Server Version#: 1.22.2.4282 (edited, had the wrong one)
Player Version#: latest
I have the weirdest problem and I’m not sure if this is the place for it but I genuinely don’t know where to start so here I am. I have 6 instances of Plex clients running in my house with various setups but all of them auto-updating on individual Nvidia Shield TVs. 5 of them run amazing and have been for years, but one of them, the one in my Guest Bedroom, will consistently throw the breaker when certain files are played (while almost all the rest of the time being rock solid). This instance is on a LG OLED using the TV’s sound (I think the lack of external speaker is probably related to the problem). I’ve watched hundreds of hours of Plex/TV in that room (it’s where we fold laundry), but with enough regularity for me not to dismiss it as file related, the breaker for that whole section of the house gets tripped when certain files are played. The file last night was Elemental (MKV with AC3 5.1 sound). Movie selected, breaker trips, I flip it back on, movie re-selected, as soon as it starts breaker trips again. I think i’ve turned off any surround capabilities in both the Shield and the Plex app (need to double check the TV settings tonight but I’m quite certain).
Has anyone ever heard of something like this? I can post a log no problem (tonight with the actual version number of the player), but i wanted to throw the general question out there first cause it’s so weird. What kind of power surge could the player/TV create that would cause a trip? This ONLY happens on plex, not netflix, disney, NFL sunday ticket, youtube tv, MLB et al.
Further color: seems like this shouldn’t happen in any event and there’s probably something wrong with the wiring of my house (specifically i suspect the neutral, but am not sure how to remedy). I’ve replaced the breaker at least once. Full disclosure, when installing home automation, my switches (Insteon dual band) were ALSO flipping the breakers and I was forced to get breakers that didn’t throw from the neutral (the wire in the panel goes straight to the neutral bar). This worked and I’ve experienced no further problems with the switches but them both being odd issues, I’m guessing related.
Nope. never heard of the app affecting any sort of power surge in device or TV. A receiver definitely has significant power draw but never heard of a TV speakers causing something like that.
Is it really only AC3 causing issues? Do you have files with eAC3 - Dolby Digital Plus? (Which is what I think most streaming services use these days)
Have you tried moving a different TV to that same room and seeing if same thing happens. May help determine if that specific TV or Shield device specifically has a significant draw while playing that content or the wiring in room is the issue. (I am by no means an electrician so just threw that idea out as something to check)
Taking the neutral wire issue out of contention for the moment… The breaker should only pop when there is excess power draw, right? And some files will be more work to decode than others. So in principle if the Shield is working harder and drawing more power, that could send the circuit over the limit and pop the breaker. I think @BigWheel was right to observe this.
You could easily test this. Set up the room like you would for viewing. Put on a file that does not crash the Shield. Then add some more devices to the same circuit… Lamps, whatever you have. See if you can pop the breaker that way.
But a Shield power brick puts out 11 W max. If the brick is super inefficient maybe it consumes triple that? I dunno. Anyway, it’s not much power draw… Less than an incandescent light bulb. It is really hard to believe that circuit is already so loaded that a few watts difference in Shield power consumption pops the breaker. And we know the breaker itself is good since you already replaced it. But, you can test this scenario easily enough.
A power adapter can fail in such a way that it shorts and trips a breaker… But I have never heard of it happening when under load only. I suppose it is possible… and you should be able to rule this out by moving the Shield or adapter to a new location.
I worry that this problem is related to the neutral wire issue you discovered with your Insteon switches. I have no idea what is really happening but that’s awfully fishy.
If I were you, I would test my outlets ASAP to see if they are wired correctly. A plug-in circuit tester won’t tell you everything, but it will highlight some glaring wiring problems. You can get something like this at any hardware store.
And whatever the tester shows I think the next step is an electrician.
yup, it sure is weird. In case i wasn’t clear, my running theory is that plex is, by error or design, forcing the tv to try to play some audio format it isn’t capable of and borking the breaker.
