Been trying to watch seasons 16-18 the last week. It’s not working on either computer [server] or any of my 3 TV’s that have Roku. I’ve tried all seasons, and it’s totally down. It starts like it’s loading, but plays the first few seconds of the opening commercial, then goes away. I hope it’s not down for good.
Same here, it’s probably the channel I’ve had the longest too! Any way to know the status for sure?
Just checked a few random episodes and it worked for me.
Try checking the server logs, file named com.plexapp.plugins.southpark.log to see if it reports any errors.
czukowski, you got it to work on a Roku or similar or was it just in the browser? Because what I have seen is that a lot of the times, it will actually play in the browser once it’s done playing that little jingle but on my Roku’s or Samsung Smart TV it will kick it back out where you can pick an episode after the little jingle.
I just checked the first 5 episodes in each season. The little ‘commercial’ with is 6 seconds long plays, then I’m taken back to the list of episodes. I tried it on my Roku “stick” and used both my computer servers. It does the same thing on both of them. Loads then brings me back. I’ve been rewatching all South Parks since the beginning of the summer and all was working fine for me until about 2 or 3 weeks ago when this problem started. I wanted to finish watching them before the new TV season starts. Sure wish it could get fixed!!!
Here is the log file that it just created. I’ll try to send it here.
It seems to be only affecting the earlier episodes that have started to use the longer intro jingle. From around Season 13, they are still using the shorter jingle linked below and they seem to be unaffected so far.
Ten, I’m not able to watch any in the earlier seasons on my Roku sticks! For me, it seems to be all seasons!
@dant2590 said:
Ten, I’m not able to watch any in the earlier seasons
That’s what I said. That the earlier seasons seems to be the ones affected.
Try playing season 13 and up. They work for me.
I am not sure what this conversation has to do with channel development. If you want to report or discuss an issue with a Plex channel, that should be done in the Plex channel section of the forum. This section of the forum is for questions and issues using the Plex Framework to write Plex channels.
Unless, in your effort to fix the South Park channel or its URL service, you have a specific question about the code used or you have a question about how you can submit your own updated fix for the South Park channel and its URL service to the plexinc-plugins Github site, then this is not a conversation about Channel Development and is better suited for the Plex Channel section of the forum.
There is currently a discussion on the subject of the South Park channel not playing all of its parts that is posted in the Channel section of the forum at forums.plex.tv/discussion/230589/plex-channels-south-park-not-playing-full-episodes#latest.
When I was reporting the problem, I was directed HERE and told to report the problem here!!! But it does look like 14 is playing now for me.
I actually found that at least season 1 and 2 are not working. Seasons 3, 4 and 5 are still working though (and probably the rest of them). But the problem is not in the player, but in the channel itself.
So, to keep it within the ‘Channel Development’ bounds, we can go and display the XML code for the 1st season by opening the following URL in the browser (replace the IP address with your own PMS location):
http://192.168.0.254:32400/video/southpark/episodes?season=1&title=Season+1
This turns up a list of episodes, each having a Media tag and a Part tag inside of it:
<Part key="/system/services/url/lookup?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsouthpark.cc.com%2Ffull-episodes%2Fs01e01-cartman-gets-an-■■■■-probe&indirect=1&limit=1&mediaInfo=%7B%22audio_channels%22%3A%20null%2C%20%22protocol%22%3A%20null%2C%20%22optimized_for_streaming%22%3A%20null%2C%20%22video_frame_rate%22%3A%20null%2C%20%22duration%22%3A%20null%2C%20%22height%22%3A%20null%2C%20%22width%22%3A%20null%2C%20%22container%22%3A%20null%2C%20%22audio_codec%22%3A%20null%2C%20%22aspect_ratio%22%3A%20null%2C%20%22video_codec%22%3A%20null%2C%20%22video_resolution%22%3A%20null%2C%20%22bitrate%22%3A%20null%7D" ...
