I’ve encountered a specific issue with Live TV playback and time-shifting (seeking) when a show is actively being recorded and watched concurrently by multiple users. The crucial finding is that this problem seems client-specific, as the Plex Web App worked flawlessly.
📌 Incident Details & System Configuration
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Plex Media Server Version: Latest version.
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Tuner Availability: 4 tuners (only 1 used for the recording/streams).
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Users/Streams:
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Stream 1: Remote user (outside LAN) watching the show live from the start.
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Stream 2: Local user (myself, inside LAN) attempted to watch the show live concurrently.
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Affected Clients (Local User): Apple TV app and Android app
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Working Client (Local User): Plex Web Browser
❌ Problem Symptoms (on Apple TV / Android)
When I attempted to watch the in-progress recording on the Apple TV or Android app:
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The stream failed to start or play correctly.
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Seeking (FF/RW) was completely non-functional.
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The stream appeared to start playing from a point about one hour before the actual scheduled show started (i.e., playing irrelevant content, indicating a significant time-shift buffer confusion).
✅ Key Diagnostic Result
The local user experienced perfect playback and working seeking controls when using the Plex Web Browser during the same incident. Furthermore, the completed recording file checked the next day was perfect.
❓ Core Question for the Community
Given that the Web App worked, but the Apple TV and Android clients failed with seeking/time-shifting:
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Is this a known bug in the current release versions of the Apple TV or Android Plex clients regarding how they handle the temporary Live TV time-shifting buffer when it’s being written to (by the recording) and read by multiple streams?
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Could the mix of local stream failure vs. remote stream success point to a network or client setting conflict (e.g., direct play vs. transcoding differences between the Web App and the TV/mobile apps)?