I don’t know, it IS pretty much only kid’s shows though. The issue was VERY clear last night, happened the minute Elemental was played. And i know in the past it’s happened a few different times but the only episode i can (almost) specifically recall was a specific episode of Hilda (and didn’t happen on the same episode on Netflix), and it wasn’t the minute it started either, but a specific part of the episode. I’d be happy to test other AC3 files or even other formats. Is there a way to sort the library by audio type?
I haven’t and this is a good idea, but unfortnately (or maybe fortunately) most of my TV’s are this model of LG OLED (2x 55" and a 65"). I also have another TV (a sharp) in the den using the TV speakers without issue. So i suppose it could be something weird with this SPECIFIC TV but I feel pretty confident in the model (at least when soundbar’s are attached/used). The majority of the Insteon breaker flips were in the same area of the house as well…
I think this is absolutely right. Though it is not strictly with LARGER files so it feels like more of an “error”. Trying to do something it can’t and surging…
This is a good point, I will preform all these tests asap. Unfortunately the TV is wall mounted and Nvidia shield mounted to the back of the TV. so it’s non-trivial to move stuff around. What do you mean by “load only”? What else would it be under?
Yeah I hear ya. I did have a contractor who’s very good with electrical at my house for 6 months before we moved in (doing other things) and we have spent many of days trying to troubleshoot this (including the breaker replace and skipping straight to the neutral bar, which tbf I wasn’t comfortable with as a fix but it cured the problem without issue for well over a year now). I ALSO had a very skilled (and expensive) electrician over to troubleshoot the same issue. he thought maybe i had non triac (or something) retrofit LED’s or that there’s possibly a “loose” neutral somewhere in the run but that there were no glaring errors (he used a similar tool to what you shared but that is an excellent suggestion as well). Basically told me it would be thousands and thousands of dollars to track down the issue, which I’m close to acquiescing on…
yeah…I was really hoping he’d open up the outlet and say, “there! the neutral is stripped and touching the box” or something. But he was basically like, “you can pay me 250/hr to pull every outlet and switch off to make sure the neutrals are correctly attached, then to check the panels in the basement and i probably won’t find anything and the issue is probably deeper in the walls” So I checked all the outlets and switches myself and the breaker has been checked. But some of the junction boxes are real tight, so maybe when closing stuff back up I recreated an issue that sporadically shows itself…or maybe the problem is behind drywall somewhere…
Any chance your Plex Media Server host is on the same circuit? I wonder if perhaps something about this particular client’s configuration is causing the server to need to transcode for certain media. Depending on server hardware/configuration, a transcode could cause the server to consume considerably more power and potentially overload that circuit, if it’s teetering on the edge.
You could try disabling transcoding completely (Settings → [Server Name] Transcoder → Disable video stream transcoding) as a test. Obviously, anything which needs to be transcoded would then fail to play.
By the way, what type of system hosts your server (Windows, Mac, Linux, something else)? What kind of hardware? And what’s the server version (what you list in your initial post isn’t it; it can be found under Settings → [Server Name] General)?
No, they are different circuits and the server isn’t crashing or turning off when the circuit breaker trips, but there MAY be something with the notion of “forcing to transcode”. Cause I accidently had a 4k UHD version of a movie in the non 4k folder a while ago and it was causing some kind of borking (I can’t remember exactly but I think it stuttered a lot). It was apparently trying to transcode it despite everything being on the same LAN and the device being 4k compatible. This is an issue that hasn’t surfaced again recently but i’ve always had my suspicions that i set up the transcoding part of it incorrectly.
This is a great suggestion and much easier to test, i will try very hard to try this tonight. Will the plex server need to be rebooted after the transcoder option change?
It is running on a HP210 with ubuntu, I can share the full specs tonight but it is a transcode compatible intel processor…and my bad about the server version, it’s 1.22.2.4282 and I’m being informed there’s an update…quite a few it would seem. Any way to check the specs of the server from the Plex UI? I’m not sure I have enabled Remote Desktop in Ubuntu…Open to other suggestions to get the specs without pluggin in a monitor
No, this setting does not require a server restart to take effect.
