FireTV Stopped Playing Movies

[krhen]

New to Jellyfin, server works great from PC/web interface

Fire TV wouldn't play a large number of my collection.  Then found a post that said to set Settings -> Client Settings -> Video Player Type, setting it to VLC somethingorother, and voila!  Movies all played

Today they don't play again, and I find that that setting has mysteriously DISAPPEARED!    Looked everywhere, tried everything else, but NOPE. 

Movies start at black screen, then just sit.  The time signature sits at 0:00.  FFing doesn't do anything.  Disabling CC doesn't do anything.  Totally dead in the water

How can I get that back so I don't have to go back to Plex again?  Thanks

[Efficient_Good_5784]

The video player "LibVLC" was removed due to security reasons.
LibVLC was marked as "experimental", meaning it could have been removed entirely in the future (which did end up happening).

https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-and.../pull/2534
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-and.../pull/3639

If you're finding that you can't play videos with the remaining video player, you need to make sure that transcoding is enabled.
Can you share your server's logs & server specs here?

[krhen]

The video player "LibVLC" was removed due to security reasons.
LibVLC was marked as "experimental", meaning it could have been removed entirely in the future (which did end up happening).

https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-and.../pull/2534
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-and.../pull/3639

If you're finding that you can't play videos with the remaining video player, you need to make sure that transcoding is enabled.
Can you share your server's logs & server specs here?

Well my server isn't powerful enough for transcoding so I guess it's back to plex for me

[xaque]

Was in the same situation. I wound up forking the repo and re branded the entire 0.16.z branch with custom logos/color scheme/default players and side loaded it. Works like a charm.

[krhen]

Was in the same situation. I wound up forking the repo and re branded the entire 0.16.z branch with custom logos/color scheme/default players and side loaded it. Works like a charm.

Seems like a lot of effort when Plex just works unfortunately.

Also seems like a simple warning on the security risks of using the VLC player might suffice (and users can flip back and forth as necessary), instead of rendering Jellyfin pretty useless to the masses IMO

[Efficient_Good_5784]

You can always use the last version of ATV that still has the experimental LibVLC player by getting it here: https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-and...g/v0.16.11

Just keep in mind that as time goes on, newer server versions may not work correctly with older releases, so it would also be a good idea to stick to a working server version as well.

[xaque]

Was in the same situation. I wound up forking the repo and re branded the entire 0.16.z branch with custom logos/color scheme/default players and side loaded it. Works like a charm.

Seems like a lot of effort when Plex just works unfortunately.

Also seems like a simple warning on the security risks of using the VLC player might suffice (and users can flip back and forth as necessary), instead of rendering Jellyfin pretty useless to the masses IMO

Except plex doesn't support .strm files, which I use for a good portion of my media.

I've got hopes that the playback rewrite is going to help solve a lot of issues that 0.17 introduced for a lot of people. I was messing around and made a debug apk of the 0.17.z release, and in the developer options there you could enable the playback rewrite. It helped with playing some media that on the stable release wouldn't, but it still transcoded it. No osd, no subtitles, no nothing except the video playing on the screen, so it's currently rough around the edges but is promising.

With that being said I do wish that 0.17 would have been pushed back until the playback rewrite was further along in its development. Hell I feel that the entire 10.9.x releases have felt a bit rushed, and a lot of the fixes to certain areas also break previously working features. But that's the cost of using open source projects, and I'm totally fine with that, as I'd rather have people willing to volunteer their time developing the project than it going stale and dying out.

[krhen]

You can always use the last version of ATV that still has the experimental LibVLC player by getting it here: https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-and...g/v0.16.11

Just keep in mind that as time goes on, newer server versions may not work correctly with older releases, so it would also be a good idea to stick to a working server version as well.

I wouldn't know how to get that onto my Fire TV cube

[Efficient_Good_5784]

I would check online to see if there's relevant guides for that like this one: https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-sideload...tv-4582671