Samsung TV with Emby App doesn't play most MP4 files

[SamES 1056]

1 hour ago, olli14 said:

With FAT32 the TV doesn't install the data from the USB stick,

 

I am from Germany.

 

And yes the app is in the app store.

FAT32 should be fine. Try FAT16 and make sure you are expanding a fresh version of the zip from https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby.Releases/raw/master/tizen/tizen.zip

What year or model is your TV? 

What version is in the app store now?  It should be fairly recent.

[olli14 4]

My Samsung TV is 55AU7179. Should be from 2021.

I installed emby from the store only a few month ago. And I'm quite sure that emby version is something like 1.8.x. So not the newest version.

All my USB sticks have minimum 16 GB. To format an USB stick in FAT16 you need an USB stick with 4 GB or less. Even if I find a "small" USB stick and format it in FAT 16  --> does my TV install the newest emby version 2.1.1? Or would the installer refuse to install the newest emby version, because my TV in from 2019?

 

[SamES 1056]

All App Store versions should be at 2.1.0 now (updated about 2 weeks ago).

Aside from that, FAT32 should be fine.  Try fully reformatting the USB, download the zip and extract it to the drive as per the forum post instructions.  What system/OS system are you using to format and copy the files to USB?

Also, make sure the userwidget folder is at the root of the usb and not a subfolder

\userwidget\emby.tmg
\userwidget\widget.license

Edited June 24, 2025 by SamES

[olli14 4]

I have emby version 1.9.6. From the app store I don't get further updates.

[SamES 1056]

4 hours ago, olli14 said:

I have emby version 1.9.6. From the app store I don't get further updates.

That's strange. It should be there. Please keep an eye on it over the next week and see if it appears.

[olli14 4]

Now I have a very old Samsung TV at home (it is a Samsung TV from my son).This Samsung TV is about 10 years old. On this Samsung TV I installled Emby from the Samsung store. Emby on this TV has version 1.0.77. And I can tell you that on this Samsung TV the movie "Schweinskopf al dente" plays fine. As I mentioned already in this thread my much newer Samsung TV doesn't play this file.

I can't believe that this old tv from my son (emby 1.0.77) plays this file and my much newer Samsung tv doesn't. And I'm quite sure that this old Samsung TV play the other movies as well that ma much newer Samsung TV doesn't play. What is going wrong here?

[SamES 1056]

Sorry, you'll have to provide specific details of the files that don't play on the newer TV, but it does happen that Samsung (and other manufacturers) stop supporting older codecs on newer models (for example some mpeg formats, avi and others).  This can because they are older formats that are not commonly used and not worth maintaining, security or support issues with 3rd party libraries that they may be relying on to support these old formats, or it's even possible that they have to pay licensing fees and the small user base for these old formats doesn't make it worthwhile.

[olli14 4]

Hi SamES

attached (and also in post #1 in this thread) you find the media info of a movie that the emby client of my "new" Samsung TV isn't playing but the emby client of our older Samsung TV from my son is playing.

In my opinion newer versions of emby client should be better than older ones. But you can see that is not like this. The old  Samsung TV has emby 1.0.77. The new Samsung TV has 1.9.6.

Schweinskopf al dente-Mediainfo.txt

[Luke 42077]

5 hours ago, olli14 said:

Hi SamES

attached (and also in post #1 in this thread) you find the media info of a movie that the emby client of my "new" Samsung TV isn't playing but the emby client of our older Samsung TV from my son is playing.

In my opinion newer versions of emby client should be better than older ones. But you can see that is not like this. The old  Samsung TV has emby 1.0.77. The new Samsung TV has 1.9.6.

Schweinskopf al dente-Mediainfo.txt 4.13 kB · 2 downloads

Did you try installing the new version on the old TV?  The difference is probably not the app, but the TV or tizen operating system.

[SamES 1056]

But didn't we already establish that it was probably the 50 fps rate that was causing the issues? 

19 hours ago, olli14 said:

In my opinion newer versions of emby client should be better than older ones. But you can see that is not like this.

While your opinion might make sense, for these reasons below, it's not always the case. Also keep in mind that older 'Premium' models might be 'better' than newer 'Basic' models

21 hours ago, SamES said:

It does happen that Samsung (and other manufacturers) stop supporting older codecs on newer models (for example some mpeg formats, avi and others).  This can be because they are older formats that are not commonly used and not worth maintaining, security or support issues with 3rd party libraries that they may be relying on to support these old formats, or it's even possible that they have to pay licensing fees and the small user base for these old formats doesn't make it worthwhile.

But as Luke has suggested:

14 hours ago, Luke said:

The difference is probably not the app, but the TV or tizen operating system.

 

[Luke 42077]

@olli14?

[olli14 4]

I will not try to update emby on my old Samsung TV. When the update is on the old Samsung TV then probalby I have the same problem as on my newer Samsung TV. I would rather like to make a downgrade on my newer Samsung TV and downgrade emby to version 1.0.77. But yesterday I tried again to make an emby update via USB stick (to the newest version) on my newer Samsung TV. But my TV doesn't make an update via USB Stick. I made a partition of 2 GB  on my 16 GB USB Stick. Then made a FAT16 format on it. Then extracted the emby ZIP file on the USB stick. But the newer Samsung TV didn't recognize the files on the USB stick as an update. The TV only shows the content of the USB stick.

