LG / entertainment / ACE PLAYER
REVIEW
Ace Player handles the formats your LG TV refuses to.
A generic media player for LG webOS that does the unglamorous work of playing the file your built-in player chokes on, with the rough-edged UI that comes with the territory.
BY THE APP COMRADE DESK · MAY 11, 2026 · 2 MIN READ
Ace Player is a category of app every smart-TV platform ends up needing — the third-party media player that fills in where the built-in one gives up. LG’s stock webOS video app is fine for the formats it supports, but the moment a file lands outside that envelope — a Matroska container with a DTS audio track, an older AVI from an archive disk, an MP4 with an unusual subtitle stream — it returns an unsupported-format error and the file sits there unplayable. Ace Player is the app for that exact moment.
It is not a Plex competitor and does not try to be. There is no library view, no metadata enrichment, no continue-watching list. What it offers is a file picker, a codec stack that’s more permissive than LG’s, and enough subtitle and aspect-ratio control to actually finish a movie. For the user with a USB drive of mixed-format files or an SMB share that hasn’t been transcoded, that’s the entire value proposition — and on its own narrow terms, it works.
The price of admission is a UI that looks roughly a decade old and a feature set that ends at “play the file.” That’s a fair trade for the audience this app actually serves: the user whose built-in player just failed and who wants the file to play right now.
Ace Player exists for the moment your LG's built-in player throws a codec error and you just want the file to play.
FEATURES
Ace Player is a third-party media player for LG webOS aimed at the gap LG's own media app leaves open: arbitrary local and network video files in formats the stock player won't touch. Point it at a USB drive, a DLNA share, or an SMB network folder and it plays through the standard webOS video pipeline.
Format support is the headline. The app handles common containers — MP4, MKV, AVI, MOV — and the codec mix inside them, including the H.264 / H.265 / MPEG-2 variants and audio tracks (AC3, DTS where licensing allows) that the built-in player occasionally rejects. Subtitle support covers external SRT files alongside soft-subbed tracks inside MKVs, with manual offset adjustment for out-of-sync captions.
Playback controls cover the basics — seek, audio-track selection, subtitle toggle, aspect-ratio override, basic playback speed. Network browsing surfaces SMB / DLNA shares with credential entry through the Magic Remote on-screen keyboard, which works but is the slowest part of the experience. There is no library, no metadata scraping, no Plex-style poster wall — files are listed by filename.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
The codec catch-all role is the whole point and Ace Player does it. When the stock LG player throws an "unsupported format" error on a Matroska file with a DTS audio track or an older AVI, this is the app that will play it. For users with NAS-stored video libraries that aren't normalized to a single container, that capability matters more than UI polish.
Magic Remote support works as expected — pointer navigation for the file list, standard playback gestures during a video. No surprises.
ROOM TO IMPROVE
The interface is purely functional. No artwork, no library organization, no recently-played list that survives an app restart, no continue-watching. Each session starts at the file picker. For anyone used to Plex, Jellyfin, or Infuse on other platforms, the contrast is immediate.
Audio passthrough to AVR receivers is hit-or-miss depending on the LG TV model and firmware — DTS passthrough in particular fails silently on some configurations, with the app downmixing to stereo without warning. Subtitle rendering is basic — font size adjustment works but there is no styling control beyond on/off.
CONCLUSION
Install Ace Player if the stock LG media app fails on your files and you don't already have a Plex or Jellyfin server running. For users with proper media-server infrastructure, the dedicated clients on webOS are a better fit. As a tactical codec backup for the file the built-in player won't open, Ace Player earns its slot on the home screen.