The key attribute starts with ‘/system/services/url/lookup’ will tell us that the channel uses URL services to fetch the media objects, if that process produces any logs, they won’t be found in ‘com.plexapp.plugins.southpark.log’, but in the ‘com.plexapp.system.log’ file. We can also copy that value of the key attribute and paste it in the browser’s address bar, like so:
http://192.168.0.254:32400/system/services/url/lookup?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsouthpark.cc.com%2Ffull-episodes%2Fs01e01-cartman-gets-... (the rest omitted)
This, in turn, will show another Media Container object with another Media and Part tags. This time the latter will have the key attribute starting with “rtmpe://…” and that is the link to the actual media file.
Likewise we can check another season, that we have confirmed working, all the way to getting the actual media links. In my case (s05e03) I found a Media tag with five Parts inside.
So the problem is obviously that the playlist isn’t being generated correctly.
As we’ve noted above, the actual media links are being generated from the URL services. The one for the South Park channel can be found in Plex Media Server/Plug-ins/Services.bundle/Contents/Service Sets/com.plexapp.plugins.southpark/Url/South Park/ServiceCode.pys. We may look inside that file to see where the issue might be. So going back to s01e01, we could also examine the ‘com.plexapp.system.log’ file for the relevant records and indeed there are a few lines of interest:
2016-09-05 20:38:20,778 (43c) : DEBUG (networking:166) - Requesting 'http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s01e01-cartman-gets-an-■■■■-probe'
2016-09-05 20:38:20,977 (43c) : DEBUG (networking:166) - Requesting 'http://southpark.cc.com/feeds/video-player/mrss/mgid:arc:episode:southparkstudios.com:5fb8887e-ecfd-11e0-aca6-0026b9414f30'
2016-09-05 20:38:21,046 (43c) : DEBUG (networking:166) - Requesting 'http://media-utils.mtvnservices.com/services/MediaGenerator/mgid:arc:video:southparkstudios.com:8c13cda4-ed00-11e0-aca6-0026b9414f30?device={device}&aspectRatio=16:9&lang=en'
2016-09-05 20:38:21,135 (43c) : DEBUG (networking:166) - Requesting 'http://media-utils.mtvnservices.com/services/MediaGenerator/mgid:arc:video:southparkstudios.com:e5a3c356-ed00-11e0-aca6-0026b9414f30?device={device}&aspectRatio=16:9&lang=en'
2016-09-05 20:38:21,201 (43c) : DEBUG (networking:166) - Requesting 'http://media-utils.mtvnservices.com/services/MediaGenerator/mgid:arc:video:southparkstudios.com:e5a42012-ed00-11e0-aca6-0026b9414f30?device={device}&aspectRatio=16:9&lang=en'
2016-09-05 20:38:21,275 (43c) : DEBUG (networking:166) - Requesting 'http://media-utils.mtvnservices.com/services/MediaGenerator/mgid:arc:video:southparkstudios.com:e5a48584-ed00-11e0-aca6-0026b9414f30?device={device}&aspectRatio=16:9&lang=en'
2016-09-05 20:38:21,332 (43c) : DEBUG (networking:166) - Requesting 'http://media-utils.mtvnservices.com/services/MediaGenerator/mgid:arc:video:southparkstudios.com:e5a54c8a-ed00-11e0-aca6-0026b9414f30?device={device}&aspectRatio=16:9&lang=en'
Trying those links in the browser (the interesting stuff starts from the 2nd one, as the 1st is just the source web page where we would go to view the show normally, had we not ever heard of Plex before), we can roughly see where do the actual media links are coming from. By cross-checking that with the contents of the MediaObjectsForURL function from the ‘ServiceCode.pys’ file we might be actually able to tell where the issue is. This I’ll leave to the reader’s exercise, because I couldn’t see anything obvious without actually trying to run and debug that code 
I watch south Park almost everyday and it’s been working fine from the earliest seasons to the most latest. Alls good. ( I really do wish they would bring the Randomizer option back)
@gizplex said:
I watch south Park almost everydayand it’s been working fine from the earliest seasons to the most latest. Alls good. ( I really do wish they would bring the Randomizer option back)
What device are you using to watch the channel on?
