Thanks for the update. Let me know if there is anything I can do. I have 1gb upload speed if you need access to my plex live tv for testing.
Thanks for the offer, but the looping is something I can reproduce locally, and have given logs to our developers for already 
2 Likes
Hi Dave, just a note here. Weāve had this since about Oct. of last year. At first LIve (antenna) TV would just die after about 4 minutes, Android, well as long as Closed Captions was enabled. But more recently it plays fine for about 4 minutes and then starts buffering like crazy, or something. Of course Roku has a different CC setup. I still record CC alright, just the āLive TVā . Something with transcoding maybe? My 2 cents.
@DaveBinM @daioio @sixones
Unfortunately the latest release (8.13.1.23036) does not fix this issue. Still starts seeking / jumping backwards at about 300 seconds (5 minutes). Plex for Android - #376 by daioio
02-19 15:20:16.790 i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] [https @ 0x85369800] Opening 'https://192-168-1-140.2ade9dc280a0409ca0bdac9cf513b313.plex.direct:32400/video/:/transcode/universal/session/c2ba770c8a492cb4-com-plexapp-android/base/00313.ts?X-Plex-Incomplete-Segments=1' for reading
02-19 15:20:16.795 i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] [https @ 0x7bd94800] Opening 'https://192-168-1-140.2ade9dc280a0409ca0bdac9cf513b313.plex.direct:32400/video/:/transcode/universal/session/c2ba770c8a492cb4-com-plexapp-android/base/00314.ts?X-Plex-Incomplete-Segments=1' for reading
02-19 15:20:17.050 i: [ExoPlayer][EventLogger] videoDisabled [eventTime=316.29, mediaPos=306.39, window=0, period=0]
02-19 15:20:17.054 i: [ExoPlayer][EventLogger] audioDisabled [eventTime=316.30, mediaPos=306.39, window=0, period=0]
02-19 15:20:17.055 i: [ExoPlayer][EventLogger] videoEnabled [eventTime=316.30, mediaPos=306.39, window=0, period=0]
02-19 15:20:17.060 i: [ExoPlayer][EventLogger] audioEnabled [eventTime=316.30, mediaPos=306.39, window=0, period=0]
02-19 15:20:17.062 i: [FF] Seeking outside buffer
02-19 15:20:17.066 i: [ExoPlayer][EventLogger] timeline [eventTime=316.31, mediaPos=306.39, window=0, period=0, periodCount=1, windowCount=1, reason=SOURCE_UPDATE
02-19 15:20:17.068 i: [ExoPlayer][EventLogger] period [307.01]
02-19 15:20:17.069 i: [ExoPlayer][EventLogger] window [307.01, true, false]
02-19 15:20:17.070 i: [ExoPlayer][EventLogger] ]
02-19 15:20:17.071 i: [Player][ExoPlayer] onTimelineChanged (Position: 306392 ms, Duration: 307006 ms)
02-19 15:20:17.072 i: [FF] Loading canceled (released: false)
02-19 15:20:17.073 i: [EngineEventManager] onBufferingStarted (isSeeking: false)
02-19 15:20:17.074 i: [TranscodeSession] Updating session status
02-19 15:20:17.074 i: [FF] Input has been seeked to 306392984us.
02-19 15:20:17.076 i: [TranscodeSession] Media choice updated
02-19 15:20:17.077 i: [TranscodeSession] Pausing...
02-19 15:20:17.078 i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] Demuxer is applying pending seek to 316392984 us, original target was 306392984 us.
02-19 15:20:17.079 i: [ExoPlayer][EventLogger] state [eventTime=316.31, mediaPos=306.39, window=0, period=0, BUFFERING]
02-19 15:20:17.079 i: [ExoPlayer][EventLogger] isPlaying [eventTime=316.31, mediaPos=306.39, window=0, period=0, false]
02-19 15:20:17.080 i: [TranscodeSession] Direct Play
02-19 15:20:17.081 i: [Player][Buffer] Buffering due to network too slow
02-19 15:20:17.092 i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] [https @ 0x7f7c4800] Opening 'https://192-168-1-140.2ade9dc280a0409ca0bdac9cf513b313.plex.direct:32400/video/:/transcode/universal/session/c2ba770c8a492cb4-com-plexapp-android/base/index.m3u8?X-Plex-Incomplete-Segments=1' for reading
1 Like
Does the original issue still exist (exits to guide after 5 minutes)?
No, they fixed the original issue that was causing it to exit to guide after 3 minutes. That was caused by the player not sending ātimelineā requests back to the server, causing the server to time out after 3 minutes. This issue is something in the app causing the player to seek / rewind after exactly 5 minutes (300 seconds). It will play for a few seconds then re-wind and play again continuously until it finally causes the player to eventually crash after a few more minutesā¦
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Sorry Iām not really very good at this stuff, not really a techie, but would like to mention, I have exactly the problem you mention above when playing live tv remotely after 5 mins, (my plex server is in the uk & I live in Bulgaria) , i get this problem on all my android devices i.e. Firesticks, andriod phones & Tesco Hudl 2, but my roku device works fine. Is this problem something that may be sorted in the near future or are there any workarounds available please? Does anybody know the actual state of play with this matter please?
