Playback is interrupted once daily (at calculated sunset time?)

Plex Players Player Betas
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1

Hi all,

full disclosure: what follows is copied from my own thread in the SHIELD TV forums which I’ve created yesterday. I’m not sure which is the better place for my bug report.
// edit: I’m posting in the player betas section since I’m currently using a beta version. However, I’ve also had this issue while I was still using the official released versions. Feel free to move this post if you think it’s misplaced.

I’ve got a uniquely weird and frustrating issue with Plex on my SHIELD TV that’s been bugging me for months (if not years).
Once daily the Plex app is stopping the current playback, showing that the connection to the server has been lost, loses the tracked progress and gives me the options to cancel or try again. The subsequent playbacks are always without any further issues. It doesn’t matter whether I’m playing 4K HDR10 video with lossless audio or if I’m playing 720p video with Dolby Digital Stereo, the video, audio or subtitle formats don’t seem to matter at all.
Everything is direct playing and audio is always bitstreamed to my AVR.
This issue appeared to be completely random (never the same amount of time played, never the same audio or video formats, etc.) until now that I have a theory (which I will share at the end).

First, here’s the hardware I’m using:

  • SHIELD TV 16GB (bought in 2017) running the latest 7.2.3+ test image (older firmware versions showed the same symptoms) -> 1Gbit/s ethernet connection to my switch
  • Marantz SR-6011 AVR -> HDMI cable from the SHIELD and to the TV, no other devices attached
  • Sony KD-55AF8 4K OLED TV
  • HDMI cables are all 18Gbit/s capable (and I’ve replaced them just to be sure)
  • Logitech Harmony Elite (with Hub) as remote control
  • Windows 10 Pro machine in the same network -> 10Gbit/s link to my switch

Software:

  • SHIELD 7.2.3(30.6.131.71) -> happened in previous, non-preview versions as well
  • Plex client 7.18.1.11300 -> happened in previous, non-beta versions as well
  • Plex server 1.16.2.1297

Here’s what I’ve tried to troubleshoot in the past (no specific order):

  • new TV (previous TV was a 720p plasma model)
  • new AVR (previous one was a Yamaha)
  • new HDMI cables (again, just to be sure)
  • new network cables (upgraded to the thickest shielded CAT.8 cables I could find)
  • new network switch (went overboard and got a 10G managed one)
  • completely new Plex server hardware (I’ve had a Z68 board with a 2500K before, now I have a Z390 board with a 9900K, I also went from an Areca RAID controller to an Intel RAID controller)
  • new network card for my server (10Gbit/s Intel X710 card connected over OM4 optical fiber cable)
  • factory reset the SHIELD
  • switched to latest SHIELD test image
  • swtiched to latest beta versions of the Plex client app
  • I’ve studied the Plex client app logs, the Plex server logs, traced TCP connections with wireshark and also had a look at the Microsoft Defender Firewall logs

Now I’m coming to the reason why I’m finally ready to post this thread:

I’ve analyzed quite a few logs over the past couple of days and I’ve found something which I think is at least related to my specific issue. In the SHIELD log there’s a dump of the current state of the “uimode” service. This service in turn dumps the state of its member “mTwilightService”. The reported sunset time for the current day matched the minute of my playback issues for (at least) three days in a row now. Each day one or two minutes earlier than the last one.
I tried to find more information about the uimode and twilight services and it seems like the uimode service broadcasts to listening apps whenever there’s a transition from daytime to nighttime so that these apps get the chance to switch their UIs from bright to dark mode.
If my theory is correct, this broadcast interrupts the current playback in the Plex app.

I have the following logs for you (playback issues occured at 21:26 on the 15th of July):

The first suspicious log entry is in the Plex client app’s log in line 3393: “07-15 21:26:24.960 i: [TranscodeSession] Pausing…” -> There’s no logged remote control entries before this line. I believe this is the first log entry out of line and it’s been the same for the last few log files I’ve looked at. By the way, is it normal that I’ve got a running transcode session even though I’m direct playing all my content?

The uimode twilight service dump I’ve mentioned can be found in line 145973 of the adb bugreport file.

I hope that I’ve given you enough information to start looking into this issue.
Please let me know if you need any additional logs or info.

Best regards,
Patrick

2

I don’t think I have ever had any issue at sunset with Android TV but maybe I have not been watching anything at that time. I will pass this along to Android team to look into. Thanks for report

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Hi all,

I wanted to provide an update.
One or two days after I’ve posted this thread, my Sony TV received an update to Android Oreo.
I haven’t seen the playback issues since.

I’m still convinced that the twilight service and the sunset time is related to the issue I’ve had. However, now I think that I’ve blamed the wrong Android device. Unfortunately I’ve never pulled any logs from my TV and now it’s too late.

If anyone else is having similar issues than I had and is now reading this thread, this is where I’d start to investigate.

BR,
Patrick

4

We fixed the issue in v7.19, when the device is configured to enter dark mode when the sunset occurs the UI would be switched and our player was interrupted, we’ve made sure when the switch happens the player stays active and playing.

5

Now that’s interesting. Since 7.19 has been announced 2 days ago and I haven’t seen the issue since ~14 days ago, is it possible that I got the fix in a beta version? Do you know when the corresponding beta was first rolled out?

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