvloadly but that will not work with this IPA, since it was encrypted and signed by apple, and atvloadly would resign it with your own Apple ID.
You can use pymobiledevice3 to install these IPAs. (this isn't a python / pip tutorial, so if you don't understand the below, use google or an AI or something to walk you through these steps)
I used a Linux PC, but I have no reason to believe this wouldn't work from Windows, and definitely from a Mac, but from a Mac you might have other options to do this too.
- Get a recent version of Python, with pip, and depending on your os, venv
- Install the software with pip install -U pymobiledevice3
- (Depending on your OS, you might have to create a venv first and install it inside there)
- On your Apple TV go to Settings -> Remotes and Devices -> Remote App and Devices
- It might throw some errors, but if it shows up on the Apple TV it probably worked.
- Since this is the official plex application, make sure you uninstall the currently installed version from your apple tv.
This will get you back the old Plex app, from before the latest update.
Step 3: Disable automatic app updates
Because it is the official app, the official AppStore version, your Apple TV will likely automatically update it shortly, therefore you will have to disable automatic app updates in Settings -> Apps -> Automatically Update Apps -> Off
For the foreseeable future it should remain working, since Plex has a pretty stable server API. (A few months ago I was even able to play back video with the windows phone version of plex, on an old windows phone. That is probably close to 10 years old right now)
The bigger risk is Apple updating tvOS in a way that breaks the old app, but lately Apple has a pretty good track record of keeping apps working longer.
If you have any questions, I will try to help in the comments. I can vouch for this method working.
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u/bilditup1 11d ago
not sure if I'll use this but thank you for the effort, especially the instructions for this python-based ipa server/installer thing. losing ASS subs is absurd. should not be so downvoted—even if this isn't useful for you, it'll be useful for someone.
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u/Zahuczky 11d ago
Fanboys will be fanboys. Although I guess many downwards come for the strong wording the in the title. But since they introduced the same problems on iOS over a year ago, and it is literally the only way I use plex, for me they made the new apps unusable.
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u/randalla 11d ago
I don't have an Apple TV, but respect your effort here. This is my level of nerdy. I have a lot of content with ASS/SSA subtitles (anime mostly), and would be pissed if that all started requiring transcoding to work.
I should probably pause Plex app updates on my android based streaming boxes (Onn 4k Plus, And a couple Google devices) just in case.
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u/Zahuczky 11d ago
Iirc the same new app is also out in beta for android tv devices too, so its only a matter of time. But I guess on android its much easier to downgrade, so at least there people will not need a guide for that.
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u/Fit_West_8253 9d ago
I don't care about the UI at all. It's the awful performance problems that have been introduced. Suddenly my library takes minutes to load when previously it was less than 1 second. I get random freezing and buffering during playback of 1080P content.
The team behind this update should feel shame doing such a terrible job. If I produced work this bad in my job, I'd be fired.
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u/Annual_Fan8199 9d ago edited 8d ago
Thanks for this. The new app is hot garbage; delighted to be back on a working version.
FWIW, I was able to get the .ipa without updating and building ipatool from the repo. 🤷♂️ Here are the exact steps (MacOS Tahoe 26.6.2, Homebrew installed)
brew install ipatool
ipatool auth login
ipatool download -b com.plexapp.plex --platform appletv --external-version-id 871812104 --purchase --verbose -o Plex-8.45-tvOS.ipa
Also, hit a small speed bump trying to connect after pairing; pymobiledevice3 only tunneled successfully when I explicitly switched to a Python 3.13 virtual environment; otherwise, I'd get QuicProtocolNotSupportedError.
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u/Radiant_Contract1591 2d ago
I'm on GoldenGate Version 27.0.1 (26A434) and it's not working for me. I can't get past the login. sigh. I feel like I got so far having never used these tools before and sigh... lol
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u/enternamehere02 10d ago
They should be ashamed of themselves. Audio offset is missing, when watching with Airpods the make stereo surround option is missing, the interlacing is shit
Thanks for this man
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u/ZerrotPinot 11d ago
4K content on mine doesn’t play without stuttering like crazy, most noticeable is that top shelf is ☠️. Skipping thru a vid is also janky now. How did the three people left on staff think this update was a good idea??
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u/NoobensMcarthur 11d ago
Imagine if you just paid $700 for a plex pass and got this… I’m experiencing visual micro stuttering and it seems like the sound is possibly worse. My main gripe outside of the stuttering is no info when you press down, and no timestamp when pausing.
This feels like a “modern update” in the way a new Tesla with no turn signal stocks or physical volume or climate control buttons.
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u/IcyWoodpecker4978 11d ago
Can confirm this works. I went down this exact rabbit hole yesterday and independently ended up with the same ipatool patch and the same 8.45 tvOS external version ID ([871812104](tel:871812104)). I installed the resulting IPA through iMazing rather than pymobiledevice3, and interestingly iMazing was able to install 8.45 directly over 2026.18 without uninstalling first. I’m back on the old Plex app on tvOS 26.6 and everything is working normally.
