Live TV broke for me too just as others describe here - no longer loads the guide properly and all channels say “bad URL” and it’s very frustrating Plex isn’t fixing this right away - a whole section broken.
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Live TV just keeps getting worse with every update to the iOS app. A few days ago it did work, but you couldn’t do PiP like you can with other playback. Live TV did have PiP in the old app!
Now when I play any channel there’s no video. Only audio. Hey look, the PiP icon is there… but it doesn’t work.
Plex Channels and recordings/other media play fine. This is only affecting Live TV.
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Live TV iOS is completely broken when recording programs you have to start from the beginning and will not allow you to do live TV
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Live tv is absolute crap in the “new” app. When changing from original quality to a lower quality to fix streaming bandwidth issues sound completely vanishes. Endless issues with live tv and recording. Guide takes ages to load etc etc and all the other issues people have flagged on here already. Give us the old/working app back!!!
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What is the ETA for a fix?
I don’t think Plex have even acknowledged it as an issue…
So I’ve done a bit of playing around with my spare plex server and found the speed issue with loading the guide seems to be down to number of channels and also type of guide and number of days guide is for. So it seems to just be that new plex app just doesn’t cache any guide data and also isn’t using any form of compression for the guide data. When I deleted my DVR and just added back in my hdhomerun tuner (168 channels) and set the guide to the Plex one it loaded the guide much faster and browsing away from live TV to Home/libraries and then back to live TV then guide loading was instant. When I added in my threadfin tuner and used xml instead (350 ish channels) then it took well over 2 mins to load the guide. My xml guides are large as they have all UK channels from all providers in and 7 days of listing’s. I am pulling the data from schedules direct. The guide data takes about 30 seconds to populate in threadfin and so I’m guessing that plex is pulling in the entire xml and then only displaying the matched channel info and this would explain the delays. Wish Plex would do some kind of compression support for xml guides ie gzip and also cache the 7 days in the app once it’s loaded and then only update the additional days not already in the guide when next loading the guide data
Many of us Plex users are hitting a frustrating wall with Live TV on the Android TV app lately. If you’ve tried to fire up a live stream from the guide in the last few weeks, you might be seeing endless buffering, cryptic “source errors,” or just a black screen after the live stream plays for about a second or two( my case). What’s particularly odd is that these same live streams often play perfectly fine if you pick them from the “Recent Channels” section on the home screen, and they’re still humming along without a hitch on the Plex web app or your phone. My Google Pixel 7 Pro, for example, handles them flawlessly. My iOS devices I hadn’t checked.
From what I’m seeing in the logs and from others’ experiences, the core problem seems to lie within the Plex Android TV app itself, specifically after some of the recent updates. It’s not that your Plex Media Server isn’t doing its job, or that your network is suddenly acting up (and don’t fool with IPTV settings on your router, it’s not that). The technical errors like ExoPlayerEngine] Releasing media source due to engine destruction. and [ASS][Renderer] Missing surface, can't start renderer yet. point directly to the app’s media playback engine (ExoPlayer) and its ability to display the video. It looks like the newer Live TV Guide interface, for some reason, isn’t properly handing off the stream details to the player, causing it to stumble and crash before it can even draw the picture. It’s like the app knows what it needs to play, but gets confused right at the moment it’s supposed to show you the video.
Until Plex rolls out an official fix, the most reliable workaround I’ve found (and many others have too) is to downgrade the Plex Android TV app to an older, stable version and then stop it from auto-updating. This means uninstalling the current problematic version, then manually installing an older APK (like version 10.26.0.2578 from the 10.x.x series, which seems to be a community favorite), and finally, making sure the Google Play Store doesn’t automatically update it back to the broken version. It’s a bit of a hassle, but it should get your Live TV guide working again.
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It’s also broken for me.
@sa2000 how come we haven’t had any response from anyone on the dev team as to what the issues are, why they are happening and when they will be looked at/fixed?
he may still keep in contact with a few people. Used to be very helpful back in the day. It is a bit sad that there is nothing official in the way of bug lists etc for the new app as there are so many features missing/not working properly that were there in the previous incarnation.
