Spent a little time reading through this thread and see it has going on since Feb when Plex switched to Exoplayer in ver 6.13. I’m on 7.7 so thats a lot of version since. Is this something fixable, or was the move to Exoplayer something that broke the Android client that cant be fixed?
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I had an entire party of kids disappointed today because of this issue. I ended up downloading the movie to a USB and plugging that into the back of the Shield.
That said, I’m not sure why this is happening with this movie–I tried a couple of others, and they worked fine.
@sa2000, your 11/28 post (here) is helpful, but can you provide some details on how to turn off hardware acceleration?
I posted this info before but so Im clear…If I playback from the Shield client, it is perfect. No issues ever. If I play from the Sony TV client, big problems. Both are same client version. Direct play in both cases. I did try transcode on the Sony and no better. The obvious difference is
Direct HDMI playback on the Shield Vs going over network (wired) on TV
Much more processing power on the Shield.
It is in server settings which you can manage through Plex Web on a desktop/laptop
See Transcoder Advanced Settings
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200250347-transcoder/
I’m having a similar issue with the same error, streaming from a remote server (Linux 16.04) to my Shield as a client, but it seems to only present itself at specific times of the day. Between around 8pm-12am I find I can’t stream without this error appearing every five minutes or so. Outside of those times I literally never see it at all. I’m going to try turning off hardware acceleration on the server and see if this makes a difference, but I’d much rather leave it on as I often have a lot of users transcoding at the same time.
As mentioned earlier, there are two issues that give rise to this. One is where we get spurious end of video indication and a fix is coming out for this. The other specifically relates to the Shield and relates to memory usage but that only arises when hardware acceleration is enabled
Live TV DVR clients just seem to be problematic in general. If you just play a recording its OK. If you want to FF/REW all bets are off.
Here is what I have seen with what I have had available: Everything listed uses same Shield Server setup
Using Shield as server and client directly connected with HDMI works pretty well. The setup is Shield with USB tuner and USB3 HD Very fast and rarely an issue. This is the only workable solution for me. This is direct play. This is my main use case thankfully.
Using same Shield server but Android client on TV over wired network, constant issues with FF/REW. Direct play and tried transcode - no difference. Cannot use this.
Apple TV 4K client… Totally unusable. Was pretty shocked how bad it is. Takes forever just to tune a channel. Watch for just a small time, Pause or REW some and FF to real time and will lock up 100% of time. ATV is transcode
Samsung TV client (older not Tizen). Direct play over network. FF/REW totally uncontrollable. Will race off to wherever it wants to. This is direct play
Roku TV over wifi. This is different. Its not a “skip ahead” like the Android but a FF. When you FF, playing stops and a spinning icon until it is ready to play again. No lockups or crashing, but slow. have not tried this wired.
Windows Chrome browser on wired network. Seems oK. Transcodes.
Are these fixes direct play, transcode or both? Any ETA?
Thanks!
Was talking to a friend over Thanksgiving who said he had this issue and he solved it by going to the Shield Display & Audio Advanced Settings and changing the Surround Sound setting from Always to Auto. No idea if that will help, but thought I’d throw it out there in case anybody wants to try it 
I was just fighting with this issue on my shield and fire stick… And pmp for windows. My android phone was fine, roku as well. I installed 7.7.2 that was on my phone on both shield tv and fire stick. Voila. Seems good to go. Everything is fine and dandy if I direct play but if I tried transcoding, even though the server was fine, the clients would fail.
Not sure if this belongs in this tread, but…i’ve been having this issue for a while.
I signed up for the android tv beta and updated my Nvidia Shield Plex app version to 7.8.0.8088 .
I’ve been trying to play large 4K files for a couple hours and have not seen the server lost error message.
I hope this helps someone. Took about half a day to get on the beta list. You have to wait a bit for the shield to get the Plex beta. Set your shield to update apps automatically.
Is this a bigger problem impacting ALL Android devices? A friend of mine has a FireTV Stick and a Vizio 4K Android TV and here lately, she’s been having lots of problems with the following errors just randomly popping up during playback:
No Servers found… retry, sign out, continue
Indirect Playback, you are not directly connected to this server…
Error, Playback has stopped because the connection to the Plex Media Server has been lost
If she gets on her computer and logs in to Plex.TV, no issue so I don’t think it’s an internet problem between her and I.
My Shield and Sony TV got upgraded to 7.8.0.8095 today. I will record something and give it a test later.
