I’ve since narrowed it down to a wifi issue SPECIFIC TO PLEX. I have no issues streaming from Youtube, Prime Video etc. but Plex will drop out. If I go wired the issue is gone.
Since 8.6 update it drops out almost immediately, no after 11-13 minutes.
Before you guys blame my wireless network understand that its perfect for all other apps, all other devices, and I’m literally testing with the Shield 1 metre away. 400Mb+ throughput (steady) when I file copy, every single other device on my network is 100% stable and fine, and EVERY OTHER APP ON THE SHIELD IS FINE. Its specific to Plex.
Well, the tube has issues with playback of any 4k video, not just high bitrate ones. I can’t playback 4k videos as low as 10Mbps on the tube without issues (Kodi with PKC works great though). My point being if it’s the tube, 4k and/or high bitrate videos will be an issue on the official Plex app. It’s not optimized well enough to run on the tube.
Yeah its bizarre, I have NO issues with any other app BUT PLEX.
In turn, the plex server / wifi in general has no issues with any other app or any other device, including multiple Windows plex clients. Go figure.
Unless Plex responds I’ll have to live with it being some random weird incompatibility with the Plex software and Shield wireless HW/driver combo and my wireless access point HW/firmware combo (that doesn’t affect any other apps on the same Shield, or any other devices on the same wifi lol).
For now I’m only using it in my study so wires is not a problem but I had planned on using it to replace my HTPC when I (finally) upgrade to a 4K UHD TV in the living room. We’ll see I guess esp. as a reasonably high-end 2021 TV should have a reasonably good smart TV setup as well.
I am having issues with LiveTV freezing from remote Plex Media Server on brand new nvidia shield 2019 Pro (not tube). Usually it happens about 10 to 15 minutes into the LiveTV Stream, but sometimes happens sooner or later than that time frame. Other times, it seems to play back for a long time without issue.
Remote PMS server is on Verizon FIOS internet connection with consistent 800+ MBs bandwidth for both upload and download.
I have 3 Shield TV Pro 2019 units and all are on Mediacom Cable internet connection with consistent 200+ MBs bandwidth for download and 30+MBs bandwidth for upload. All are on wired gigabit ethernet connections. I am not using WiFi for these devices.
LiveTV seems to be okay from local Plex Media Server.
I have Plax Pass.
Plex Media Server Version 1.20.1.3252 running on Windows 10 Pro PC with core i7, 16 GBs RAM, Samsung 850 Evo 500 GB SSD for C: drive and Plex Software, 6 TB hard disk drive for storage.
nvidia Shield TV Pro 2019 version 8.2
Plex for Android App on Shield is version 8.6.0.20351
TV Tuner is HDHomeRun Prime with latest firmware.
The wife is very annoyed because she can’t watch CNN from remote server without interruption. Sometimes switching back to old player version helps, but it has frozen too.
Please fix this issue. Let me know if you need or want logs and if so, how to get them.
I have switched back to the old player and it has been working consistently. So there seems to be a bug in the new player that is causing the freezing when watching LiveTV.
For me, it only happens when watching LiveTV from a Remote Plex Media Server and that site has the HDHomeRun Prime with Cable Card from Verizon.
Hello,
I want to report the same problem with the new player on NVIDIA Shield Pro 2017 Plex Client.
Live TV freezes after 3 to 5 minutes. Works fine with the old player (activated in the settings) and on the other devices.
On my side, I run the Plex server that provides TV on directly on the Nvidia shield.
nvidia Shield TV Pro 2017 version 8.2
Plex for Android App on Shield is version 8.7.0.20853
Plex Server Shield is version 1.20.1.3252
TV Tuner is USB 1-tuner Hauppauge.
Plex on Shield reverted back to new player again this past week. I guess the client updated automatically and reset the setting. The issue returned when this happened. I manually switched back to old video player and all is good again.
I just read the Update on Plex for Android 8.8.0. and ine the What’s New Section, it states, “Player: Live TV is no longer supported in the old player.”
Does this mean that we can not switch back to the old player on the nvidia shield to prevent the stream from freezing or are they talking about a different “old player”?
In case this helps anyone. I have been battling with this issue for a couple of months as well on all 3 of my Nvidia Shield TVs(1 tube and 2 2019 Models). Today, I had the crash keep happening and I decided to try various troubleshooting steps. I went into settings in the plex client on Nvidia Shield and turned off “Refresh Rate Switching” and also turned off “Resolution Switching”. Can anyone else experiencing issues with Live TV crashes try this and see if it works for them?
One difference I did notice is the spinning/buffering icon still comes up but it looks like the player is able to recover itself as opposed to before just crashing and not recovering.
@DaveBinM did you at least managed to reproduce the issue? You’ve mentioned that you guys are tracking this internally but it would be awesome to have any kind of additional info. Is there any debug version that we could possibly use to help tracking this issue?
I had to switch to Kodi, because Plex’s UI on my Nvidia Shield Tube freezes after few minutes of playback - can’t press any button, nothing seems to be working - only after a while some input manages to catch up / or the entire app just crashes. It clearly looks like a RAM problem.
The only thing that helps for limited amount of time (day or two) is to do a hard reset of a Shield device.
I think I have this issue too, but only when I’m direct-playing high bitrate 4k content. For example the movie Tenet, in MKV container, “HEVC Main 10 HDR”, 62094kbps. It’s especially bad if I have subtitles enabled.
After 10-20 minutes of watching, the Plex interface is no longer responsive, pressing any buttons on my shield remote does nothing. The movie playback will start stuttering and eventually freeze. It takes a few minutes but I can finally kill the app.
Also, if I stop playback, close the app, and re-open it, the interface will again be frozen, it’s impossible to even pause the movie. The only way to get it back to normal is to clear cache and force stop the app.
This is reproducible every single time with the same file. If I downgrade the video quality so it’s encoded on my server, then everything works smoothly, no problems. The issue seems related to direct playing 4k HDR content.
For comparison, the webOS Plex app on my TV does not have any freezing issues at all.
