There’s a possibility that a new version of the Plex player for Android TV (due as a Beta soon) will solve this, but it’s not yet certain.
As a workaround, your can use Kodi with the Plex Plugin - the Kodi player doesn’t exhibit the same problems. But it’s an ugly solution if you just want a simple interface for the rest of the family.
I’m also using HD Homerun Connect with Plex DVR on my Shield and have the same issue. Generally, recording is fine but playback fails. (Playback appears fine via the Web Player though). For now, until its (hopefully) fixed, i’m using KODI for playback since the player is the most rock solid player i’ve come across. Not ideal, but…
I went back to my Windows PMS which is an Intel i5 3.2Ghz. Playback is fine on SD and HD channels. I had to switch on ‘Adjust Automatically’ for the video quality in the Shield Plex app to get the HD working. Otherwise it would play a few seconds, freeze and then say the connection was not fast enough. My home network is all hard-wired gigabit.
Ah - spoke too soon. Slight frame drops which causes the sound to go out of sync. :s
Also made the mistake of trying to FF past adverts. whilst watching a recorded Formula 1 race which brought up the server is unavailable. Had to reboot the shield.
And 10 mins later, the playback stopped all by itself. This is not going well. Am now trying an SD recording.
An update from Nvidia
There is a stutter problem with Experience 6.0 on the Shield, but the underlying UK problems still remain:
HD broadcasts have audio in AAC_LATM. The Android TV player on the Shield won’t play this, so Transcoding is forced. Skipping (and seeking) suffers as a result.
Additionally, UK HD broadcasts switch from interlaced to progressive on a regular basis, and can (theoretically) switch audio codec or aspect ration mid-programme. This causes a major headache for Plex.
Still no answer from Plex after this was acknowledged in February…
I have been speaking to sixones directly about this. He has asked for a sample from me, however using the plex server transcoder I get the following error
I’m not entirely sure what the sample required is, but if it’s any help, here’s the Plex server log created whilst I just tried to play Child In Time, recorded from BBC1 HD a few weeks ago. It’s 1080p, AAC_LATM Stereo. After clicking the play button, it takes about 2 minutes of the orange circle whizzing round, then I get audio, but a single frozen image, skipping forward eventually plays the audio from the skipped point, but the frozen image doesn’t change. This is on an nvidia Shield (both Plex server and player), with nvidia Shield v6.0, PMS 1.9.4 and Plex Android v6.6.0.
Btw, playing other HD content has pretty much the same symptoms.
yep, that is absolutely identical to my issue. When viewing on a laptop or phone it works fine. However playing on nvidia shield it does exactly what you have said.
This happened to the Android player earlier this year. It was fixed by an update - I think it was to the PMS server. Mine was on windows.
But this has been the same issue since February I believe.
Now unsure if this is a plex issue or an Nvidia issue. or Both. but right now all HD content (possibly all content) is more or less unusable once recorded.
Tried the Kodi app with the Plex plugin. Works fine there. You can switch off all the Kodi menus and get Plex add-in to launch on kodi startup. The interface imho is better than the native app.
So in answer to your question - I don’t think it is an Nvidia problem as Kodi seems to run fine.
For now setting quality to 12Mbps 1080p in the plex settings for homestreaming fixes the issue as it now transcodes both video and audio. It is only when using direct play it does not work
So my last post about setting to 12Mbps doest seem to solve the issue. It did for some recordings. but for Blue Planet 2 (recorded with plex on shield using HD homerun) playing back on nvidia shield, I cannot get it to work, it just sticks at the beginning as described earlier and fast forwarding just breaks it completely, no matter what quality I set it to. Streaming using my laptop works fine though. This is really frustrating, as said before it makes the PLex DVR using Nvidia shield useless in the UK.
Anyone got any other ideas?
If you leave it on the “stuck” image at the beginning you should hear audio play, and after 1-2 mins the picture will unfreeze. What I think is happening is that the frozen image is from the point the broadcast switches from 1080i to 1080p, but the audio plays from the start.
It’s not a permanent solution, since FF or REW will hang, as will resuming the programme.
The only permanent solution currently is to use Kodi with the Plex plugin.
Yes, I know after about 1-2 minutes it does start, However as you say FF does’t work, I also find the audio and video are often out of sync once it does start. If I start halfway through the episode I get the same stuck image, so unsure if its when it switches after the adverts.
Also, you should unmark this topic as answered, as it is not yet answered/fixed
Anyone had any more luck/work arounds with this?
Or used the new Plex for Android 6.9.0 update? Unsure if there are fixes in it for this. Of interest is:
[TV] Improve refresh rate switching.