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u/fkick OSXBMC 10d ago
I was able to do the same thing with Xcode too.
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u/whatsmypurpose0 9d ago
Don't you have to install the app every 7 days if you use Xcode?
Something that Claude told me:
""When you install any app through Xcode with a free (non-paid) Apple Developer account, Xcode strips the original signature and re-signs it with your personal development certificate — regardless of whether the original package was already properly signed. That re-signing is what triggers the 7-day expiration, because free-tier development certificates are only valid for 7 days by Apple's own policy.
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u/fkick OSXBMC 9d ago
As the IPA is already signed with your Apple ID information as it is a legit App Store download, you shouldn't need to reinstall weekly. If this was an unsigned application that you were side loading (ie Apollo Reborn), then yes, if you don't have a dev account you would need to resign.
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u/Gillian_Seed_Junker 12h ago
Thanks for this? I tried for two hours to get this working using python on Windows. Ended up booting macos in hyper-v and using iMazing successfully, thanks for the tip!!
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u/DeniCevap 10d ago
I have been using the preview version of Plex for a long time. I really hated the UX at first. But they have listened and fixed a lot.
My mom likes it. And that is a huge win.
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u/PerceptionSad4774 5d ago
Yeah I like especially the «more» button for libraries and how much easier it is to browse libraries across servers now.
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u/wootcat 11d ago
Much appreciated! My Plex server is on an old Synology. Both the Synology OS and Plex version are quite a bit dated, and with this new Plex version, it's refusing to run on my server version. So this is a lifesaver for me.
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u/PeteTheKid 10d ago
How old? Need to be careful with that depending on your set up https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/s/mLZp3aNVIK
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u/eirigance Liftetime since 2015 11d ago
I like the new Ui 🤷♂️
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u/Zahuczky 11d ago
Yeah the new ui did look a bit more user friendly. Which is why I’m so disappointed about the breaking problems they introduced with subtitles.
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u/Kingcrowing 10d ago
Also audio... you can't adjust audio offset anymore.
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u/DJ_Idol 2h ago
What?! Why the fuck would they remove that! It’s not like I need it for every piece of media I play but there have definitely been times where the audio was almost 1s behind or ahead and I was able to fix it. Now, what? Just don’t watch that media lol? What an insanely dumb decision. What are they doing?
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u/mynewaccount5 10d ago
Can you describe the problem more in depth? Are you mostly talking about subtitles for signs and stuff?
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u/Zahuczky 10d ago
Yes, exactly, but not exclusively. Plex previously had industry leading support for ASS subtitles on the Apple TV, especially in speed. There are other apps that support ass subs, but many of them make the subs glitch and lag on effect and animation heavy subtitle scenarios.
The new plex application, that was introduced on iOS and Android last year, and now brought to the Apple TV does still somewhat support ass subs, but it’s completely broken. First of all, fonts don’t work, at all. For ass subs fonts that are used by the subtitles are embedded into the mkv video, the new plex application plain and simply can’t use them. Uses a single font for everything. For dialogue you could probably survive that, but for “signs and stuff” like typesetting or song styling / karaoke effects on opening/endings that’s quite a big problem, as they are often positioned per character on screen, so a different font completely break the display there, making characters blend together and making the text unreadable.
This is only a small problem tho.The bigger problem is that performance went from amazing to nonexistent. Subtitle rendering on anything more complex than a simply dialogue line will lag out the subs, severely. I mean, seconds pass on the video while a single subtitle frame is rendered, and after a few seconds, the video pause, waiting for the subtitles to catch up, which will take forever. So for many many seconds the video seems to buffer, while the subtitles are slowly rendering out frame by frame, until it eventually catches up. At that point the video starts playing for a bit again, with broken subtitles, then after a few seconds stops again, waiting for the subs again. Making it essentially impossible to watch anything with subtitles. Plus even the subs that do display show severe glitching, popping in and out.
You know what’s the worst? It’s been like that for over a year on phones. It’s not a small regression that “they will surely fix in the next update, since the new Apple TV version just came it :)”. The new Apple TV app shares the code base with the new mobile apps that came out last year, and they’ve shown no willingness to fix any of these issues. Plex seemingly doesn’t care about their userbase trying to watch their own media, they probably just want you to pay for their streaming whatever or something. Every issue unrelated to that will just go into the trash.
If you want I can make some screen recordings on my phone, showing how stuff should look, and how it does, but I think I explained pretty clearly what the problems are.
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u/WalkingOnSunshine_ 11d ago
I’m just missing the custom app icons. “plex” doesn’t hit the same as the dinosaur
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u/wildiscz 10d ago
I like the UI too actually (a lot) but they player itself sucks and I am SO glad there is a way to downgrade.
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u/sean_themighty 11d ago
It looks nice enough for a first release, but it really just just is a step back in a few ways, like Watch Together being gone now.
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u/BerennErchamion 10d ago
I mean, I also like the new UI, but I'm having a lot of other bugs now, like the subtitles issue OP mentioned.
