Server Version#: v2.1.34 (on QNap)
Player Version#: 7.21.0.12323
Hi all
I’ve not been able to play back any HD TV recordings made recordings via my HDHomerun (whether recorded via HDHR or Plex via HDHR) or view any of the HD channels via Plex Live TV for months. Apparently there isa problem with the 4k Fire Stick a few firmware upgrades ago.
I asked on the HDHR forum and they have said that they gotten around it because their software allows them to block a particular decoder if one is detected, such as the one that is causing the problem.
Is this something you guys are aware of and able to resolve? I have a load of kids TV shows from CHannel 5 HD that I trim out the ads and can never play them on the 4k stick.
I have a the same problem with playing live tv in HD. (It cant be network speed because it is Gb ethernet connected) I convert all my live recordings to mp4 using winx or leawo - so that may help you with playback.
I was hoping to do the same thing with live tv - Get plex to transcode live tv because I think live tv direct from hdhomerun box is an awkward format. However everytime I load live hd tv in fire tv plex it runs the direct stream and crashes. Really frustrating.
Ok so I’m watching live hd tv on my server (desktop pc) it is using 20% of my processor and 50% of GPU. My conclusion here is that the Fire tv stick just doesn’t have enough power to transcode the ‘ts’ file / stream which is probably mpeg.
So a couple of prerequisites here: defo need to make sure network / wifi speed is good enough (if you can watch amazon prime ok then would say your fine) and you need a plex server with a decent cpu and or gpu.
Try turning down your h.264 transcode level on your fire tv stick. Scroll up to top - hit enter on your username and go to settings - down the bottom is where you find the transcode level. I found 3 -3.1 the most I could go. start at the bottom and increase it until the screen freezes / crashes etc.
Like I say you will need a decent server (mines a desktop pc with quad core processor and nvidia gpu - It is using 15% CPU and 25% of my GPU to handle this transcode)
The Fire TV Stick 4K has a bug in the video decoder that causes it to crash when playing certain types of video, and the UK HD channels happen to be one of those types. Amazon is aware of the issue and last we heard they were waiting on a fix from the company that makes the GPU (since that contains the decoder) but there’s no timeframe on when they might get that fix or when it might be released to the public via a firmware update.
The latest version of the HDHomeRun app has a change in it that bypasses the broken decoder when playing those channels, so it sounds like you might not be updated to the latest version. Once you update it should stop crashing.
Any issues with Plex would need to be reported to Plex for them to investigate. The crash you’re seeing has the same root cause of the broken decoder. We don’t know if Plex has the capability of changing the way their app decodes the way we did though. We use our own video player so we have more control over things like the decoder in use. If Plex uses the builtin player in Android then they might not have the same level of control. If you force transcoding in the app it should help though.