I have also added logs for the looping problem on my original post here
Yes, im seeing this on the current live feb20th release on 4kfire tv too.
Latest version of Plex on the FireTV still has non-functional Live TV. If needed, I can post logs.
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Can also attest that the 8.14 beta still buffer loops
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What are the alternatives to Plex for live streaming?
Iām losing confidence on the whole company.
I was using the HD Homerun app for fire stick, but the interface was really bad. I switched to the Channels app a few weeks ago and it works perfectly. It costs $25 (one time fee for all of my amazon devices in my account) but it is worth it. I still use Plex when I want to record live tv, but use Channels to watch live tv. At least for now, until Plex gets it working again.
3 Likes
Channels has been perfect, curious as to why you arenāt using Channels to do the DVR component. Plex would cancel recordings every time there was so much as a blip in the over the air signal, whereas Channels is tolerant of these blips (you have a full recording with āskips/dropsā instead of the 8 minute recording you get of a 1 hour program on Plex).
My wife just uses it to record a couple of live shows to watch later in the day, thoughā¦ I have no desire to fill my Plex library with broadcast recordings, commercials and signal interference and all, so I keep them separate.
1 Like
Interesting. I havenāt had any issues with Plex recording live tv. I like the fact that I can record it and it automatically gets added into my Plex library. I donāt really see any need to pay an additional $8 per month for something that I already have that works fine. Plus hopefully Plex live tv is fixed soon.
Yeah I used to get excited about the plex blog updates about how they were improving core features of the services - stuff like major audio player updates, dvr updates, and movie agent updates. Now if I get those emails Iām thinking āhmm what useless subscription junk are they trying to tack on now?ā
Sighā¦ Will still recommend Plex to friends and family but I am slowly losing confidence in their decision making.
2 Likes
I had the following issues:
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Recordings aborting when signal broke up - the local ABC affiliate broadcasts on a low power VHF signal that has lots of interference issues, and so it will occasionally drop signal for a second. Just a couple of times over the course of a 1 hour show.
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FireTV was not working for LiveTV as others are seeing in this thread, and we have 4 in the house running Plex
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iOS app casting feature would crash when trying to cast LiveTV
Since my wife said I could cancel the Hulu Live TV subscription (around $50-60 a month in savings to cancel) once I had a solution for her to watch live sports, and Channels DVR solved all my issues, it was worth the $8 now to immediately start saving from the Hulu subscription (and at the time I was up against needing a working solution for the Super Bowl).
If Plex can solve all of the above issues I can consider moving back, but for now it just makes sense to pay the $8 for Channels.
Like I said, though, we arenāt keeping any recordings or adding them to a library. My Plex library is to maintain a central repository of all the movies and TV shows I have on DVD / BluRay, so I can access them anywhere in the house. Iām never going to put recorded TV content there.
3 Likes
Canāt speak for anyone else here but a lot of us drank the koolaid of a lifetime subscription/plexpass. Generally speakingā¦ up until this issue, plex DVR and live TV has worked perfectly for our family for years now and it has been a great investment. Just doesnāt seem like this issue was taken seriously at all until an internal staff member was experiencing it. Their resources are elsewhere or perhaps the team on the google apps is understaffed/overloaded.
2 Likes
Well it looks like they are working on it again. I got a PM earlier today to send over some new logs from the latest beta. So hopefully it gets fixed soon.
I am running on a current Fire TV Cube (2019) and three Fire TV Stick 4K. The version of Plex I am running is the one downloaded from Amazon.
Live TV dies. Sometimes in just a few minutes, sometime it goes more than an hour, either way, I get:
! Error
An error occurred while attempting to play this video. Please check
your connection and try again.
The Fire TV Cube and the Fire TV 4k both running version 8.13.1.23036. I am running a HDHomeRun Connect Quatro, HDHR5-4US, Firmware 20210210
A few months ago I reinstalled HDHomerun on each Fire TV, it runs SOLID on Live TV.
With Plex, I have NO problems streaming content thatās stored in my libraries. Not to derail the thread, but I thought I would mention:
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Back in 2019 when I first began using Plex, I discovered that with the configuration I had, I was unable to watch the same live channel on two TVās at once. The work-around was to turn off āconvert video while recordingā.
[Tuning in to same channel on more then or more TV's fails] -
Shortly after that gave up on using the Live TV DVR to record. The reason is the recordings would often not complete. I got lucky here and there and an entire episode would have recorded to the end, but rarely. I even set up a two Plex servers, one on my Synology and the other on a Win10 machine. Both had the same issue, the recordings would often be incomplete. I gave up on it and became a subscriber to YouTube TV. I may need to test this again, as the server software has been updated a number of times since I quit using the DVR.
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Plex Live TV still was useful. It gave me a TV guide and did not count against my data usage from my ISP. But starting several months ago, it began bombing out so often that I gave up on it.
I would like to āfixā this. Iāve considered replacing my Fire TV extenders (with Roku?)ā¦ or trying out different software (Channels?) ā¦ but really hoping the Plex fixes it.
[Lifetime Plex Pass purchased in 2015]
