I have two use cases. The first one is wife watching Jeopardy and a couple other shows with “watch from start” to get by the commercials. Watching as being recorded. Sometimes she will watch after it is fully recorded. If that happened, then it would direct stream the mpeg 2 and have the crashing., To prevent that, in the DVR setting I set to transcode while recording. This way there is an h264 recording that wont crash on FF. This seemed to make the watch from start work better. It will always transcode now. I have it set to High quality which has been 19M for 1080i and 10M for 720P. For this use case, things are working well
Second use case is NFL games also watch from start. We will start watching 1 hr in to have buffer to get by the commercials and 1/2 time. This TV is a secondary TV. We have another nicer setup of a Sony 75" TV with Android TV built in. Plex DVR is flawless on this TV. It direct streams MPEG2 with no issues. This is where we watch content mostly. Nice seating, big TV very nice sound system
Sometimes on a less important game we will just watch on the other TV with the CCGTV. This has been an issue. One problem is sometimes the DVR just cant figure out where it is. It will go to the end of the recording in progress and you cant rewind. or you are stuck at beginning and cant FF and issues like that. The other issue is over time, the video will get choppy to the point you dont want to watch it. We dont have these issues on the Sony TV using Plex on internal app.
I may replace the CCGTV with an Nvidia Shield and be done with it
One other thought is to pay the ~$30 for the HDHR DVR service. This is reliable and will work. Since I have already paid for lifetime Plex Pass, that doesnt sit very well with me but it is a way to get a working system. I see they finally added a grid guide and you can disable the slice guide.
I’m reasonably happy with my FF/RW crashing “solution”.
I actively share your frustration with the progress tracking nonsense. It’s my biggest problem.
I see it on my CCwGTV and on Plex Web in a browser.
One more note, I purchased a very cheap used Roku 3 to play around with.
Had heard that it was solid and it certainly is.
Plays live and recorded TV without any issues with nice video quality.
No configs of any kind required.
The stream always gets transcoded to H264 which my little server handles without issue.
I have not tested the Roku in a time shifted mode while recording to see if it has all the progress bar tracking issues. I’ll report back here after I see how it behaves.
I also have a Roku TV that is in a workout room and isnt used with Plex. I did try it. It has an option to allow MPEG2 video and that works. It will direct stream MPEG2. I think you are better off direct Stream/Play MPEG2 with Plex TV/DVR. If you go the Roku route I would be sure to have one that can direct stream MPEG2
Actually, I am getting a Roku 4K stick. On sale for $25 which is a great deal. I had enough Best Buy rewards points to get it for free. The Roku will direct stream MPEG2 which is the best way to do the live TV/DVR without various problems. Im not wild about Roku UI but its fine and will fix this issue.
One drawback of the Roku is on Android when you FF, you can see the picture and know where you are. Just stop hitting the FF and normal playback resumes. With Roku, FF brings up a scrubber. The TV content is not shown… You have to guess if you FF enough times, then press the enter to resume. For NFL games that will be easy since it is always 5x30 sec skip for the commercial breaks.l
Working. Direct Streams MPEG2 without crashing. One disappointment (there are always tradeoffs with Plex) is instead of -10 +30 REW FF the Roku is -10 +10. For NFL game to skip commerical block with Android, 5 quick clicks. The Roku is 16. Not crazy about that.
Thanks for the “Pro Tip” about enabling MPEG2. Works and looks super good.
Also upped the top rate to Max/Original.
I’ve done just a little testing of playing and skipping around in currently recording TV.
Gotta say that it has been totally rock solid.
The play control stuff is a little clunky like you mentioned.
Can’t wait to give it a true test on a time shifted football game.
I think rather than 16 clicks I’ll try bringing up the progress/scrub bar and attempt holding the right directional for just the right amount of time to skip commercials. Seems totally doable in my testing. At least you can see the amount of time you are skipping.
I’m using a Roku 3 (4200x) that I picked up via NextDoor for $15.
I was practicing and it seems about a "count to 4 gives me the 2:30 I need to an NFL game. Will try this weekend. But yes, solid. No forcing a transcode or any nonsense.
That is a great deal on the shiny new Roku for sure. Thanks for sharing.
All my TVs are 1080p at most and I’m not ready to wholesale swap away from CC to Roku.
There is a lot I really like and use in the CC/Google ecosystem.
I can see using this Roku 3 to fix the main TV while I wait (indefinitely maybe?) for Plex to fix their damn app.
Another change for me. The Roku was really good for $25 and didnt have the issues of the CCGTV but I could not live with the “blind” 10 sec FF operation. Traded one issue for another.
I put in the fix I should have long ago. I had an Nvidia Shield connected to my Sony Android TV. The Sony is flawless with Plex (and everything else) so I really dont need the Shield there. Shield is now on the Samsung TV and I have a perfect setup with both TVs. Direct Stream MPEG2 with watch from start and Direct Play when recorded
I also tested. I try to retest when the app or server release notes say something “interesting”.
This quick update of 9.12.0 to 9.12.1 seemed promising
Adding to my hopes was the latest system update that I got just a few days ago.
Well, as sjmplex noted it’s actually worse.
I used a currently recording FIFA game as a test.
I always restart the CC before a new round of testing.
I’ve also reverted the Plex app settings to default so that I get direct stream/play.
I want to test the mode that I need to run and that works perfectly on an old Roku!
Right after the restart things were promising. I was FFWD and REV skipping like a madman up through the first 10 minutes of the match. Everything was working great. Then playback started getting stuttery and ultimately the app crashed while I was doing nothing.
After this happened I was unable to get more than a minute into a retesting on many tries.
Seems like this would be GREAT INFORMATION for Plex TESTING and/or DEVELOPMENT TEAMS!
Lets hope they read these forums.
Who am I kidding, we know they don’t!
I noticed promising content in recent release notes so I updated server and client and did some testing.
Things seem a lot better at first glance.
Have not had a single crash watching recorded or currently recording (time shifted) TV.
I’ve not tried on anything as long running as a football game but I regularly get through 1-hour TV shows without a hitch.
PMS 1.31.1.6733 on Debian Linux w/ all updates applied
Plex app 9.17 on Chromecast with Google TV
Plex app configured to always Direct Stream/Play …No transcoding
Chromecast firmware and system apps all up to date
Things are still better than the bad old days for sure, but not perfect.
Watching fully recorded TV appears very stable. This is a big step forward. Skipping around seems to work well and not crash the Chromecast client.
Watching currently recording (time shifted) TV is better but not fully stable. Skipping around seems to work but also seems a little laggy. I have experienced the following problems watching time shifted TV:
Video freezes, audio continues. Can fix by clicking the skip back button which gets the video moving again.
Playback occasionally gets a little jittery. This used to be an absolute harbinger of an App crash coming soon. Clicking the skip back button seems to get things running smoothly again.
Very occasional App crashes seemingly out of the blue. Annoying for sure but does not happen with the clockwork regularity that it used to.
All-in-all it seems like a good bit of progress and I’m looking forward to further fixes/refinements.
I’ve switched back from my Roku to continue characterizing the new situation on CCwGTV.
We’ll see if it gets irritating enough that I have to switch back to the Roku while waiting for more improvements.
Just to let you all know. Time Shift is terrible on WebOS also. Trying to fast-forward crashes the app. Where recorded TV works perfectly. So when we use Time shift, we just let it play, and there isn’t a problem with that.
