Is Remote Playback of LiveTV working for anyone? If so help!

[freedman_mike_gmail_com]

Server Version#: 1.28.1.6104
Player Version#: latest on Samsung, Roku, Windows

So for many months now I have been unable to play any LiveTV from a remote location via either my Plex Samsung TV app or my Plex Roku app. FYI … it was working fine before this. I also can’t play remote LiveTV in the Plex App on my android tablets. I can play remote LiveTV on on windows either via the Plex web browser app or the Plex Windows App. I can also play LiveTV on my android tablet via the Plex web browser app.

By not being able to play I mean the following: On Samsung the LiveTV channel starts to load (get spinning dial) then disappears, then reappears, but after about 90 seconds puts up an Unexpected error message. All the while the server shows its happily working/transcoding the channel until the player timesout which causes the server shut down the stream/transcode.
The other situations I haven’t investigated in depth.

Of course everything works fine when on a local network (I have the same tv model - one in a local location and another in remote)

Server is on a Nvidia Shield.

I have a couple of existing posts to the NVidia and Samsung categories hoping the Plex folks would investigate and either fix or at least let us/me know its an known issue but haven’t heard anything.

My problem right now is figuring out if its just me ( something weird in my configurations/I missed needing to change) or something that is actually a Plex issue. I can live with waiting for a future fix (even if its hard/complicated and will take some time) but would like to know if its just me or others are having issues.

So is remote LiveTV working for others particularly when Nvidia Shied hosting the server and/or Samsung Tizen is the hosting the player? I would appreciate any help or advice anyone out there can give.

[pl_5309]

Remote being the key word, your remote networking isn’t working. Live TV over the relay will be unreliable.

Are the clients setup to direct play? The Roku has a check box for mpeg2.
Are you limiting your upload bandwidth?
Is the Shield on all the time so that it can keep up with housekeeping?

The Shield is pretty low power and Live TV uses the processor for most everything. More than 1 stream might get unstable.

Don’t post the same thing all over the place, people will ignore you.

[sixxnet]

It’s you. Remote Live TV works fine on Plex.

[freedman_mike_gmail_com]

Thanks all. I dug deeper seeing if I could discover more in the logs. I believe I am seeing the following behavior: Samsung Plex App requests direct play from PMS for its LiveTV playback. PMS rejects this request saying “Direct Play is not supported for LiveTV”. Instead it transcodes the output. In looking at the Samsung Plex App logging information it shows it receives 100% of the first transmission from PMS and changes its status from buffering to playing. This is the point in which nothing happens on the App side until it reports an “Unexpected Playback error” about 90 seconds after instigating the request.

So for those of you with way more experience than I, has PMS never supported Direct Play of LiveTV, is this a more recent change, or is it peculiar to Samsung Tvs/SmartTvs?

For those that remote access of liveTV is working on their Samsung/SmartTvs, is playback transcoded like I am seeing or are you getting Direct Play?

Any advice how to track down the cause of this generic “Unexpected Playback error” message from the app as the logs provide no additional details?

[sixxnet]

I’m not sure how the Samsung app works but look for enabling Direct Stream and MPEG2 support. That’s what I needed to do on the Roku.

For Android make sure Adjust automatically is OFF and Transcode interlaced is OFF. Set local and remote quality to Maximum.

Otherwise reproduce the issue and post the logs.

[freedman_mike_gmail_com]

More details:
Server Version#: 1.28.1.6104
Samsung Plex App Version: 5.32.1
Samsung TV model: QN65Q80RAFXZA

In terms of configuration of the app: DirectPlay and DirectStream are enabled. Allow In Secure Connections is enabled and my PMS has been changed to only prefer Secure Connections. These later changes were made per this bulletin: Important information about Plex for smart TVs after September 30, 2021

Plex Live TV Fails Logs.zip (201.6 KB)

In case the serial update of the app was causing the problem I first cleared its data and cache, then deleted it and readded it from the Samsung (after unplugging for a short while).

If you look at the logs it appears that the Plex App is failing to play liveTV because it gets an error when it tries to create after setting its state to playing from buffering. live TV works fine on my other Samsung TV which access the PMS locally. In addition playback of DVR works remotely on this remote Samsung whether DirectPlay or Transcoded.

Sep 08, 2022 15:46:15.001 [9078] ERROR - [Req#2d6d] [Plex for Samsung] [freedma5:c7lpzjb7neuylrk7no2d6jfm] [AVPlay[1] (IDLE)] onAVPlayError: PLAYER_ERROR_GENEREIC
Sep 08, 2022 15:46:15.001 [9078] INFO - [Req#2d6d] [Plex for Samsung] [freedma5:c7lpzjb7neuylrk7no2d6jfm] [PlaybackSessionController] playback state changed to: stopped. Here is the log snippet. The full Plex Media Server log is attached (called Remote LiveTV to Unexpected Error.log.) I have also attached two other logs for comparison: Remote DVR Playback with Transcoding.log and Remote DVR Playback Direct Play.log.

Sep 08, 2022 15:46:15.001 [9078] WARN - [Req#2d6d] [Plex for Samsung] [freedma5:c7lpzjb7neuylrk7no2d6jfm] Failed to send transcode action stop to source: server://7e8654bd8ea500ccea69ff7740a5babe897306b0/tv.plex.providers.epg.cloud/tv.plex.providers.epg.cloud:2/metadata/plex%3A%2F%2Fepisode%2F62cca5ac9692a2db8708fad4
Sep 08, 2022 15:46:15.001 [9078] ERROR - [Req#2d6d] [Plex for Samsung] [freedma5:c7lpzjb7neuylrk7no2d6jfm] Playback error occurred. Reason: FailedToSetupOrCreatePlayer, Failed to create or setup player! Message: An unexpected playback problem occurred.
Sep 08, 2022 15:46:15.001 [9078] WARN - [Req#2d6d] [Plex for Samsung] [freedma5:c7lpzjb7neuylrk7no2d6jfm] [PlaybackSessionController] could not retry, reporting error
Sep 08, 2022 15:46:15.001 [9078] INFO - [Req#2d6d] [Plex for Samsung] [freedma5:c7lpzjb7neuylrk7no2d6jfm] Opening modal: ActionsModal
Sep 08, 2022 15:46:15.001 [9078] INFO - [Req#2d6d] [Plex for Samsung] [freedma5:c7lpzjb7neuylrk7no2d6jfm] Opened modal: ActionsModal

As you can see the Plex App doesn’t seem to provide any clues why it can’t create/start a player.

Again: I ask is anyone out there is accessing LiveTV remotely on a Samsung TV?

I wonder/hope that someone on the Tizen app team can add extra debugging statements in the next Tizen app update to give me/us more information.

All I can think of at this point is to do a full factory reset of the TV which obviously is a pain. Problem is I don’t have much confidence it will change anything as this isn’t a Plex app doesn’t work situation just one (important) feature fails to work while other very similar use cases do work. Could the player that tries to start have a bug where it tries to create/grab too much memory? Could the LiveTV stream be transmitting data that makes the player think it needs much more resources than it really needs? I am open to any suggestions, even speculation as this has now been a long term issue for me.