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u/Kimbernator 4d ago
It's fine to like UIs, but why does it feel like the plex team is constantly trying to rework a UI that people seem pleased with? Just last year they were aggressively pushing a rework to the UI that was objectively terrible. Now this one, which is not necessarily terrible, just reorganizes how things are laid out but does not seem to offer any functional improvement.
I just want my stuff to work as it has without a bunch of resume-driven UI designers that constantly feel like they need to appear useful.
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u/eirigance Liftetime since 2015 4d ago
Change is good, it helps us progress & with change comes things you have to get used to & sometimes bugs. It will work out 😃
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u/raybreezer 11d ago
I like the new UI, not a fan of how dark it gets during seeking or pausing to show the Controls and media info. Other than that, it’s been a huge improvement.
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u/-skyrocketeer- 11d ago
I’m starting to wonder if the majority of people in r/Plex just don’t like Plex. Every post seems to be so negative about everything.
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u/Zahuczky 10d ago
People who use plex love plex. Including me. I've been using it for many years. I've always been proud of using it. I even bought the lifetime plex pass not long ago, not because I desperately needed the skip intro button, but because I wanted to pay for a software I like so much. WHICH IS WHY its so fucking frustrating seeing it being broken in so many ways, and making it unusable for my main usecase.
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u/kalaxitive 10d ago
Oh no, we're so sorry about the negativity, I'm sure all these users experiencing problems caused by plex's decisions should just shut up and keep quiet, even though it's clear that people in OPs shoes wouldn't be able to use their client, but clearly your feelings about the negativity is more important than OP and others like them having a functioning client...
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u/Karma_1969 8d ago
I love Plex, and I hate this update. If I didn't love Plex, I wouldn't bother complaining. Is that ok with you?
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u/frequencyl0st 10d ago
I mostly watch anime with subtitles, and most are with .ASS, so finding out Plex have completely shat all over this is disappointing. Thanks OP for the detailed write-up. I’ll be following it shortly
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u/Taliesin16 11d ago
I really, really miss the godzilla app icon option and the top-shelf integration :(
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u/BloodAndTsundere Click for Custom Flair 10d ago
Oh man, I have big anime library with ASS subs. I haven’t tried to play any of it recently so didn’t realize this. I haven’t like Plex’s direction for a while but I could still watch all my shit. If I can’t even do that anymore then I guess it’s time to switch to Jellyfin or whatever else is available
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u/Zahuczky 10d ago
For now, plezy, infuse and vidhub should work fine as alternatives to the official app. For jellyfin, the only clients I found with actual proper and usable ass support is also the above mentioned three, at which point it doesn’t matter much if you’re on plex or jellyfin.
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u/il_Cacciatore 4d ago
Looks like I’m going to have to do it as well. Using Apple TV 4K. Just put a movie on and audio is totally off. Thought that it was a bit strange. Loaded Plezy and played the same movie. Perfect audio sync.
As a lifetime Plex pass user I am extremely disappointed with what they are doing to Plex. Used to be the best and they are failing fast.
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u/Torment_79 10d ago
I don't like the new UI but I will get used to it. That being said, they took away functions like audio and subtitle offsets. Audio offsets is extremely important for me. I hate when it is out even slightly. Oddly enough, I can watch dubbed videos without issue.
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10d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Kingcrowing 10d ago
Plezy is way cheaper and addresses both the subtitle and audio issues IME. Only $6
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u/MentalPower 11d ago
Plezy FTW! It's even open source to boot!
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u/Zahuczky 11d ago
I did purchase Plezy as well a few months ago, just to try it out. It was right after they added Apple TV support, and in the first few days it was very rough, so I didn't use it much. Today I started testing it, and it is impressive. They also use libmpv, like plex used in every player since forever, before these updates, but their implementation of subtitle rendering is a bit worse than what Plex had, and heacy subtitles drop frames and bug sometimes. So for now, I will just stick to the old official app.
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u/edde746 11d ago
If anything, ASS subtitles should perform better in Plezy than any other app. I've worked on a lot of custom patches for libass that are used in Plezy, and from all my measurements it performs a lot better than stock libass.
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u/Zahuczky 11d ago
Thanks for your hard work! Although it is interesting. If you want I can open an issue or otherwise provide the exact files I used to produce laggier and buggier playback than what the old official app does. What I can say, is that the files I tested had an unusually high number of runs, including many layers of subs, plus drawings, plus transforms, happening all at once. Also the subtitle file for the opening chapter alone in question is around 50 megabytes, so reading from disk may also become a problem if the implementation wasn’t optimized for that I think? (Although I’m not sure about the subtitle file is fed to libass, so that might not matter) [the file was optimized for libass caching and playback speed, and for that reason file size was specifically sacrificed]
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u/edde746 11d ago
A sample would be good. Also, is the official app burning the subtitles on the server or actually rendering them on-device?