The older Samsung TV is about 10 years old and the price was about 600 Euro. The newer Samsung TV is about 4 years old and was about 700 Euro. So is the old one a "Premium" model?

It is very sad that the newer Samsung TV is not able to play conventional movie files while the 10 years old TV does.

[Neminem 1516]

@olli14did you remove Emby from your TV before plugin in the USB stick ?

[olli14 4]

2 hours ago, Neminem said:

@olli14did you remove Emby from your TV before plugin in the USB stick ?

No.

[Neminem 1516]

Try removing the App and restart tv and then plugin your usb.

[SamES 1056]

In my opinion, I think you should stick with the store version.  There is very little difference between the store and USB versions now, and for a long time, any changes and differences have been in the UI experience and will not impact playback or your issues. There are now only limited reasons to use the USB version on a regular basis.

You must accept that Samsung does stop supporting some of these older codecs, and there is nothing we can do about except for forcing those files to transcode on newer models.

If it is the case that it is not playing and also not transcoding, then let's focus on one specific example and provide the server logs with debug enabled and the ffmpeg logs for the specific playback, and a clear description of what actually does occur when you try and playback.  There is no value in comparing what it does on an older model. We can only focus on what specifically doesn't work for a specific example

[Luke 42077]

1 minute ago, SamES said:

In my opinion, I think you should stick with the store version.

I agree but this is just for testing to demonstrate that it is most likely not the app version that is responsible for the problem.

He thinks the app version is the issue but the Samsung video player is what is doing the work of playing the video. The only way the app version could be the source of the problem is if it's interpreting a message from the video player as an error and then putting up the error message when it shouldn't.

[SamES 1056]

7 minutes ago, Luke said:

I agree but this is just for testing to demonstrate that it is most likely not the app version that is responsible for the problem.

He thinks the app version is the issue but the Samsung video player is what is doing the work of playing the video. The only way the app version could be the source of the problem is if it's interpreting a message from the video player as an error and then putting up the error message when it shouldn't.

True, and I agree to prove this would be one reason to use the USB version.

[olli14 4]

Attached the Logs while trying to play the movie "Schweinskopf al dente".

The very old Samsung TV from my son is connected to my home network. This old TV with emby  app 1.0.77 plays the movie "Schweinskopf al dente" just fine.

My much newer Samsung TV GU50AU7179 with emby 2.1.0 doesn't play the movie "Schweinskopf al dente". This much newer Samsung TV is also connected to my home network. The emby server software is 4.9.1.80. I get this error "Wiedergabefehler. Derzeit sind keine kompatiblen Streams verfügbar. Bitte später erneut versuchen oder den Systemadministrator für weitere Informationen kontaktieren."

A few days ago I installed a server pc (with the same hardware as my server) at my doughters home. The emby server from my daughter is also running  4.9.1.80.  She has also a Samsung TV model GU50TU8079. This Samsung TV also plays the movie "Schweinskopf al dente" just fine with emby app 2.1.0.

It is very strange isn't it?

ffmpeg-transcode-a03b8050-5e27-48c8-82bb-b0eaf32a621a_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-aa0ad336-d3a5-4020-9ac5-e58ede119612_1.txt ffmpeg-directstream-09da237a-d51c-4e7c-bf13-20747016733e_1.txt

[SamES 1056]

Can you please send me a sample that fails via PM and I will test, but please don't overlook this point.

On 02/10/2025 at 08:40, SamES said:

You must accept that Samsung does stop supporting some of these older codecs, and there is nothing we can do about except for forcing those files to transcode on newer models.

The error in the logs that is causing Transcoding is directly from the built-in TV player.  For DirectPlay, we give the file directly to the player, as it is. If it doesn't work, all we can do is transcode or convert it.  Either the format is no longer supported on the newer model, or the file is not well encoded and the newer model is more strict/picky about the format.

[olli14 4]

Hi all

there is also Jellyfin. I have found a description how to install the Jellyfin client app on my Samsung TV . Now I have Jellyfin on my Samsung TV and I can tell you that all movies are playing well with Jellyfin that Emby doesn't play.

[SamES 1056]

31 minutes ago, olli14 said:

Emby doesn't play.

But this is not really correct.  The file plays, it just doesn't DirectPlay.  Correct?

[olli14 4]

This file doesn't play with emby at all.

1. It doesn't DirectPlay.

2. When trying to transcode I get the error "Wiedergabefehler. Derzeit sind keine kompatiblen Streams verfügbar. Bitte später erneut versuchen oder den Systemadministrator für weitere Informationen kontaktieren."

3. But this file plays via USB stick

4. And this file plays when I play it via DLNA.

There are more files that have this behavior with Emby. 

But all of these files play with Jellyfin. Just DirectPlay. No need of transcoding.

[SamES 1056]

Can you please test a specific file that doesn't play, attach the log files, and PM me a link to the same file so that I can test it? Thanks  

[SamES 1056]

Please also provide some specs on your server hardware as I suspect that it is having trouble transcoding fast enough