Server Version#:1.19.4.2935
Player Version#:6.6.2
I updated my TCL tv from Roku OS 9.2.0 to 9.3.0 and started seeing live tv freeze randomly. Audio continued to play. The only way I could fix it was to tune to a different channel. Has anyone else seen this behavior?
I have a TCL 75R615 tv experiencing the same issue, for the past 2-3 weeks. It also did it last night, during playback of a recorded tv show. I have all the same versions/revisions as you.
#MeToo it’s annoying, sound works but the video stream just stops
I know you dont want to hear this, but if you change the resolution down to 720p @ 2Mbps it seams to work, this will force trans-coding on the server. I think it has something to do with streaming the MPEG2 directly to the TV as raw, may be a bug with Roku, however i have notice this issue rarely on the web player, but it does happen.
My 2 cents
I’ve been having this issue for about a week or two and I’m just getting around to looking into it. This also happened after installing the latest update for Roku TV, so that could be the culprit.
I don’t know if anyone has just let the stream continue after video freezes, but it appears that eventually Plex will kill the stream and report an error of “mulitple playback errors.” So, I suppose with that there is a small possibility it could actually be with Plex.
I’m using latest Roku client 6.6.4 and PMS version 1.19.5.3021.
Edit: I’ll try to get some logs when it happens tonight.
My 75" is my primary TV, and is on all day as I work from my home. I uninstalled/reinstalled the Plex app on my TV earlier this week, and so far no issues. It has only been three days, but I have played a fair bit of Live TV/Recorded TV without a hitch. Hopefully it has removed the problem.
Having said that, my 32" TCL Roku TV in my kitchen, started exhibiting the same problem this week. It is only used 5% of the time my primary TV is used. Consequently, it may have had the potential for longer, but it hadn’t been on enough to be given the opportunity to gack.
We eventually had it freeze. SO stopped it before it failed on its own, so if it happens again, I’ll make sure she doesn’t stop it so I can get those logs as well.
I do believe this is being cause by a regression introduced by Roku with the 9.3 update for Roku TVs.
Emby users are having the same issue: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/87712-live-tv-playback-frame-freezing/
My 75" has been flawless since the reinstallation. Even the fast-forward/rewind has been working properly again. Have to get around to trying it on the 32" tv, which doesn’t get used much.
Do let me know if it happens again. We were seeing the issue pretty much once a night, but hoping it would happen again so I could capture more logs, we only had it happen once during the entire weekend.
I previously had to disable MPEG2 on our two Roku Streaming Stick+ as it didn’t seem to deinterlace properly, but after the 9.3 update for it, it seems to handle MPEG2 streams just fine without issue (unless I’ve just been lucky) now. The frame freeze has not occured on the non Roku TV devices.
It finally happened while I was watching TV tonight. I have a feeling it’s happening when the Roku gets bad data. I could see that the picture briefly pixelated, and that’s when the video froze. The audio kept playing for about 30-60 seconds before the stream died.
Here’s logs just in case they will help!
I’m seeing identical behavior 
For me it definitely started within the last few days. This happened several times just yesterday on my Roku TV - a TCL 55S403. The audio plays on, but the video freezes.
I have to exit and re-start the stream to get it to play properly again.
Luckily I have a Tablo as a backup for live TV, but would prefer to use Plex.
Are we for sure this is a Roku OS issue? Has anyone from the Plex team confirmed it? This is super frustrating.
Next time this happens can somebody check the Activity/Dashboard/Bandwidth in PMS?
I had something very similar happen to me, but I wasn’t watching live TV - so maybe it’s unrelated. It was prerecorded H.264 or H.265. Video froze, audio continued.
In PMS Activity/Dashboard/Bandwidth my “Local” bandwidth was over 100Mbps.
I exited Plex on the TV and restarted. I rewound a couple of minutes and played again. It played past the “problem” time in the video and continued. Bandwidth returned to normal.
If it happens again I’ll work harder to get good logs.
I too experience this exact same issue regularly with Live TV (until I turned Direct Stream off). Although, I don’t want to do that as the quality is visibly poorer and my server is having to do more work.
I have also seen it when watching back a recording. Doesn’t always pause in the same spot, it is very flaky.
This has been happening with some recorded OTA shows on my TCL Roku TV for weeks. It only happens on some shows and it happens consistently on the same frames. If I pause playback right when it happens and start it again, playback will sometimes speed up for a few seconds and then resync the video and audio. Sometimes if I pause and then fast forward for 10-20 seconds it will be able to resync. Other times when I try to fast forward for 10 seconds the recording jumps to the end of the show. Very irritating. (BTW, fast forward sometimes does this on files that aren’t freezing). My observation is that the problem occurs when there was a brief OTA reception issue during the recording, probably caused by the wind blowing wet trees in my reception path. Plex on Windows will glitch for a second or two and then play through the problem frames. Windows Media Player also plays through the problem and recovers more quickly. VLC shows some brief pixelation and recovers the quickest of the players I’ve tried. The Plex Roku player needs to be more tolerant of OTA reception glitches.
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Spending more time on the web I see that Roku playing .ts files is often problematic. I tried playing the same .ts file with reception errors using the Roku media player (never used it before) and it froze the video in the same places as the Plex Roku app. Somewhere I saw that I might try changing the ts file to an mkv. I tried it and it played perfectly, and fast forward and rewind worked correctly as well. So how do I get Plex to store my OTA recordings as .mkv instead of .ts? I’m running Plex server on a Netgear RN202 NAS.
Any updates on this? This is happening to me to on live tv playback on my roku tv. Everything else seems to work ok, recorded shows do not freeze. I got a new Google TV and watched football yesterday and there was no freezing, so it seems to be only on the roku.
No changes for me, It happens for me on a Roku Steaming Stick+.
FYI the following is logged on Roku’s forum which I think is the same problem.
Interesting. The problem only occurred for us on our Roku TV. In fact, I was watching live TV on a Streaming Stick+ last night with no issue.