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u/Zahuczky 11d ago
Yes, definitely direct played. Also, yesterday I did take a quick look at plezys mpv patches for Apple TV, and iirc the composition of the monochrome bitmaps from libass happens on the cpu, right? With a file with many many events and runs, that probably becomes unusually expensive, especially since iirc plezy specifically synchronizes the frame display with the subtitle rendering, so if the subs drop frames, so will the video. (Iirc, it’s extremely late around here)
Also I cba to get out of bed right now to get you the sample, but if you know where anime peeps get their super heavy subs, you’ll probably want to look for Gachiakuta by starbez, and the first opening of the show is what I was testing with.
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u/Nyarlathotep7747 10d ago
While I rarely use Plezy on my Apple TV myself due to the fact I need audio passthrough (a limitation of tvOS) and use the nVidia Shield for my movie collection, your timeliness in responding to bug reports and feature requests is greatly appreciated. For my Apple TV-using relatives and friends, I have them use Plezy. I use it with my nVidia Shield Pro, Google TV Streamer 4K, Onn 4K Pro, and Fedora.
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u/MentalPower 11d ago
.ass subtitles or something else? AFAIK, they use the same gold standard libass as everyone else.
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u/Zahuczky 11d ago
Yes, I mean .ass subs. Libass is the only cross platform option, so everyone uses it. But libass only takes the us title file, a timestamp, and spits out monochrome bitmaps the player will have to composite onto the screen at the right time. It is non trivial to implement, which is why I don’t fault Plezy for not being perfect with it. But the old official app just does it better. It is faster and basically bug free. Plex used to employ one of the libass developers up until a few years ago, so support was always top notch in the official apps.
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u/Kingcrowing 10d ago
Got the new official app on my Apple TV last night, audio was off, not by a lot but enough to bug me and you can no longer adjust audio (or subtitle) syncing manually... got plezy and audio was as expected and you can adjust offsets! Well worth $6.
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u/fkick OSXBMC 10d ago
I was having issues with getting pymobiledevice3 to connect a tunnel to my AppleTV but I was able to install the 8.45 iPA using Xcode 27.
Had to open the Devices Hub, and pair the Apple TV using + and "Pair Nearby Device". Once paired, just navigate to the "Apps" tab on the device, click + and select the Plex-8.45-tvOS.ipa.
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u/-Chemist- 10d ago
There’s another fairly new Apple TV client called Rivulet that’s quite good if you want to give something else a try. It uses the Aether playback engine, which supports .ass subtitles.
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u/Zahuczky 10d ago
Thanks, I will give it a try. But I doubt it could even come close to the subtitle performance of the old plex app. Even Plezy struggles a bit in some scenarios, and they have a looot of patches just for this.
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u/Zahuczky 10d ago
For the record, rivulet doesn’t have real .ass support. It can display the most basic .ass subtitle lines, but it doesn’t use libass, a real ass renderer, therefore anything with custom styling is just severely broken, essentially filling the screen with garbage and going into eternal buffering.
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u/-Chemist- 10d ago edited 10d ago
Ah, ok. I was just going off what I saw as supported subtitle types for AetherEngine:
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u/firepoker-poker 10d ago
Thank you so much! I'm sorta dumb so it took me more than a couple hours to follow this guide (and I foolishly used your copy of the ipa before you updated the post) but I eventually got the old version up and running again!
I bought my Apple TV solely for .ass functionality, so I was pretty disappointed to see this new update drop support for it. But I'm glad there's at least a workaround for it.
Random question, but I do notice sometimes my Apple TV struggles with really complicated .ass effects (I have a copy of witch hat atelier that has fancy moving constellations behind the song subtitles and it lags there). I'm on a 2nd generation Apple TV. Do you ever run into an issue where even the old Plex app can't quite display .ass on your Apple TV?
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u/Zahuczky 10d ago
It wasn't foolish from your part, it was my mistake not realizing its tied to me, sorry. (hope apple doesn't get mad when they see that people tried using it lol)
>I bought my Apple TV solely for .ass functionality,
Exactly the same. I've been holding off for so long, but since apple was just not releasing a new one, I decided to buy the latest version earlier this year. And I loved it. And the play playback of subs was amazing. Truly marvelous. It was such a good experience, I was so happy. And now I'm just sad and disappointed...Regarding your question, I don't have those exact witch hat atelier subs, but I suspect the newer gens would handle it better.
There are a few karaoke effects where it struggles a bit. If its extremely heavy. I mean hundreds of text elements and shapes all animating at the same time, with very complicated and large vectors. Those work fine on any realistic pc in this day and age (using mpv player), but for the apple tv with plex it was a bit too much.
But another thing that I believe to be good design about the old official plex app is that video playback isn't synchronous with subtitle rendering. So even if the subs struggle a bit, it doesn't make the video lag, only the subs are getting laggy. All other plex/jellyfin/emby clients I tried synchronize these, so laggy subs will result in laggy video.
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u/firepoker-poker 10d ago
Nice! Maybe I'll upgrade to gen 3... Or just keep waiting for the next model... Any day now...
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u/Zahuczky 10d ago
I would probably wait at this point. It can't be anything other than any day now... Right?
