Fire Stick stops playing live tv every few minutes, exits to guide. ([FFmpeg] [ERROR] [tls @ 0x81b7e740] Error in the pull function.)

Plex Players Streaming Devices
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87

I downgraded. Was working fine then when I started a live stream on second firestick, first firestick is spinning. Both are direct stream showing up in dashboard and both are wired.

Hour later, video and audio are way off with freezing sometimes. For me, this version is doing the same thing as the problem I have in windows 10 client.

88

Hi @DaveBinM,
Can you take a look at this Plex app for Fire Stick 4k (and also Android TV) issue for us?

89

I see Dai is already in here, though he is currently on leave (like many folks at the moment). As heā€™s already following and has context, better to wait for his return

90

Thanks @DaveBinM,
Dai popped in 2 weeks ago and asked for new logs but didnā€™t come back after that. We have been trying to get someone from Plex respond to this issue with the Fire Stick 4k since September. Any chance you could see if Plex is tracking it for us? Basically Live TV stops playing and the Fire Stick 4k crashes back to the guide every 3 minutes or so. I captured some packets using WireShark and found that the app is not sending the ā€œGET /:/timeline?audioStreamID=288174&duration=3600000&guid=plexā€¦ā€ requests when watching Live TV. When watching movies etc it sends these requests exactly every 10 seconds. I believe if the server doesnā€™t receive these requests it kills the transcode stream after about 3 minutes.
Thanks
JG

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91

Please keep in mind that many people are on leave at the moment for the holiday period, and please be patient. The fact that Dai is in here and is asking about it says itā€™s tracked.

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92

I understand people are on leave. That also means most of us users are at home using Plex more than ever. The other tech popped in, but rarely replies and we have done a lot of homework and investigating on our own. Can we get a better reply than ā€œplease be patient?ā€ Most of us pay monthly or annually for this service. Thanks so much.

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93

Please keep in mind that we have been dealing with this issue since the beginning of November. I understand people are out on leave, but the ā€œI see someone responded 2 weeks ago, I will leave it to themā€ response is not really the answer any of us were looking for. Is it possible that there is more than one person working for Plex that can work on this issue, or at a minimum give us a status update that the issue has been confirmed and is being worked? Two months is a long time to go without working TV. Happy New Year!

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94

Bump. Driving the wife (and me by proxy) absolutely mad. Disabling closed captions on a per-stream basis is a workaround but certainly not a fix. Also have been having this issue for months on Shield TV. Finally got the free time to look for a proper fix. I was sure it was a server config issue on my end considering it has been broken for this long with regular server updates. Fresh logs: logging.txt (2.5 MB)

95

@tolsona this started in September, maybe even August already. You can check some of the other threads on this forum.
Like many here, live TV is the reason I pay for Premium. I got so desperate and was trying all sorts of devices/solutions. Right now Iā€™ve reverted to using a Chromecast to which I cast Plex live TV from an iOS device, which has been rock solid.

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96

Not sure if this is linked but I have been having issues with live TV streaming crashes on Fire HD8. I suspect it might be something to do with the stream. SD channels crash, same channels HD versions appear to be fine.

97

Does the video appear in the Plex server dashboard when you are playing on the fire hd8? If it does not show up in the dashboard then it is probably related to this bug.

98

No, just checked. It is showing. Itā€™s weird. Just tried a reset if my hdhomerun tuner and it looked to be working on QUEST but then switched channel and crashes again. I cannot narrow it down.

99

I only use Plex to watch and record OTA TV. Used to work fine on my firesticks too. Then in October it basically quit. Same symptoms as this topic thread. Since Plex is no longer suitable for the intended purpose, Iā€™ve suspended the automatic renewal of my Plex Pass.

Maybe the developers can fix some of the other bugs, too: Like when FF, instead of going forward, rewinds instead. Sometimes to the beginning of the program.

100

Funny, I just hit the fast-forward-rewinds-to-the-start-of-the-program bug yesterday while watching a football game. Suddenly the score was 0-0 and I thought CBS screwed up the graphics going to commercial. Nope, Plex did it.

To work around the problem of the show stopping after a few minutes I was able to flip back and forth between CBS and Fox and back to CBS, using the guide, to engage the transcoder and then I was able to watch the entire game without an issue.

Iā€™ve been doing this channel hopping to work around this problem for a few days now and it seems to work (while keeping a tablet or cell phone looking at my Plex dashboard to confirm the transcoder is active). For me, usually going to Fox engages the transcoder, but I havenā€™t tested enough to say that with any certainty, it might just be going to another channel, or it might be because they tend to broadcast 1080i and ABC/NBC/CBS tend to broadcast 720p.

I have the wife use the SiliconDust Fire App for watching live TV since thatā€™s rock steady and she doesnā€™t do well with workarounds.

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101

Same issue here. Brand new Fire TV Stick 4k. Wife starts watching Good Morning America, and a few minutes later, it just quits and goes back to the grid guide. Iā€™m disappointed that there doesnā€™t seem to be any developer activity on this issue. Lately any more, live TV is pretty much the only thing I used Plex for. If that doesnā€™t work, then Iā€™ll have to move on to something else and quit the Plex Pass.