Hi,
I had this issue just now because i moved my plex library hdd from old pc. I fixed it by going to the library folder - right click - uncheck read only and Apply. If you get an error about permissions, follow this guide https://superuser.com/questions/846143/remove-read-only-attribute-from-folder-after-windows-reinstall
hope that works for some!
Tested with the 7.8.0.8095 Sony TV client and no change. Same issue when using FF
Still getting the crash with client 7.8.0.8095 on my Nvidia Shield and server version 1.14.0.5468.
This plugin generates the error all of the time on my shield
The plugin works fine on iOS and Web clients…
Plex for Android 7.8.0 is now being released and it has some improvements to logging for the issue identified in this forum thread where end of video stream is spuriously
Anyone still getting this, please update to 7.8.0 when available to you and get Plex for Android and Plex Media Server logs
Thanks
See https://support.plex.tv/articles/201573117-android-android-tv-fire-tv-logs/
and for the server
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201643703-reporting-issues-with-plex-media-server/
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200250417-plex-media-server-log-files/
@sa2000 Please find client logs from Sony Android TV and Shield server. Let me know if you need any additional info. SJMplexlog.zip (250.0 KB)
Thank you. I have passed the logs to the development team
Could you confirm that the error to look into is the one that arose at 23:29:06
I think more like 23:29:32. I was banging on the FF pretty good to recreate the problem
1-26 23:29:32.412 i: [video] **Error detected during playback**
11-26 23:29:32.446 i: [FF] ********************************************************
[FF] Statistics:
[FF] ********************************************************
State: Buffering Loading: Yes Auto Play: Yes
Surface: android.view.Surface
Position: 6:08 Duration: 58:09
Window Start: 0:00 Window End: 58:09 Position in Period: 0:00
Period Position: 0:00 Period Duration: -13:-25
Video:Unknown
Audio:Unknown
Memory Usage: 400.35938 / 1583.4141 Threshold: 192.1875.
[FF] ********************************************************
11-26 23:29:32.462 i: Fetching [method:GET] https://192.168.1.101:32400/:/timeline?bandwidth=78151&bufferedTime=32&containerKey=%2FplayQueues%2F252&duration=3489144&guid=com.plexapp.agents.thetvdb%3A%2F%2F72194%2F16%2F57%3Flang%3Den&key=%2Flibrary%2Fmetadata%2F914&machineIdentifier=cbaca6ebbb552a53caedfb08769fa13d1f4921c8&playbackTime=20972&playQueueItemID=303&ratingKey=914&state=stopped&time=368503&token=...Wz2a&X-Plex-Client-Identifier=1348614d3be1c7b6-com-plexapp-android&X-Plex-Token=...Wz2a
11-26 23:29:32.498 i: [Exo2VideoPlayer] Seeking to 398503ms
11-26 23:29:32.509 i: [FF] ********************************************************
[FF] Statistics:
[FF] ********************************************************
State: Idle Loading: No Auto Play: Yes
Surface: android.view.Surface
Position: 6:38 Duration: 58:09
Window Start: 0:00 Window End: 58:09 Position in Period: 0:00
Period Position: 0:00 Period Duration: -13:-25
Video:Unknown
Audio:Unknown
Memory Usage: 413.02344 / 1583.4141 Threshold: 192.1875.
[FF] ********************************************************
11-26 23:29:32.622 i: [Exo2VideoPlayer] Player has already been stopped.
11-26 23:29:32.632 i: [TranscodeSession] Stopping...
11-26 23:29:32.633 i: Fetching [method:GET] https://192.168.1.101:32400/:/timeline?bandwidth=78151&bufferedTime=0&containerKey=%2FplayQueues%2F252&duration=3489144&guid=com.plexapp.agents.thetvdb%3A%2F%2F72194%2F16%2F57%3Flang%3Den&key=%2Flibrary%2Fmetadata%2F914&machineIdentifier=cbaca6ebbb552a53caedfb08769fa13d1f4921c8&playbackTime=21151&playQueueItemID=303&ratingKey=914&state=stopped&time=398503&token=...Wz2a&X-Plex-Client-Identifier=1348614d3be1c7b6-com-plexapp-android&X-Plex-Token=...Wz2a
11-26 23:29:32.633 i: [TranscodeSession] Session already stopped.
11-26 23:29:32.641 e: [Video Player] A recoverable error occurred while attempting to play: /library/metadata/914.
11-26 23:29:32.642 e: [Video Player] **Playback has stopped because the connection to the Plex Media Server has been lost. Please ensure the server is available and retry.**
11-26 23:29:32.649 i: [Video Player] Showing retry playback dialog.