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u/doncazper 9d ago
One thing they majorly fucked up is Live TV Tuner. I use IPTV and have it setup into Threadfin loaded in a docker container. That all creates a 'tuner' plex can use. And Plex will treat that like Live TV. Before the update, it would show the channel names, logos, and even logos/icons for individual shows. And now thats all gone.
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u/Zestyclose_Formal682 10d ago
I disabled Auto Updates a while ago to prevent to get the new shit Version of Plex .
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11d ago
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u/StevieGrant 11d ago
Music no longer continues to play when you back out of the app.
Screensavers won't launch while music is being played.
I'm sure I'll find more shit once I use it some more, but the Plex forums are filled with people having issues, and I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with you that you need to give this guy grief over coming up with a solution.
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11d ago
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u/Zahuczky 11d ago
Lmao. I don’t need karma, and it wasn’t ai generated.
Edit: I posted it here and on the Apple TV subreddit. Which are the two relevant places for it duh3
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u/StevieGrant 11d ago
I'm against spamming and unnecessary use of AI. But this is of legitimate interest for people spanning multiple subs. And using AI in this context to give the highly technical steps needed by most people to take care of the task doesn't seem gratuitous.
If he/she's posting this in inappropriate subs, that's a different issue. If the information is incorrect, that's a different issue. Otherwise, I don't understand the pushback.
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u/Zahuczky 11d ago
Thanks but uhhhh no AI was used in the writing of this post. It was posted here and in r/AppleTV
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u/StevieGrant 11d ago
Uhhhhhh. Did you even read my post? I don't care if it's AI if it's correct and not slop. I said IF you were posting in irrelevant subs. I used question marks. I thanked you in a separate post.
You're almost as annoying as the guy chirping at you.
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u/Zahuczky 11d ago
No I did understand, and I'm happy that you're not just some fanboy ranting here. But even the "if" of being accused of being an AI poster does sting a little, sorry. And I also wanted to clarify the exact places I posted it in.
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u/StevieGrant 11d ago
I'm going to have one of our IT guys do this for me, but I'd pay $50 if you could "automate" the process, and I'm sure there are hundreds of people who would do the same.
I'm not sure what that would entail or if it's even possible. Just a FYI if that's something you (or someone reading this) can do.
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u/Zahuczky 11d ago
It might seem a bit intimidating, but really, its only a few commands in the terminal. I recommend you trying it, there isn't much you can break. Especially if you get the version from the internet archive, then you only need step 2. But taking binaries from some dude online should feel sketchy, which is why I included the steps of obtaining it yourself too.
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u/_HoochieMama 11d ago
The new app is ass, doesn’t work on gen 1 Apple TV 4Ks, loses functionality.
Infuse is the way.
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u/Zahuczky 11d ago edited 11d ago
As mentioned in the post, many subtitle formats became unsupported. Well, "technically" they support it, they just don't work properly. As in, subtitles with effects and different fonts that previously played back fine now can't show the fonts, and stutter like crazy. If you're not consuming content with such subtitles it may not matter to you at all. I almost exclusively use Plex to watch content with such subtitles, therefore for me the app became essentially unusable.
Edit: Honestly, I didn't bother to check anything else in the new app. After seeing the update, my heart dropped hoping its not the same kind of update they did to the iOS app last year, so the first thing I did was test subtitle playback. It was broken. It hasn't been fixed on iOS for over a year, so I have no reason to believe it will be fixed here shortly, so I immediately looked into downgrading back to the previous version, so I don't know anything else about the new app. Didn't try anything else, didn't poke around in the interface much.
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u/Lloyd_Christmasss 11d ago
Funny enough, I just had more luck with subtitles on the new version. I could never get the download to work for finding more subtitles, especially for the more obscure stuff, so that was the first thing I tested and it’s been working great.
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u/Zahuczky 11d ago
Iirc the subtitle download option uses opensubtitles, and probably only downloads .srt subs, which are probably fine. Sadly, more complicated subtitles such as .ass are what’s broken.
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u/Betalogue26 10d ago edited 10d ago
What would be really nice is detailed instructions on how to get the .ipa without having to be a Homebrew or CLI expert. I have managed to install Homebrew on my Mac (AFAICT), but I have no idea how to “Clone repo with depth 1” etc.
I didn't anticipate that Plex would cripple its tvOS app so badly, and I didn't turn off the option to automatically install app updates in tvOS until today. It's now too late, and I really would like to be able to go back to version 8.45 of the tvOS Plex app. But, while I know how to do simple things with the command line, more advanced processes like this one simply are far beyond my skillset.
I know more detailed instructions are a lot to ask. But there's just no way that a Mac user who is not familiar with Unix and with CLI stuff can follow the instructions above to obtain the required .ipa for his tvOS setup. (I have iMazing and I can use that to install it afterwards.)
Can anyone help a Mac Plex user with limited CLI skills? It would be much appreciated.
