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Jellyfin Android Client Black Screen - Printable Version

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+--- Thread: Jellyfin Android Client Black Screen (/t-jellyfin-android-client-black-screen)

Jellyfin Android Client Black Screen - safderun - 2025-08-20

Hi all. I have installed Jellyfin on a Linux server with Docker. I can watch all the media from my desktop browser without any problem but when I try to play some of my media from my Android TV box, I get black screen, no sound, no video. I never use transcode and use direct stream.

My Android TV box details:
- Chipset: Realtek RTD1325
- CPU: ARM Cortex-A55
- GPU: ARM Mali-G57
- Ram: 2GB
- Note: I can watch most of 4K high bitrate movies, so the CPU&GPU performance is not the bottleneck here.

Here are some media information:

1. 1080P media that I can play on my Android TV box:
[Image: TREulG0.png]


2. 1080P media that I can play on my Android TV box:
[Image: B3pQcOg.png]


3. 1080P media that I can't play on my Android TV box but play on desktop browser
[Image: 7O4sj2z.png]


4. 1080P media that I can't play on my Android TV box but play on desktop browser
[Image: PgAs7fa.png]


5. 4k media that I can play on my Android TV box (to prove hardware)
[Image: Rst8SDT.png]

I think the audio codec "DTS" is the problem when I compare the medias above. If I enable external media player option on the Jellyfin app and use "Nova Video Player", I can play the video. So I think the hardware is not the problem but the internal Jellyfin media player is.

Jellyfin server version: 10.10.7
Jellyfin Android client version: 0.18.11
Jellyfin server host details:
- Proxmox VM
- 6 CPU
- 6 GB RAM
- 1TB HDD.

What are the solutions/options for me in this case?

RE: Jellyfin Android Client Black Screen - bitmap - 2025-08-20

Your client likely doesn't support DTS-HD MA and you've disabled transcoding (from what you've said). It's likely trying to play without being able to do so. The issue doesn't lie with the media player, it's the media.

You can use an external player that works, you can enable audio-only transcoding, or you can re-encode the audio yourself to something like DDP which seems to be compatible.

RE: Jellyfin Android Client Black Screen - safderun - 2025-08-21

(2025-08-20, 11:07 PM)bitmap Wrote: Your client likely doesn't support DTS-HD MA and you've disabled transcoding (from what you've said). It's likely trying to play without being able to do so. The issue doesn't lie with the media player, it's the media.

You can use an external player that works, you can enable audio-only transcoding, or you can re-encode the audio yourself to something like DDP which seems to be compatible.

Actually I am trying to understand howthe external players can play the media without transcoding but Jellyfin can't. I don't want to use transcoding because I don't have gpu in the Jellyfin server. I also don't want to use an external player since they don't support the external subtitles of Jellyfin.

- If the problem is the client hardware, how the same tv box client play with an external player app?
- If the problem is the client software, Jellyfin media player in this case, will it get fixed or is there anything I can do?

RE: Jellyfin Android Client Black Screen - safderun - 2025-08-21

(2025-08-20, 11:07 PM)bitmap Wrote: Your client likely doesn't support DTS-HD MA and you've disabled transcoding (from what you've said). It's likely trying to play without being able to do so. The issue doesn't lie with the media player, it's the media.

You can use an external player that works, you can enable audio-only transcoding, or you can re-encode the audio yourself to something like DDP which seems to be compatible.

BTW, I didn't disabled any transcoding options. Since I use the Jellyfin in LAN and the clients are modern, I generally don't need to transcode.

If my Android TV software doesn't support the audio codec, how can I make sure the audio is being transcoded automatically?

Here are the transcoding options for the user from Jellyfin web UI. The "Preferred transcode audio codec in video playback" option is already set to "Auto".

[Image: 2l7PurZ.png]

Even if I select the AC3 manually, the TV box doesn't play the video.