Roku Live TV quitting stream after 2 seconds

General Discussions
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1

Dear Plex,

Live TV is not working anymore on my Roku. Stream is quitting just 2 seconds after start since latest update.
Waiting for a solution.

Thanks

2

Let me repeat:
I cannot use live tv since the latest awesome update.
Plex is quitting after displaying around 2 seconds of the stream.

Please revert the latest wonderful change or give an option to revert to a previous version.
I’m f…g tired of this.
TAKE AS MANY TEST CASES AS NECESSARY TO AVOID ANNOYING PAYING CUSTOMERS WITH ALMOST EVERY SINGLE UPDATE!!!

Thanks

3

I’m also seeing the Plex app crashing on my Roku when trying to watch Live TV.

A workaround that seems it may work for me is to go into the video settings on the Roku app and set “Direct Play” to either “Auto” or “Off”. If it does direct stream then the Roku Plex app doesn’t crash at least. I’m consistently getting buffering after ~30 seconds of direct stream that I haven’t experienced previously, but then it seems to do ok after that.

Edit: Additional test cases and information
PMS: 1.16.3.1443 (1.16.5 has another Live TV issue that I have another thread discussing)
Roku Plex Client: v6.3.13.5830-82b237149-Plex
Tuner: HDHomerun Extend

Test cases - “Fail” indicates that the Roku Plex app crashes and returns to the Roku home screen. “Pass” means a successful and stable play.

Fail

  • Direct play Live TV, h.264 in .ts container (“High Quality (30fps limit)” transcode in Plex HDHR Extend settings)
  • Direct Play Live TV, mpeg2 in .ts container (“Original” in Plex HDHR Extend settings)

Pass

  • Direct play of recorded TV, h.264 in .ts container.
  • Direct play of movie, h.264 in .mp4 container
  • Direct stream Live TV, h.264 in .ts container.
  • Direct stream of Live TV, mpeg2 in .mp4 container
4

Thanks for trying to help.

Unfortunately I cannot accept transcoding as a solution.
Roku Streaming Stick+ can handle every format that one could think of via direct play.
Plex has to keep things working the way it should. If it did direct play before an update on plex side, than it should keep playing directly afterwards as well.

5

I’m not suggesting transcoding… I can’t use transcoding on my old PMS hardware either. Direct stream is closer to Direct Play than it is to transcoding, and direct stream has much lower CPU use than transcoding.

I just posted a series of test cases. I want this fixed also, but I do believe that direct stream is a viable short term workaround.

6

Indeed it is a workaround, thanks for suggesting.

Still I don’t think that this should be the normal way of publishing updates for something that is a core feature of plex…
Imagine you get home after a hard day and want to watch your favorite show, when suddenly live tv won’t work anymore - not for the first time - and you are there again searching for solutions to problems that shouldn’t have been called to life…
I’ve already spent days diagnosing errors in plex. For open source software this is acceptable, as there everyone is trying to do something useful mostly in their spare time. But this is a paid service, and as such we deserve better quality assurance in my opinion.

7

I totally agree with you. Currently there seems to be a lot of reliance on the user community testing the previews/betas. Ideally they would have a test lab with all of the supported servers and clients, and have fully automated regression testing. Until that happens… I’m also trying to also do two things: to help the next guy that comes home tired and find this problem, and to help the developers frame up the issue to make it easier to find and resolve.

Now if someone from Plex will pick up this discussion, replicate the problem, and submit it to Dev…

8

Sorry for the troubles, and thanks for the report. We have identified a crash when a channel supports direct play. We should have a fix coming out this week.

1 Like
9

This is great news. Thank you so much for the quick turnaround on the fix!

10

The fix has been published to our Preview channel. Please let us know if anyone can confirm.

11

Confirmed. I’m watching football with direct play on one of my rokus using the preview, thank you!

1 Like
12

Works for me as well, thanks for the quick effort!

1 Like
13

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