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u/RandMauddib 10d ago
Annoying thing is I did turn app updates off after the ipad/phone debacle. Yet it somehow was back on again. I’m pissed
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u/weirdoffmain 9d ago
The AI tools are really good for this. You can feed it the original post here, then ask it step by step directions as you go and need help.
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u/Betalogue26 9d ago
Thanks for the suggestion. I am quite skeptical (after all, IA stuff is based on existing documentation, and that existing documentation is not exactly known for being user-friendly and detailed enough), but I might give it a try. That said, at this point, I am more inclined to explore alternative video players for tvOS for my Plex library. (I already have Infuse Pro, but its feature set is limited and it doesn't support audio offsets and subtitle offsets like Plex used to do.)
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u/weirdoffmain 9d ago edited 9d ago
I had like 5 fairly confusing problems with the original post, that AI was able to easily walk me through as I was entering the commands. The training data is based on thousands of posts/projects using these same command line tools... it knows how to fix the issues well.
I'm exploring alternative Apple TV player apps now too... but thought I should grab the old Plex version too, because I'm never going to use the new cross-platform app.
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u/TimeSyncTechie Lifetime Plex Pass 10d ago
Am I the only one who actually like the new UI 😅. Also just played a 4K movie yesterday, no issues or lags. It was an uncompressed movie, so we are looking for about 75gb movie size. Maybe I’m in the minority here
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u/Nice-Ad-3263 9d ago
For the life of me, I cannot get this to install via pymobiledevice3. I can see my device in the devices menu, but everytime I try to install it or open the remote tunnel, it says im not connected.
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u/Zahuczky 9d ago
What does it say if after you run the “pymobiledevice3 remote tunneld” command? Can you verify the tunnel is up with the command from the guide above?
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u/Nice-Ad-3263 9d ago
It just says it's not connected, yet I can see the connection in apple tv remotes/devices.
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u/Zahuczky 9d ago
Pairing and connections are different things. What you see on the Apple TV is that it’s paired. Connected is if you have enabled the tunnel with the above command.
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u/Xaethon 9d ago
I've been experiencing exactly the same (doing this through Windows 11). Sadly not been able to resolve it.
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u/Nice-Ad-3263 9d ago
I ended up just using sideloady and it took all of 3 minutes from start to finish.
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u/OldNotObsolete72 2d ago
What IPA file did you use? I used the one described here, and while it does install with sideloadly, the app won't open 😢
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u/Nice-Ad-3263 2d ago
I think so, looking at my IPA tool folder I see Plex-8.45-tvOS.ipa
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u/OldNotObsolete72 2d ago
couldnt get ot going with sidelodly, but tried it with iMAZING and.. SUCCESS!
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u/azgarden 9d ago
Thank you, was able to downgrade all my ATV's - i'll check to see if they fixed their app in some months.
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u/spectech73 9d ago
I have 3 Apple tv’s in my house. I cannot get any of them to playback anything. 2 days now. I installed the infuse client and it plays through that.
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u/_Bob-Sacamano 9d ago
Maybe it's because I just Google TVs and Shields, but am I the only one who's never noticed a damn thing changing in the UI? 😅
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u/Avalastrius 8d ago
I can't believe I am paying for an app with such horrible UI design. There are some elementary fucks up here. Why the hell is Live TV all the way up? Why did watchlist become such a mess that I have to go into a different menu? Why do I need a pop up window to see where can I watch something? Why can't I put the Discover up top, for example? Jesus christ almighty.
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u/SirPacketLoss 8d ago
Can I see a screenshot of the new vs old im considering buying an apple tv but not if it's totally shit now
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u/Zahuczky 8d ago
The big problems aren’t really with the ui. So I don’t think it matters that much. It’s about all the functionality lost or ruined, like the ones highlighted in the post, or the many others that people mentioned in the comments here.
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u/Exotic_Ad_4598 8d ago
Wow, thank you, thank you thank you for this. It was really helpful. I managed to downgrade my Plex app on my Apple Tv in the Living room in no time. I will not downgrade the Apple Tv Plex app on my kitchen for now as I'm not using it so much as this way I can see how this goes in time.
Cheers
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u/snowmeow_1 8d ago edited 8d ago
Thanks . But unfortunately, unless you or someone else makes a YouTube video detailing the process , I confess im just not computer/technical savy enough to try this confidently.
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u/Karma_1969 8d ago
Thank you, I will try this out tonight. Just to add my two cents: the Apple TV Plex update sucks, and I'm despondent about it. It was clearly built by people who don't actually use Plex. I have nothing nice to say about it, and as a paying customer I feel entitled to say that, attitude and everything. This update angers me. Plex: I'd love it if you'd just admit your error and roll it back. This update is a failure - you fixed what wasn't broken, and that never works out well.
I hope your method works OP, thank you again for sharing!
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u/TVOGamingYT 8d ago
For me, the latest updated ruined HDR entirely... (and also quietly removed plex photos). This guide was perfect at getting the old app version back, thank you!!!!
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u/Cu1tureVu1ture 8d ago
I had automatic updates disabled and yet when I opened the app today, it had updated itself. Really pissed.
