Server: 1.18.0.1944 on Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS
Player: 2.8 on tvOS 13
Tuner: Hauppage WinTV-quadHD
I have a scheduled recording to record every Patriots NFL game. I have the settings set to go 30 minutes beyond the end of the recording in case of overtime.
I have multiple issues while trying to watch the recording in progress:
Any time I try to skip/seek (e.g., to skip commercials), there is about a 50/50 chance that playback will fail and I’ll get just a spinner—the whole thing will freeze, probably indefinitely (I’ve had the patience to wait only a couple minutes) and I’ll have to stop playback, re-start it, and try to find my position in the playback again. This is sometimes reproducible via web player, but doesn’t happen nearly as much as on Apple TV.
Since updating to tvOS 13 (this is not reproducible via web player), every 3 minutes one of the following happens depending on setting:
If set to play original quality, the show quits out entirely.
If set to transcode (again 720p High), it jumps back to wherever you latest paused and skipped to (or back to the beginning if you did not). The timecode on the progress bar never progresses as well. So every three minutes you have to jump again by three minutes. Note, this timecode freeze doesn’t occur on Original Quality, but there the thing just quits out entirely, so this is the less annoying of the 2 states.
When the normal air time ends, if I try to watch the recording in progress, I can no longer skip/seek at all because the progress bar switched to whatever the new show is, rather than staying with the previous show’s recording. Given 1 and 2, this means then when this happens, I’m essentially left to wait for the recording to finish before I can resume watching. This is reproducible everywhere.
I think the concept of watching a recording in progress needs some love and I’d like to throw in a feature request there as well: if I start watching a recording in progress, I’d love for Plex to remember that progress and do two things:
If starting to watch again, when offering the “A recording is in progress” dialog with options of “Watch from Start” and “Watch Live”, offer a 3rd option of “Watch from furthest progress” (or use the actual timecode like elsewhere in the UX).
When moved to the library, include this same progress data to allow skipping to that when starting playback and showing it in the library as partially watched for resume prompts.
It is unfair to say the Plex team is ignoring it. Every update for the past few months has had something to do with Live TV and DVR improvements. I don’t have any issues except the last one when the live show is over and the file moves from temp space to regular space. I have to start over and find spot again. Would like to see a pointer or something come into play so don’t have to do that.
Does your Apple TV support direct play or does the server have to transcode?
It’s not unfair as there has been 0 progress. I direct play to the ROKU (need to check the ATV but I believe it also does direct play), no transcoding. I’ve documented it repeatedly in the other thread.
Well I’ve got direct play enabled and I’ve tried with and without the enhanced player but the dashboard shows nothing when I switch to my ATV. On the ROKU a device shows up and definitely is NOT transcoding. OTA - LaffTV - “According to Jim”
And that still leaves my statement as a fair assessment as the only improvement we can come close to validating is perhaps on a shield, probably a 1-2% saturation of the devices in use. Most of us have been asking for PLEX to tell us what has been done and what is planned to be done and by when.
Perhaps it would help if you’d answer those questions instead of posting riddles???
Here’s what it looks like on an ULTRA perhaps 99% of the time. Notice the actual time (9:43) versus the progress timeline (9:07, the time I joined the showed being recorded which BTW NEVER changes). NO option to view from beginning was given and NO attempt at time shifting has been made because I know it will fail. The show is BULL on CBS so you can validate that it’s a new episode (no start from beginning option).
Now, how about telling us about the improvements already made and the plans to fix this since you lay claim to be versed based on your post!!!
I have no idea what percentage Shield’s make up. As for what’s been done, that’s all posted in the release notes for the server and different clients, which you can read at any time. We certainly want to make DVR and Live TV with Plex more reliable, but I can’t tell you exactly what’s been planned, or when it’ll be done. Plex doesn’t give ETAs for things like that. I don’t see any riddle in what I posted, and the anecdotal from other users seems to indicate there’s been improvements.
And if you read the release notes you’ll see nothing has been done about these issues. You should know the saturation of your user devices with all the telemetry you collect. If it mirrors that actual sales numbers it’s less than 1-2% I generously gave you.
Before responding it would be great if you actually gathered some information for us, or are you saying you’re satisfied that 98% or more of your users haven’t been able to use a basic DVR 101 feature for more than a year?
As to you relying on anecdotal reports of improvement, that pretty well sums it up and validates that nothing of any significance has been accomplished or you’d be specifically pointing to it as the owner of the product.
I != Plex. Just because I personally don’t know the numbers doesn’t mean that they’re not off somewhere else (and these aren’t generally numbers that are shared anyway). I never said I was satisfied with how things are, and if you had a look at the release notes you would see that there are very frequent improvements (bug fixes or new additions) to the Live TV & DVR portion of Plex.
I’d also ask you to review our Forum Guidelines, as trolling, being disrespectful, rude, making personal attacks, and ranting will not be tolerated.
Thanks for the improvements so far, but please get the feature more robust. Watching recordings live, and pausing for some time while watching, causes total timeline mess-ups when you try to scan past commercials. Also scanning recordings that you started watching live, but have finished recording get total corrupted timelines as well. Please test these features on roku ect. and get these basic DVR features working, so frustrating watching time delayed football games dealing with these issues. This feature is why I signed up for PlexPass in the first place (lifetime!) , i.e. using the DVR features of Plex with my HDHomeRun and streaming to various Rokus around the house. Please make fixing these issues high priority. Thank you in advance!
I literally have a thread on this that has gone unanswered… I get that this is a big project, but it is frustrating to never get any response ever. I wish plex took support more seriously. With this being the only way to get support, and then never getting any makes it hard to give my money away.
The wife aggro this has caused is beyond reprehensible… I wish they would just take a look at windows media center and do exactly what they did for the ui. It just worked, and was very user friendly.
Are you sure because I just tested on my ATV4K and my ROKU Stick/Stick+/Ultra(18)/Ultra(19) and it’s still broke on all those devices. There can be an occasional random success but try a couple more time shifts and you’ll see it fail.
Yes I’m sure. Skipping is working great (issue 1) and it’s no longer jumping back every 3 minutes (issue 2).
The issue I reported is on Apple TV FWIW, so I can’t speak to any issues you may be having on the other hardware, but issues 1 and 2 I reported in my initial post are working fine on my same hardware I reported (though of course all software is likely newer versions).
If it’s happening happening across different players for you, perhaps it’s a problem with your server and not the players?
No, it’s not my setup. It’s a well known and long standing issue that PLEX refuses to address plus it’s observed on multiple servers (I try to help those who made the PLEX mistake until they can afford a replacement.)… My ATV4K still shows the problems and so do my neighbors. I don’t rely on PLEX, haven’t for a long time, too unreliable. I’ve gone with other solutions but keep my setup active for the assistance I noted above since they’d never refund my $$ for a product that really has NEVER worked right on the ROKU platform.
