SOLVED: Black Screen When Playing 4K HDR Content on Fire Stick 4K

[nastygum]

I am having an interesting issue. I have a Jellyfin server running on my TrueNAS Server. I typically stream all of my ripped MKV content using the Jellyfin app on my Amazon Fire Stick, which is a 4K Gen 2 model. I also have a 4K LG TV that supports HDR but not Dolby Vision.

The Issue:

• One 4K HDR file, The Green Knight, displays a black screen while streaming on the Fire Stick, but the audio continues to play. The video player interface completely disappears while this happens. The Jellyfin dashboard says it's direct streaming.
  
• Other HDR content like Dune plays perfectly fine on the same setup, with virtually the exact same video media info, minus the bitrate. See attached images.
  
• Other video players experience the same issue as the Jellyfin app.
  
• The problematic file plays fine through the Jellyfin web app and other clients.
  
• Nothing in the logs indicates any errors.
  

Setup:

• Jellyfin Server: Running on TrueNAS (i7 4790, 16GB ddr3, gtx 1050ti).
  
• Amazon Fire Stick: 4K Gen 2 model.
  
• TV: LG 4K, supports HDR10 but does not support Dolby Vision.
  
• MKV Files: Typically 4K HDR HEVC
  

This issue is a mystery to me. My running theory is that the bitrate is too high for either the Fire Stick or the network. I feel like if this was the case, it would have a more graceful handling of this.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

   
   

[TheDreadPirate]

Exoplayer, which is what our AndroidTV app uses underneath, is supposed to fallback to DV8 or HDR10 for DV7.6 content, but doesn't. This is a known issue with exoplayer.

Your options are to use the quality selector in the AndroidTV player to select a lower bit rate than the video's native bit rate. Looks like these videos are between 60-70Mbps, so selecting 50Mbps would trigger a transcode.

Your other option is to strip the Dolby Vision portion and make your video straight HDR10 since Dolby Vision 7.6 and 8 are built on top of HDR10.

[nastygum]

That seemed to work. Transcoding kicked in and it played just fine.

Thanks for the help!

[reprak]

Hello, please any news for this issue? Having probably the same behavior under new Fire Stick 4k Max 6E client 0.17.9 and also under newest 0.18.0 from GitHub. Many high quality movies starting in Direct Play mode (as per server Dashboard), sound is working fine, while whole TV screen is orange/red without any progress bar and play/fwd/rev buttons. I can only return back to Jellyfin library.
When I set Max bitrate down to force transcode, it starts to work ok. But of course lower quality + unnecessary transcoding for many other high quality/bitrate movies having no issues.
Will be happy to run all media with unlimited bitrate (set to 200m as highest value now), same as I used to under Windows client and also Android client.
Or please is there anything like "best client" for TV?
I was thinking about some miniPC with Windows and connect TV via HDMI, still I gave a try to stick - newest Fire Stick 4k Max 6E.
Server running fine under 10.10.3 so far.
Thank you for your recommendation/hint/help.
Was also thinking about Zidoo Z9X8K, but how can I make sure if there could be same issue as with Fire Stick. Assuming it uses same client, although read somewhere Zidoo working on "their own client"... This can be both positive (I will be able to play everything fine directly without transcoding need), or negative (Zidoo could anytime abandon the client development and I will stay with expensive useless "brick").
Will be happy to know the best client with brightest future as I am very happy with server side and also native Windows and Android apps fine so far.
Also having here old Chromecast 4k Ethernet (black one) but as far as I found Jellyfin client can only run under new Chromecast 4k with Google TV if I am correct. Not sure if upgrade here could help me a lot. Also dislike the 100mbit fast ethernet only although having wifi 7 and 6 at home. I would like to run as much as possible via cables (10Gbit home network) to free up wifi for mobile devices to gain multigigs without overloaded APs with many unnecessary clients.
Happy for your thoughts.
Thanks a lot.

[TheDreadPirate]

When it comes to Android/Android TV, pretty much all of my devices, and Dolby Vision I've given up on waiting for Google to fix this problem with exoplayer. I opted to convert Dolby Vision 7 and 8 to plain HDR10.

https://forum.jellyfin.org/t-converting-...n-to-hdr10

[reprak]

Thanks for your comment. So it looks like nobody cares with this exoplayer bug/issue. Very sad.
Conversion might be an option, still I am wondering how to effectively "scan" the library to detect all movies with this issue to show me the list of "unsupported" by Android TV.
Also a pitty to decrease quality just because somebody is lazy to correct exoplayer issue, correct?

Probably I will try to ask Zidoo users or I will end up with some miniPC/NUC for my TV.
Any chance for any external player to be without issues under Fire stick?
Any chance Jellyfin will switch to much better internal player for AndroidTV version based on fact exoplayer is having this long term problem without any light of sorting it up?
Thanks.

[TheDreadPirate]

exoplayer comes with Android. We'd have to bring in another playback engine and re-write the playback code. It is not a trivial endeaver.

I have no idea why Google won't fix exoplayer. Probably because they DGAF.

[gianlucaf81]

Good evening guys, sorry if I'm doing some sort of necroposting but I noticed this problem with firestick 4k but only a few weeks ago, I suspected it was an update or the server or the firestick but reading it seems to me to understand it's the player. Movies that I used to watch without any problems now I can't play them anymore. The error seems to occur with HEVC 1080p/4K and Dolbyvision. Obviously the movies work if I use another player (VLC). It seems to me that there is no solution for now right?

[TheDreadPirate]

The "solution" is to give up on Dolby Vision and convert to HDR10. My guide is linked above.

Firesticks have the additional issue that several Firestick models have a bugged chipset driver that affects Dolby Vision in more than just Jellyfin.