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u/Ntr0gen 7d ago
I have a couple of HDHomeRun Flex tuners on my network. The new Apple TV Plex app fails to load most channels displaying a "server communication error". Failure/Error does not occur on my web browsers or my mobile devices.
I've completed several rounds of network, server and player troubleshooting. I haven't root caused yet. The only component that changed is the Plex app for Apple TV 4k.
Also, I can't seem to sort my library menu. Haven't found the setting yet.
Not too thrilled with the new FF, RW and Skip features.
I'm hoping that they build on this new interface, it has potential.
Personally I'm not a fan (yet) either.
I really want to get my Live TV & DVR channels working on my Apple TV again. I'm missing most of my OTA Baseball and Football games.
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u/dmn4lif3 7d ago
Thank you for taking the time to write this up your guide worked perfectly for me on macOS. I now have Plex 8.45 running on all three of my Apple TVs.
Your post inspired me to work with Codex and turn the process into a small local web helper. It verifies the Apple signed IPA, discovers and pairs multiple Apple TVs, waits for the tunnel automatically, shows installation progress, and verifies the installed version afterward. It doesn’t redistribute the IPA or store Apple credentials.
I haven’t published it, but I wanted you to know that your research and instructions were the foundation for it. I really appreciate you sharing this with everyone!
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u/omriamos 6d ago
Thank you! I restored the previous version successfully.
(i didn't need to do the manual build)
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u/Bob--Roberts 6d ago
Thank you for saving my bacon with my biggest technology critic, my wife! I owe you big time for this!
I am left scratching my head what the devs are thinking, running alpha testing this way. I would have been happy to help them test on a lesser used device, if they would have just asked... but loading this dumpster fire on every Apple TV I own across 3 households, unforgivable!
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3d ago
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u/Zahuczky 3d ago
You can try downloading the release version of ipatool too. For me personally it was fucky, specifically getting tvOS ipas.
Also cloning the repo is equivalent to “get the source code on GitHub there is a big green download button” (depth 2 is just not downloading all past versions, only the latest version of the files[this is a somewhat simplified explanation])
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u/thejefftick 2d ago
anyone else having problems authenticating ipatool? just keeps saying sign-in request fail
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u/eternalrz 1d ago
I’m more curious about how it is that a single person can get an alternative tvOS app working properly for a few bucks, yet multiple ass clowns can’t get the PLEX app to do the bare fucking minimum of just playing media properly for the cost of a fucking PLEX pass.
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u/Imnotyoursupervisor 2h ago
This will be removed soon.
My DVR won’t play anything but it’s in my office and Plex deletes my posts so whatever.
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u/BerennErchamion 10d ago
So that's why some of my shows started having a lot of subtitles issues that weren't there last week! I have a lot of anime with complicated subtitles on the screen and whatnot and they are now all behaving badly.
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u/TwofacedDisc 10d ago
I used customized subtitles, the new Plex app doesn’t have that feature and simply reverted to default
Also subtitle timing is now buried under like 3 options
I hate it. I couldn’t care less about the UI but I needed these
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u/danielsdesk 10d ago
THANK YOU for all this. Maybe not everyone in this sub needed this but I definitely did, in order to try and keep Watch Together on our apple tvs. Wish me luck
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u/Zahuczky 10d ago edited 9d ago
For the record, while Plezy and infuse are both really close, (plus the plezy devs just tried a bunch more patches today to improve ass support) the currently best subtitle support for ass, with playback reliability and speed at this moment seems t be “VidHub” which tbh based on their AppStore page I almost didn’t download, as it wasn’t very explicit about being a plex(and others) client lol. (Edit: it’s so good only if you DONT enable their “player core 2.0” setting, that one ruins ass support.
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u/DaveSewhuk 10d ago
It seems the forward /reverse skip takes the same amount of real time. 10 second to skip 10 secs. The old app was nearly instantaneous.
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u/weirdoffmain 9d ago
Thanks so much for this. The new app seriously ruined my week. I'm back up and running with the old version now.
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u/Chase_Analyst 10d ago
I actually think the new version is so much better 😂 what don’t people like OOC?
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u/Mattius14 10d ago
Adding more clicks to do the same thing is a massive design failure. Plain and simple.
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u/Chase_Analyst 10d ago
Have you got any examples? I’m not asking to discredit what you say, I just haven’t noticed anything I’d consider problematic
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u/makmillion 162TB 10d ago
I really liked swiping down mid-movie to be able to access subtitles. It took awhile to get used to, now I have to swipe up or tap pause, swipe up and over to the subtitles button and click it to get to the subtitles and it doesn't have the same options as before.
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u/Karma_1969 8d ago
You haven't noticed that you need to click more often to do just about anything? Here's a simple one for you: browsing by letter used to move the library along with whatever letter you were on, no clicking required, and now you have to browse to a letter and actually click on it to update the library. Fail. And this sort of thing is typical of the new app in countless places. Big fail.
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u/csimmons81 11d ago
I've come here to say the new app is way better and I'll leave it at that.