No worries, thanks for the version info. Yeah, there have been quite a few updates since that release (and quite a few changes). If you decide to update, I’d recommend creating a full backup of your /var/lib/plexmediaserver directory (assuming you’re not using a custom location for your Plex Media Server data directory) before doing so. Just in case.
If you can SSH to the server, you can run something like neofetch (apt install neofetch) to get a high-level overview of the system configuration.
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. First day of school yesterday for my daughter, lot of activities leading up to it. I updated plex, so that I’m now on 1.32.5.7349. I ran neofetch and I’m on an Intel Celeron G4900 @ 3.1 (nothing in the responses re: the memory but I know I upgraded it so I’m sure it’s fine). I disabled transcoding completely, ran Elemental in the guest bedroom and it made it all the way to the end of the movie…I THEN reenabled it and it made it all the way to the end of the film . So maybe the server upgrade did it or maybe the problem is more complicated, in any event I guess i’ll need to wait for it to bork on me again. Thanks for all the help so far…
It happened again! After playing the whole movie twice, once with the transcoding disabled and once with it reenabled. I tried watching Elemental in the guest room ( this is a week later) with my kids and it almost instantly threw the breaker…
We watched it upstairs no issues and I subsequently disabled transcoding on the server. After putting them to bed, I restarted the movie from the same spot and it played to completion. I am going to again re-enable transcoding and try again when I get home. What does this mean? I obviously need transcoding enabled…Anything I can do to this specific client to get it back to non-destructive functioning?
I have not, like I said above, it is a wall mounted TV and the Shield is mounted BEHIND the tv. It’s extremely non-trivial. I’d need to bring in outside help. Not saying I won’t, but upgrading the server SEEMED like it maybe fixed the issue so I didn’t chase it further. I will have to now…
Def. There is a single bathroom on that circuit so obviously some gfci’s in there. Also, I mention this because the ONLY outlet in my house connected to a switch is ALSO on that circuit. Not sure if it’s a GFCI or not but I mention it cause it’s an oddity. There was nearly nothing on that circuit being used however except the TV last night… I will have to check that switched outlet though to see whether it was on… The circuit is JUST outlets. no lights go out. It’s 2 rooms on my second floor. Whenever it happens I hear the UPS in the other room beep that it no longer has power. That room has a pc (that was asleep) a printer, monitor, motorized standing desk. All were in a sleep state (I presume).
You have other Shields, can you bring one of them and its power supply into the guest room and hook it up? I’m just trying to see if the problem follows one Shield, and you can figure that out by using any other Shield in that spot. This is the next thing I would try.
If that doesn’t do it, I would also try unplugging every other thing on that circuit – even if it is not being used. It’s a long shot, but you are well past the easy and obvious stuff! So, do more tests with the bare minimum of stuff plugged in. And if it seems to work… Test some more. Since the problem can be intermittent you need to do a lot of runs to be sure that a positive change is reliable.
It is interesting that you have a GFCI on that circuit. Usually it is the GFCI itself that will trip if it is old and flaky, but it is possible that it contributes to a breaker trip. It is a very long shot but if you get desperate, try replacing the GFCI.
also, since it appears I’ve probably approached the “test the hardware” stage. What is my best order of operations. Pull the TV down from the wall…then just plug in a new power supply to the Shield? My main theory is that using the TV’s speakers is the real culprit. Should I move the whole TV and Shield to a new room? should I just replace the Shield AND power supply while I have it off the wall? I am shuddering about what a pain in the ass it is to take this thing down…
I think this is a great first test that will save me the manual labor of getting help. I have a monitor. I’ll bring a Shield into there with the monitor and see if the same file trips the breaker, but that really only eliminates the whole set up, doesn’t narrow it to the shield, PSU or TV…
. So maybe the server upgrade did it or maybe the problem is more complicated, in any event I guess i’ll need to wait for it to bork on me again. Thanks for all the help so far…