Okay. Sorry, haven’t had time for more testing until today. I noticed we are now on Plex Web 4.71.0, so hoping it might fix the problem, I reinstalled PMS 1.25.1.5286 (beta) and tested again on multiple browsers (Plex Web 4.71.0). It took a little longer to get the “session has ended” error (4-20 minutes or so), but I was able to reproduce it on Chrome, Chromium, Firefox, Opera, and Edge (As a side note, Edge has absolutely no audio from Plex Live TV, DVR recordings, and my movie library. However, I do get audio from my music library, Plex content, and another local video library—it’s the strangest thing. I will post this problem in new topic if I can’t figure it out after some more research).
Anyway, I digress. I will pm you @sa2000 about debugging (i.e. sharing DVR). I need to know which PMS version to use (public or beta), whether we need verbose logging as I think I already established the server is seeing our latest Plex Web version (now 4.71.0), and a day and time frame to do this, because we can’t watch Live TV very well while the newer PMS versions (i.e. post 1.24.4.5081) are installed due to these nagging errors.
I can send the sever log of my testing today if you are interested. It should have captured the errors for all this browser testing. Verbose is off.
Just as a double check, the error did not occur for Android and Windows players within this time frame, as expected.
Another side note. Our home entertainment is a dumb TV hooked to a Linux box. I find this configuration vastly more flexible than any smart tv I’ve seen. Also, after suffering Windows for years, Linux proves vastly more stable and consistent than Windows on the same host.
The only problem; there is no officially supported Linux Player. Yes, there is a port out there but it is out of sync with new Plex features and cumbersome to use. The only real solution for our entertainment room configuration is Plex Web, which is wonderful to use and quite beautiful by my UI tastes, but no doubt introduces a whole layer of complications as a player. This error may be one of them. But Plex will figure it out, right?!
I sent you an alpha version 1.25.2.5306 to try out. Please run with verbose logging enabled and send me the server logs zip after retrying the live tv streaming and see if it gets closed down after a few minutes
Just for the record, the alpha version mentioned above did not help me. Also, I was told this problem appears in the server log as something like this: WARN - Could not convert "duration" ("4294967295000") to the correct type
I think I speak for many on here, we are NOT using the Plex Web App. What we (or most of us anyways) are talking about is launching LiveTV as provided from something like a HD Homerun device directly through a browser.
The Plex Web App does work for me for live TV but for various reasons I prefer to just launch from native browser. The primary reason though is I have 7 or 8 different computers, laptops etc and am lazy that I won’t don’t want to have to down load the Plex Web App on all of them. And the fact that it has worked just through a browser for literally years.
Thanks for taking a look at it. It has been ongoing through the last 4 or 5 versions of PMS with you being first Plex Support rep responding that I know of.
Hi - I’m a little confused by what you are saying. Do you mean “we are NOT using the ‘Plex (platform specific) Players’?” I’m most certainly using the Plex Web browser app (currently at version 4.72) that connects to our Plex server and delivers Live TV—along with all the other various Plex content. Plex Web is the browser-based player exhibiting the problem described in this and other related posts when connected to most recent versions of the Plex server. I was able to reproduce the error easily using Plex Web on Firefox, Chrome/Chromium, Edge, and Opera from Windows and Linux desktops.
We also use the Windows, iOS, and Android “native” players, and they don’t seem to have this specific “TV session has ended” problem.
Our TV tuner is a WinTV-quadHD PCI. The tuner doesn’t appear to have any issues when using non-Plex players connected directly to the tuner device, e.g. VLC and Kaffeine on Linux. This is certainly an issue with the recent Plex server versions and how it interacts with Plex Web.
I provided @sa2000, as requested, a browser debug log in addition to Plex server & tuner logs hoping these combined might provide more insight. This test I used the most recent PMS 1.25.2.5319 beta which still gives the Playback Error in Plex Web within a few minutes of tuning Live TV.
The specific issue i am looking into is the Plex Media Server ending the Live TV playback session that was initiated by Plex Web
Any use of the DVR by other playback applications is outside the scope and would not be a Plex issue. But be aware that if other applications are used to access the DVR then that may interfere with Plex Media Server management of the DVR and scheduled recordings as it keeps and maintains its own record of how many tuners are in use at any time
I don’t normally use https://localhost:32400 but I just tried it with Plex Web 4.72 and PMS 1.25.2.5319. The “Playback Error: This live TV session has ended” happened just the same as using https://app.plex.tv. With this current configuration, the error occurs almost exactly 3 minutes after tuning a channel. I have seen this time-to-failure vary with different browsers and server versions…maybe — anywhere from 2 to almost 20 minutes. Three minutes seems pretty consistent right now.
Obviously, not everyone is experiencing the problem. You are lucky, but there are plenty of reports of this playback error smattered across several posts for both Windows & Linux PMS and Plex Web on any browser. I am still experiencing the error with Plex Web 4.72 and PMS 1.25.2.5319. If I revert all the way back to PMS 1.24.4.5081 (where we are currently stuck in order to watch Live TV without interruption), the problem goes away. Every server version after that has the problem for me, whether Plex Web has been 4.69, 4.70, 4.71, and 4.72.
I’m not sure if this could be any factor but Live TV always transcodes for me when using the Web app. Is it transcoding for you too when the error happens?
You know, if I were to speculate—and I really don’t know the inner workings of Plex at all—-the problem I see acts like the server thinks the client stopped watching live tv for x amount of time and killed the connection, but from the client’s perspective, the server just dropped the stream for no reason.
I’m assuming the playback actually shows up in the dashboard before it gets killed? The only time I’ve had this happen was when playback started but the dash never showed anything.
Though if I remember correctly this bug appeared after they fixed it on Android…
@kegbeach So, sure enough, the problematic server version Dashboard shows nothing playing, although it does show recording live tv. The PMS version without the issue shows the channel is playing in the Dashboard. Good call and Thank you!!
This should help @sa2000 and the devs figure this out along with the log and browser .har filea I sent them…I hope!!
When playback starts try changing the stream quality to different bitrates and let me know if it shows up with any of them afterwards. If it starts to show up in the dash when changing the bitrate I have a feeling it will play normally afterwards.
@sa2000 I think I may have identified the problem area!?! @kegbeach got me thinking—after I mentioned that it seems like the server thinks the web client isn’t watching the live tv stream and kills the connection after a period of time—and the Dashboard supports this idea .
So, this is my hypothesis, and it would explain why only some people are experiencing the issue. So far, my testing seems to be bearing it out too…
There is a setting in PLEX WEB - Debug called “Use alternate streaming protocol for video playback.”
I enabled this a long time ago when there were all kinds of playback problems in Plex Web for general video playback. I never turned it off. I don’t think it ever helped in that case, but I forgot about the setting.
Now, when I turned this switch off in post v1.24.4.5081 PMS, the Playback Error goes away and the Dahboard shows the TV session “now playing.” When I enable the switch again, the Dashboard shows nothing playing and the Playback Error eventually occurs after a few minutes.
I think this may be the source of my problem, and a few other people out there!!
What do you think? Can you reproduce and confirm??
I can confirm that in this case “Use alternate streaming protocol for video playback” is the issue. I can reproduce this. The session doesn’t show up in the dash and the stream dies after about 4-5 minutes.
Changing the bitrate does not help.
Looks like there’s a simple fix here. We need more people to chime in with their settings and if this works for them too.