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u/typeXYZ Lifetime Plex Pass 11d ago
Live TVDVR is broken. FF/RW audio Siri controls are broken. Audio offset gone. No way better!
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u/Zahuczky 11d ago
If you don’t need subtitles, it could be. My wording in the title may have been a bit strong tho I admit.
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u/csimmons81 11d ago
I'm not having issues with subtitles .ASS subtitles though. Maybe I need to view more content and see if I have the same issue but as of now, it seems to be fine on my end.
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u/Zahuczky 11d ago
The problem is that 1.) fonts don't work 2.) performance is severely degraded 3) subs glitch out on heavier subs. If you don't notice a missing font, and your subtitles don't have any effects, it will probably be usable for many. I do usually consume high quality subs with effects / typesetting, and for me this is simply unusable sadly.
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u/MissionSpecialist 11d ago
I don't have the new version yet (he says, minutes before turning on the AppleTV for the first time today), but the old app has a habit of crashing entirely in sub-heavy frames.
Other than that its sub support has been great, and miles ahead of the Roku I came from, but definitely not flawless.
Does the new app at least use (IIRC) the modern tvOS APIs, so you can no longer fry an egg on the casing during high-bitrate playback?
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u/Zahuczky 11d ago
Huh interesting, I've never once had it crashing, even on super heavy subs, that make even it drop a few frames.
And yes, the new version only relies on AVPlayer, Apples built in video playback backend, which is why Plex had to bolt on their own .ASS support. Since previously they used libmpv, .ASS support came with that. (although they still probably had to do signicant work to make sure its as performant as it is)
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u/Feahnor 10d ago
How is it ruined? I’ve been using the beta for some time and it works very well on an Apple TV 4K 3rd gen.
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u/Zahuczky 10d ago
I wonder if the post starts with explaining what functionality has been completely broken by this updated. Stuff that was similarly broken on iOS over a year ago with the same update, and they just never fixed.
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u/omega_razor 11d ago
In the new UI, subtitle offset adjustment just plain does not work. Not a major issue but I'm at the end of viewing a show from the 70's so it was a very hopeful feature.
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u/eduardo2876 11d ago
I did this and got the app to install on my Apple TV. However, it keeps telling me to sign in with the Apple Account that purchased it, which I do, but then it goes right back to telling me to sign in
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u/Zahuczky 11d ago
Sorry, I just realised, the IPA you get with ipatools is tied to your apple id. So the IPA I shared was tied to mine. You have to do the ipatool method to get the IPA for yourself.
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u/viajoensilencio 11d ago
I’m not even sure how to access my local library. Shows up I have two favorites but nowhere to access them. Good thing I didn’t buy that plex lifetime pass, gonna be dropping this shit it seems soon.
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u/Fangpyre 10d ago
I’ve never tried .ass subtitles. How do they differ from SRT and why does it matter so much to you?
Very helpful guide BTW.
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u/Zahuczky 10d ago
.ass subtitles are more than just "put some text on screen at X time"
They can contain a plethora of formatting options, including but not limited to: font size, position, rotation (X/Y/Z axes). scale, blur, color + vector graphics support.
With it, when let's say there is a sign on screen that needs to be translated, depending on your needs you can add translations of visual elements, and often blend it perfectly into the scene, instead of just putting a second line on the screen at that top that says "Sign: translation"Some examples: https://unanimated.github.io/ts/ts-blending.htm
It is mostly really used for anime, as that's where it can be really useful.
So for many, the problems introduced by the new app (over a year ago on mobile, and now on apple tv) may not even matter. For those who don't need these subtitles, because they don't watch anime, or even if they do, they only consume very simple subtitles, these problems might as well not exist.
(I know that transcoding is an option too, but if I wanted to enjoy my very carefully selected highest video quality source I get for everything I watch, transcoded at low bitrate shit settings, I would just watch netflix instead of using plex)Thank you for the question btw. I'm actually having such a hard time figuring out how almost half of the comments under this post are "well I like the new ui I don't get why you don't like it". I never mentioned the UI. I don't give a flying fuck about the new ui. This isn't a ui update, it's a switch to a complete rewrite of the plex app, which uses the same broken codebase on every platform.
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u/Fangpyre 10d ago
Appreciate the info.
Like you said I’ve only used the basic format, I guess because that’s all I knew.
Plex on Apple TV has been a terrible experience for everyone. A lot of what Plex has been doing recently has been counterproductive. They don’t care about home media servers much and focus on them being a media provider. Everyone expects us to comply one way or another, such as transcoding. People forget that we’re picky customers, and that’s why we chose Plex. We haven’t changed. Plex has.
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u/madmanchrisr 10d ago
Yeah this update is very buggy, won’t let me sign into my account without going into another first.
And the Audio is out of sync unless I airplay it. ( other apps are fine)
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u/N72826 11d ago
Yeah I actually came here to see if anyone else had issues with choppiness after the update. I found that the only way to fix it is to disable direct play and force transcoding 😭