Fast-Forward / Rewind are unreliable on Apple TV

[nialtos]

Server Version: 1.83.1.4061-d3f45728
Player Version: 8.28 (Build: 7384)
Tuner Make/Model: SiliconDust HDHomeRun Flex Quatro (HDFX-4DT)
Guide/Lineup name: Local Broadcast Listings (158 channels) - EN6 Postcode Prefix
Using XMLTV: No
Channel Number / Name: Irrelevant, happens on all channels

I recently bought a HDHomeRun to use with Plex for Live TV. It’s been working great, and it’s nice to have everything in one place, but I’ve been experiencing some issues with the Apple TV app when watching delayed Live TV (usually, the channel started recording 15 minutes ago, but hasn’t yet finished recording when I start watching it).

The app frequently gets stuck when fast-forwarding and won’t stop fast-forwarding when clicking the play button. The only way to stop it, is to navigate back to the channel list and then re-select the channel at which point it’s necessary to rewind which usually jumps all the way back to the beginning of the recorded program).

It feels quite unstable to use fast-forward/rewind in this scenario.

Is this a known issue, or something new?

Thanks in advance.

Toby

[shparkison]

@nialtos

n working great, and it’s nice to have everything in one place, but I’ve been experiencing some issues with the Apple TV app when watching delayed Live TV (usually, the channel started recording 15 minutes ago, but hasn’t yet finished recording when I start watching it).

The app frequently gets stuck when fast-forwarding and won’t stop fast-forwarding

I’m experiencing the same on and Nvidia Shield (Android TV).

Seems this has been an issue for quite some time:

Fast forwarding recorded shows often results in restart of show

It seems that for the last week or so, I have very bad luck with fast forwarding recorded TV on my Roku, and less often within Chrome. Often fast forwarding will result in the playback of the show restarting from the beginning on the Roku, or continual “spinning wheel of death” unless I stop the video and restart it. This only began recently, but it’s made watching recorded shows nearly useless, as any attempt to fast forward or rewind can result in a complete restart of the show, and attempts…

DVR scrubbing / fast-forward during recording jumps around

Issue; If you begin to watch a show, while it is being recorded… Fast-forward scrubbing or skipping 30s yields various results. (IE; to skip commercials) Sometimes it will accurately go to where you want… Other times, it will jump 2, 5, 10 minutes ahead into the recording. However, once the recording finishes… You can restart watching the recording, and all fast-forward/scrubbing will work properly. Server Type and Version#: Intel NUC8i7BEH, running latest release, as of 1/28/2019 DVR Sto…

Skip forward while recording still in progress broken

Server Version#: 1.37.0.2706-5b2cfe50 Player Version#: ALL Tuner Make/Model: HDHomerun Flexc DUO, hauppauge WinTV-dualHD Guide/Lineup name: Using XMLTV?: ? Channel number/Name: ALL When I record a football game and decide to start watching the recording while the recording is still in progress, I have issues trying to skip 30 seconds ahead. This has been an issue for several years now and I keep hoping it just gets fixed… it has not. Basically the problem gets worse the longer you watch…

All the threads get automatically closed without resolution, so wouldn’t expect much different here.

Appears they’re aware, and choose not to acknowledge or fix.

[nialtos]

@shparkison

Appears they’re aware, and choose not to acknowledge or fix.

Yea, I did notice that most of the other posts were unsolved.
I have discovered that using the “Old Video Player” does seem to resolve some of these issues.

Is there anyone from the team that maintains the Plex apps for Apple platforms in these forums who could answer these questions:

• Does the tvOS app use the standard AVPlayerViewController or something lower level?
• What does the “New Video Player” do differently exactly? Does it just add a transcoding step before passing the stream into some form of an AVPlayer?

I’d really like to understand what’s actually happening here.

Also, I’ve noticed a couple more light issues:

• Sometimes, when a programme ends and a new one begins, the app freezes playback for a few seconds, and then exits from the player back to the guide, but then continues to play the programme in the upper right hand preview.

• When opening the Live TV guide, the list is occasionally missing half of the schedule (for programmes in the future) and is scrolled to an unexpected position in the view. Swiping the remote to navigate to an adjacent entry causes the guide to jump many hours in the direction of the swipe. I usually have to quit and reopen Plex at this point to resolve the issue. I’ll take a screenshot the next time this occurs.

[d2freak]

Yes, it’s the same in Android TV. Seeking in the recording, when live, is very unstable. This was not an issue a year ago or so.

This also affects just resuming when the channel has been paused. It often causes a crash after a little while.

[goellnjh]

I have these same “simple seeking” reliability issues on:

• Roku 3820RW (plex client 7.14.5 preview mpeg2 and experimental mpeg2 checkboxes checked)
• Roku 4200X(plex client 7.14.5 preview mpeg2 and experimental mpeg2 checkboxes checked)
• Chromecast HD (Android TV OS 12, plex client version 10.6)

This is with any live/partially recorded broadcasts streaming from a HDHomeRun Quattro and latest PMS (Version 1.40.0.7775) on windows.

Since this is happening across multiple clients, I have to think it’s either a server side issue or an API handling issue between server and client. The time jumps are horribly annoying, unintuitive, obnoxious and unpredictable.

The simple time shifting functionality (so users can start a show slightly late and skip commercials) needs serious attention from the Plex dev team.

Let’s keep these threads alive! This basic functionality missing is a disservice to all LiveTV users.

[Kristin]

Just keeping this alive as this is still broken. Looks like my Plex Pass was money well wasted. Already stopped using Plex for regular movies/tv (files), and just using it for the Live TV/DVR, but with that now utter garbage, back to Channels it is.

[goellnjh]

Still broken on other platforms as well - Roku and Android for me. As a developer myself, I can’t believe any of the developers don’t use this functionality, because if they did, it would drive them crazy and make them fix it immediately.

steps to reproduce in case anyone cares:

1. setup a recording
2. allow the recording to record for 5 minutes
3. open up your client (Roku for this example), select your in-progress recording, select start from beginning
4. allow the in progress recording to play for a minute
5. seek forward a few seconds, play
6. seek forward again and see the timeline totally wrong, scratch head, yell at tv.
7. seek again and watch app/device crash
8. curse plex for the time it takes for the device to reboot

is this about the same for apple tv also?

[GHouse]

Same experience here. We were used to doing this with Survivor. Every season during live broadcast we would “let it record for a while so we can fast forward the commercials.” This year this does not work. If you try fast forwarding or rewinding it seemingly randomly gets totally lost and skips to the live or back to the beginning. Now we have to remind each other while watching this way which we have done for many seasons: “don’t fast forward there is that problem now!”

[goellnjh]

Any progress on the AppleTV client? I still have horrible awful seek issues and crashes on Roku and Chromecast TV with latest plex versions on server and client.

[PGalati]

Not sure if this helps at all but figured I would chime in for those that might want to try. Recording live tv, at least in my case, records as an mpeg2 file to the temp directory. When I begin watching the program, either once completed or in progress, my system transcodes the mpeg2 into h.264. I have my Transcoder default throttle set to 600, or 10 minutes as opposed to 60, or one minute. In my experience, this seems to help with rewinding and fast forwarding. YMMV