I’m posting so Plex hopefully will see this. iOS mobile app not playing live tv for me. It’s hard to believe, but it seems the app was released with no testing. I don’t do anything special, just live tv with hdhomerun tuners and I only get a black screen. Seems that some use cases are less important, which feels terrible as a user. I sure wouldn’t recommend the app to anybody. I hope they update the app soon.
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I have multiple servers set up. I have a hdhomerun flex tuner and dvr set up. I record on one server and play from another with the third as a backup. My libraries are synchronized. The unupdated app on my iPad works perfectly. The guide loads and I can see the dvr schedule for each server. The app was updated on my iPhone 14 Pro and it is useless. The guide doesn’t load for any server and I have lost other functionality. I was able to schedule recordings and verify the schedule. Now I con only see what’s playing. If the previous version was added as an alternative to the App Store it would restore the great features and functionality that has been screwed up in the recent versions. I am certainly glad that I did not update the app on my iPad so I have at least one working plex mobile app.
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I’m really frustrated with the latest Plex update, as the Live TV functionality has completely stopped working for me. I’ve tried all the usual troubleshooting steps (restarting the server, reinstalling the app, checking for updates), but nothing helps. It’s clear from this thread that I’m not the only one experiencing this issue.
Live TV is one of the main reasons I use Plex, and it’s extremely disappointing that it’s been broken by an update. I’m paying for an annual Plex Pass subscription specifically for features like Live TV, and I expect my subscription to be extended by the amount of time it takes to resolve this problem.
I hope the Plex team prioritizes a fix for this as soon as possible, because right now the feature is unusable. Is there any official update on when this will be resolved?
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Direct Play Live TV from HDHomeRun Quattro live streaming DVB-T shows the overlay but no video or sound (direct play) on iPhone 14 Pro Max iOS 18.5. Also the tv guide is really slow, just freezes while loading guide data. Miss the old Plex for iOS.
Update: also getting black screen on FireTV 4K Max but if I change resolution manually to 720p it shows up.
Plex 2025.17.0 (1082)
Worked fine in the old version for me and I’m slso pulling large xml.
Adding my voice to this as well, Live TV is just broken. I have my Plex Server running on the current LTS version of Ubuntu Linux, with an HDHomerun for my digitizer-box, and mostly Apple everything else. I can pull up a browser window and most of the channels load just fine, but on my iPhone it’s broken. The only way I can get them to work is loading a channel in a browser on my desktop, then opening that channel on my iPhone, then it streams. But that’s not a good way to run this.
Tried reloading the guide, restarting the server, doing the upgrades, and even deleting and readding the Homerun to. All with the same results. Meanwhile running the HDHomerun apps show everything as expected (and faster to boot).
At this point, I’ve lost a lot of trust in doing any updates because of Plex’s handling of Live TV. For the last several months (arguably longer), it seems like every other update breaks or fixes something with Live TV. It’s to the point where I don’t want to upgrade the apps or server because I’ll lose my antenna connections and DVR capabilities. I know it’s a bit old fashioned, but there are some things it’s nice to get over the air or to check local news in the morning or in bad weather. I don’t know what’s going on at Plex that they keep breaking this.
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I was recording the Indy 500 and cannot watch it live when I was doing things Sunday because the app does not work properly. This has been broken for over a month. Do you think he would have it fixed by now?
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Well, the Plex iOS app just updated today and one of the change log entries is “restrict live tv to transcode to h.264 for better compatibility”
Which might fix the audio but no video issue I’m seeing with live TV channels… if it actually used h264!
Checking the server dashboard while my iPhone or iPad is (unsuccessfully) pulling a stream shows it is still using HEVC, also known as h265.
EDIT: I’m dumb. I had experimental HEVC hardware transcoding enabled on the server. Turned that off and the h264 stream starts instantly
I think it’s fixed! But PiP is still broken, when is weird because it works for recordings and media!