Edit 1/6/2021:
I noticed the exact same behavior on my brand new Fire TV Stick with Alexa remote (non-4K) that I just purchased from Amazon before Christmas. Itā€™s not only the 4K deviceā€¦ This is very troubling; as I just changed over to Fire TV from Roku devices because of their superior external audio device control.

Edit 1/8/2021:
I found a workaround to stop this issue. If you go to Settings -> Advanced -> Enable new player and turn this off, it stops this annoying behavior. Yes, itā€™s the old, bogus interface (I miss the scrubbing navigation); but it makes my wife much happier since she mainly uses Plex to watch live TV. She can still pause Good Morning America when she goes to get her coffee. Please let us know when this is fixed so that I can re-enable the new player.

102

@daioio Can we provide any more information to help you all solve this issue? Seems to be specific to the new exoplayer (android TV/Fire stick). I (and probably others in this thread) am/are ready and willing to provide logs and any other troubleshooting steps you need to help zone in on the problem.

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103

i have the same problemā€¦ on 2 firesticks. One is a 4K and the other is a late 2020 non-4k model. One is on Ethernet, the other on wifi. There is also an apple tv i use but does not have this issue.

104

Thanks for the tip. Turning off new player causes different problems for me. Either an eventual frozen screen or out of sync.

105

Sadly Iā€™ve been unable to replicate this issue which makes it difficult to figure out the problem. Iā€™ve created a build for Fire TV devices that will produce more logging.

If you are able to replicate the issue, would you be able to side load the build below on to your device, be sure that the option to turn off the new player isnā€™t enabled, attempt to replicate the issue, then after playback stops, grab the logs and share them with me. I should be able to take a look then and see where things are getting stuck.

https://artifacts.plex.tv/android-experimental/8.12.0.22404-bbd1528b/PlexForAndroid-8.12.0.22404-bbd1528b-Armv7aAmazonFireExo.apk

106

Hi Sixones,
I PMed you my logs from today with the debug player you sent. With this new player I could not reproduce the same issue. The player consistently sent the Timeline: requests back to the PMS server. However the player did crash 3 times.

Here is one. I didnā€™t do anything, just watching live tv when it happened.

01-11 09:46:05.493  i: [TranscodeSession] Updating session status
01-11 09:46:05.494  i: [TranscodeSession] Direct Play
01-11 09:46:05.495  i: [TranscodeSession] Media choice updated
01-11 09:46:05.497  i: [Player][Buffer] Buffering due to network too slow
01-11 09:46:05.504  i: [TranscodeSession] Pausing...
01-11 09:46:05.508  i: [ExoPlayer][EventLogger] loading [eventTime=444.96, mediaPos=348.98, window=0, period=0, false]
01-11 09:46:05.511  i: [ExoPlayer][EventLogger] state [eventTime=444.96, mediaPos=348.98, window=0, period=0, BUFFERING]
01-11 09:46:05.513  i: [ExoPlayer][EventLogger] isPlaying [eventTime=444.96, mediaPos=348.98, window=0, period=0, false]
01-11 09:46:05.514  i: [ExoPlayer][EventLogger] videoDisabled [eventTime=444.96, mediaPos=348.98, window=0, period=0]
01-11 09:46:05.515  i: [ExoPlayer][EventLogger] audioDisabled [eventTime=444.96, mediaPos=348.98, window=0, period=0]
01-11 09:46:05.571  i: [FF][MediaPeriod] Releasing.
01-11 09:46:05.572  i: [FF] Loading canceled (released: true)
01-11 09:46:05.573  i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] Demuxer has been successfully interupted.
01-11 09:46:05.576  i: [FF] Releasing demuxer.
01-11 09:46:05.578  i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] Demuxer closing.
01-11 09:46:05.580  i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] Demuxer has been interupted...
01-11 09:46:05.581  i: [FFmpeg] [INFO] Demuxer has been closed, interrupting FFmpeg...
01-11 09:46:05.584  e: [ExoPlayer][EventLogger] playerFailed [eventTime=445.05, mediaPos=348.98, window=0, period=0
  com.google.android.exoplayer2.ExoPlaybackException: Unexpected runtime error
      at com.google.android.exoplayer2.l0.handleMessage(SourceFile:30)
      at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:98)
      at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:154)
      at android.os.HandlerThread.run(HandlerThread.java:61)
  Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Playback stuck buffering and not loading
      at com.google.android.exoplayer2.l0.n(SourceFile:46)
      at com.google.android.exoplayer2.l0.handleMessage(SourceFile:24)
      ... 3 more
]
01-11 09:46:05.586  e: [Player][ExoPlayer] Playback error detected
01-11 09:46:05.588  i: [Player][Timeline] Handling player error
01-11 09:46:05.589  i: [Player][Timeline] Playback stopped (error: true)
01-11 09:46:05.590  e: An exception occurred: com.google.android.exoplayer2.ExoPlaybackException: Unexpected runtime error
01-11 09:46:05.592  e: Stacktrace: com.google.android.exoplayer2.ExoPlaybackException: Unexpected runtime error
	at com.google.android.exoplayer2.l0.handleMessage(SourceFile:30)
	at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:98)
	at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:154)
	at android.os.HandlerThread.run(HandlerThread.java:61)
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Playback stuck buffering and not loading
	at com.google.android.exoplayer2.l0.n(SourceFile:46)
	at com.google.android.exoplayer2.l0.handleMessage(SourceFile:24)
	... 3 more