I’ve struggled with this since I bought the 2019 shield pro about 2 months ago. Another user on my server has a 2017 shield, lives 3 miles from me, and has zero problems with playback. We’re both remote. (I been renting the server for over a year without issue.) Sometimes I change the wifi for ethernet or vice versa or I restart the shield or I reboot the router or whatever and it works for however long it feels like cooperating for. I’ve been a Plex pass member for over 3 years. I love the product and I’m happy to pay for it but I was told the shield will play back anything you throw at it. Turns out it will so long as it can actually load the video. Which it cannot do. Randomly. Even mid stream. When it fails I can play it on the iPhone app or via web browser (chrome). If I then try to cast it in any way (be it chrome cast or Plex cast) nothing happens. How is that possible?
It’s not just the Shield. This has recently popped back up on my Nexus Player. I originally thought it was related to an issue I’m having with the remote on my lounge room player, but the exact same thing is happening only worse on the one in the bedroom and it’s the one with the wired ethernet connection. It took me 50 minutes to watch 17 minutes of a TV show yesterday because I had to keep pausing and then watching the buffer slowly crawl to a few minutes (as in it takes 5-10 minutes to buffer 5 minutes of the show) then play until the buffer ran out and pause it again. I literally gave up at that point.
If I cast from my phone to the Nexus Player this problem is significantly reduced (although it seems to also hate resuming play via Chromecast and it can take multiple tries to get it to work). It will still need to pause and rebuffer a couple of times but it seems to do so a lot faster and less often.
Just started happening on my AndroidTV… This is insane. Android app has gone from crap to craptacular
Surprisingly I had the Shield 2017 and it sat in the drawer, partly because of this issue and partly because of the garbage remote.
Despite already mothballing one Nvidia product I took a punt on the 2019 model (attracted by the remote).
Its my own server but hosted remotely. All media is stored on Gdrive. I haven’t had a single issue since i purchased the new model on its launch date.
More generally do any of you with this issue actually really care. It clearly doesn’t affect all users (at best) or many (at worst) and the ones it does affect still won’t provide logs despite @darcilicious providing the relevant link.
Of course we do. What makes you think we don’t and what makes you think we didn’t provide any logs yet? The fact is that there are a lot of logs to this almost-2-years-issue and nothing’s happening.
The last set of logs posted in this thread was seven months ago — probably no longer relevant.
Thanks for saving me from browsing back any further.
I was about to give up at 6 months ago.
I’ve just got done reading this entire thread so let me point out that a significant number of users early on in this thread had their issues resolved over the past two years. In some cases, it was an issue on the user’s side; many months ago, issues were identified with Nvidia; etc.
The reasons why log files are so important generally and specifically with this error message is that this particular message is a bit of a catch-all and can be caused by any number of reasons. (If you had read through this thread you would have seen this for yourself).
If you can’t post logs there is literally no way to help you resolve this issue. Similarly, posting actual version numbers of all the pieces involved is important as well.
Obviously not down to you personally but I do think that the 90 days before locking isn’t optimal for threads like this. One post every 2 months keeps a thread alive for 2 years and the “still not fixed after 2 years” hyperbole.
Ok, fair enough! I will gather the necessary logs when I get the chance and post back.
Question though, most of the time when I sort through (rewind, fast forward) through a show that is being played, the playback just gets stuck and I have to stop and play all over again. Is this issue connected the main issue in this thread?
Is that when you get the error message?
That’s one of the instances I get the error message. But most of the time I get the error message right away after playing the media file (just like everybody else). Here are the PMS logs:
Can you check this?
And that’s just it. The same error message can manifest at different times. You say “everybody else” but I actually participated in this thread back when I also had the issue. Never once did it happen straight away after starting playback. It usually happened after a very long time. That’s why multiple and frequent logs are so important from as many users as possible.
I hope you don’t think I was having a dig at you. Believe me, I know how frustrating it can be.
But the bottom line is there are a lot of Android TV users out there. Be it Smart TV’s, Shields or other Android Boxes. A particular thread post count would have to reach thousands in a couple of days before it could be classed as anything more than a “few” users.
And as mentioned I was previously one of those few users.
Anyway, I hope you get a solution or as in my case, it just seems to fix itself.
I know I disabled ipv6 as I read about that too when I was searching for a solution. I have to check wifi roaming later when I get home. Any particular reason why these two cause the issue though? I mean, what if I absolutely need to use ipv6 in my network?
Yeah, no worries I know you’re just trying to help. I will gladly provide all the necessary logs. After all, I work in IT and I eat logs for a living 
Hopefully, we just get to the bottom of this.
Cool.
Just to throw it out there (and not forgetting that causes and symptoms can vary over time.)
When i suffered the issue I had no ipv6 enabled. Currently whilst i don’t see the issue I have no ipv6 enabled.
I care. This is driving me nuts! 
I made a post about this already on the forum, included a log, and got no response.
Over the last couple of days I’ve also started to notice random issues where the client cannot connect to the server at all. It only started recently, like last two weeks. Sometimes it does it. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I switch over from ethernet to wifi and suddenly the server can be found.
Most of the time, if streaming is acting up, I’ll start watching something and within a few frames it’ll stop. I’ll pause it and the buffer hasn’t filled at all. Last night (for the first time ever) at nine minutes in it just paused, the buffer hadn’t filled past the nine minute mark. It is completely hit and miss. I came back from holidays last friday and streaming was fine until yesterday when it started misbehaving again. Power cycling everything (shield, router etc.) doesn’t make any difference. I have disabled roam and ipv6 a while back. It hasn’t solved things unfortunately.
I’m unable to find documentation explaining where the shield client logs are kept but server logs are attached.
Plex Media Server Logs_2020-01-09_13-07-05.zip (4.7 MB)
My viewing last night began at approx Jan 08, 2020 21:15 and was interrupted at approx Jan 08, 2020 21:26. At no time did I choose to stop the stream I was watching.
@MwC_Trexx @darcilicious I have tried to post this issue for the last THREE MONTHS, with absolutely no success… the problem isnt specific to a platform.
For instance, I have a sony x900e - wired connection is 10/100 on the TV, some “4k files” Plex is trying to push (reserve) 180Mbps - which wont work, so wireless is the solution, however, apparently that’s not good enough as well.
With recent updates, some are not even able to play at 8MbPS!!! and the only solution is to downsample to 4Mpbs!!!
This was NOT an issue before…
What do you need from me to get someone competent on the dev team to look into this?
Plex is basically rendered unusable atm
