I have found that in the roku app, if you go to settings and uncheck “Allow MPEG2”, it will not crash. However, now your server is transcoding which may cause stuttering.
This truly sucks ass. It’s happening on the latest Roku Ultra and on my ancient Roku 3.
Does anyone working at Plex actually watch live TV? Because this has been happening for weeks and their selective tech support has conveniently ignored this thread.
Same here - Roku Ultra, TCL TVs w/ Roku, Roku Stick, all have this issue. Roku 12.5, 7.11 build 2. Haven’t tried disabling mpeg2, but will try it. It’s been like this since early November, very, very frustrating.
Here are some rest results showing how long it takes a 1080i mpeg2 stream to crash the Plex app on Roku. In all cases it will die before hitting the 6 minute mark.
These stations are in the Los Angeles market.
KCBS 2.1, 1080i, 100% signal strength
5:09
KNBC 4.1, 1080i, 100% signal strength
5:14
KCAL 9.1, 1080i, 100% signal strength
5:24
5:08
5:40
This is on RokuOS 12.5.0, build 4178.
The results from Plex app v7.11 build 2 and Plex Preview 7.12 build 0 are identical.
Anyone else want to test and see if they can make it past six minutes? If not, I hereby declare this “The Six Minute Bug”
I posted the original problem report on 10/9/2023, see above.
Experiencing the same problem here on two different Roku Ultras. Only seems to happen with MPEG2 enabled, otherwise Plex transcodes it to h264 1080p. Getting this on WDIV 4.1 1080i.
@tulsatv you reported to Roku can you share that thread here I could not find it, but found a similar one.
I have the same problem my ultra is on 12.5 and crashes my roku 3’s are on 12.0 and have no problems with direct streaming.
I believe this is it. It appears they are aware of it. But no additional comments or action since October 13.
https://community.roku.com/t5/Discussions/Roku-update-12-5-broke-the-Plex-app/td-p/906951/page/3
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Confirmed that for me, turning off Allow MPEG2 is a temporary “fix”, but now those channels only show at 30fps, and the server now has to transcode.
sorry, everyone, for the delayed response! We have been investigating the issue and have isolated this to some changes in the Roku 12.5 OS update, specifically memory issues with MPEG2 streams in an HLS container. Roku enforces apps to use up to ~300MB of memory. Once an app goes over the threshold, Roku will terminate the app, which is what we are running into while direct streaming MPEG2 with a resolution of 1080. Lower resolutions are not immediately affected. However, those streams use much more memory in this scenario than they should. We are looking to see if we can do anything to limit the memory usage, but this may be something that needs an OS update/fix from Roku. The playback stack and memory management are part of Roku’s OS, which developers cannot tune or modify.
In the meantime, to work around the issue, we will turn off direct streaming of MPEG2 if the resolution is over 720p. While the “Allow MPEG2” setting is not technically supported, you can still benefit by enabling it for resolutions lower than 1080p. If the Live TV channel is 1080p, the setting is ignored and will require a transcode to convert from MPEG to H264 (essentially, what happens with the setting disabled). We will be publishing a preview update shortly and plan to include this change in the next official release.
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Thank you for the thoughtful reply!
That is unfortunately really frustrating on the Roku side, as unfortunately, transcoding causes a huge load on the server (I ended up just buying a beefier server to handle the additional load).
Me too. Very long thread. I guess just turn on transcoding?
@ljunkie Thanks for the information, but please do not force this workaround on everyone–it’s not a problem for everyone! My server can’t handle constant transcoding and the MPEG2 streaming often works fine, including on 1080i channels. I have been seeing this issue intermittently on some devices (crashes every ~5 min), but as an example, I have been watching local NBC at 1080i for the last 45 minutes with no issues on my Roku Streaming Stick 4k running OS 12.5.0 build 4178-CU.
IMHO, it feels like this issue deserves some more investigation into when/why it’s occurring before forcing the transcoding workaround into the main release channel.
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@awood djshin found another apparent workaround above (not that it should be considered a solution). Could you have inadvertently done this with your 4K stick?
@tulsatv good question, and no, I don’t believe so. I’ve used that trick in the past with success, but last night it was “live” (unpaused). After I posted I tried on two other Rokus and they worked fine as well. This morning I confirmed that it’s still working, including two different 1080i channels.
Note: I also confirmed that my server is not transcoding the video: “1080i (MPEG2VIDEO) Direct Stream.”
Update: I just tried on Roku Ultra LT 4801RW, OS 12.5.0 build 4178-DE and it crashed. Others are still going strong.
Interesting. The recent Roku coding changes are listed here: Roku
“Roku OS 12.5 includes new APIs for monitoring the current amount of available memory for a channel and getting the device user agent. This release also includes features that generally enhance the performance of media playback such as prebuffering for live content…”
I wonder if this code behaves differently depending on the specific Roku hardware it is running on.
FWIW, my Roku Streambar on OS 12.5 is still behaving the same way: crashes after 2 minutes of streaming 1080i Plex live TV; after the reboot, the same channel on Plex had the option to “start from beginning” (where I started it previously). Taking that option was in effect keeping a 3-minute buffer on the Plex server. The channel is still playing after 30+ minutes.
Maybe having that buffer on Plex convinces the Roku Streambar that it is no longer live TV, and thus the new Roku code doesn’t pre-buffer the same way or at all?
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Hey all. We are about to ship another preview release that may have a fix for the issue. We have opted to make this an experimental setting and it’s attached to the “Allow MPEG2” option. When “Allow MPEG2” is enabled, you’ll see another sub option named “Experimental 1080p MPEG2”. This sub option will allow direct streaming resolutions up to 1080p (again), but it should hopefully fix the memory issue. Without going into too much detail, we have found that using a different container to deliver the stream won’t exhaust the memory during playback. We’ll continue to test this on our end, however, we want to get this out sooner than later to ensure you all have a better experience! Please give that option a try and let us know if the channel exits stop. I’ll update this thread when the preview version is ready.
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Hello!
I can report that a 1080i channel here got past the six minute mark on direct play.
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