Server Version#:
Player Version: It does not matter (I use Shield, LG TV, PMP)
I remember reading that Plex was convening a SWAT team of sorts to fix DVR issues. Well I am here to report that whatever is going on, there are issues that had been fixed months ago that are back and other issues that have never been fixed. I can’t stress enough how much I resist making any changes to the environment that surrounds PMS. I am running on the same laptop (turned off Windows updates long time ago), same Windows (7), same hardware (same drivers) same network, same hdhr, same cable provider. Here is a list:
Issues that are back:
100% complete. Over the last month or so I have had 4-5 recordings stay at 100% (I did notice that the % reported stop counting after a hundred, back in the day it would get stuck and keep reporting for example 274% complete).
Garbled audio/video. Pixelation/tearing coming in and out in the middle of a recording, sounds ‘glitching’ (as my kids say).
Issues never fixed:
Every so often, randomly I can’t watch live TV on any given channel (but it always seems to be ONE channel). Sometimes CNN other times Hallmark etc. Tuning in to the same channel on any other player (HDHR, Channels etc) seems to work just fine. The only fix is to shutdown PMS, shutdown HDHR and restart both. Then it works.
I am watching a show on LiveTV. I want to go to bed so I exit out so I can schedule it to record the rest, hit record, record fails about half the time.
Trying to watch a recording while it is happening, give me the choice to watch from start or live (great!). It never remembers that I have watch the first 30 minutes of the recording (for example when I start to watch a football game on the upstairs TV and then move downstairs). This of course works for completed recordings.
If I am looking at the recording schedule, why can’t I just right into the actual item being recorded (if the recording has finished there seems to be a way to playback from that screen).
Failed recordings (exclamation mark) IN THE FUTURE? What does that mean? When the time comes, sometimes it just records with no issue, and other times, no go.
But at least we got TIDAL :-(. So much misguided potential here… (I am not saying TIDAL is not important, but you have to fix the thing people are already paying for before you move on to a new thing for people to pay for.
Thanks tachtevrenidis. Now I know I’m not alone. I bought a plex pass just about 4 weeks ago and, apparently, that is exactly when the bulk of the problems started, especially with the Guide.
I have also had future recordings on the Recordings page tinted red with an exclamation mark but no other message. Normally, when recordings are tinted red, it’s usually because of program conflicts (ie. not enough tuners to record everything). To have just an exclamation mark with no other feedback certainly is not very intuitive.
On the whole, I haven’t had too many recordings that randomly simply don’t start – but I don’t really use live tv very often which seems to the pattern there.
I really babysit the guide all day since it drops all but 12 hours or so of the guide every few hours due to some automated process that can’t be turned off. I have “guide updates” turned off in the schedule maintenance. Even so, every few hours, a fully populated guide has the guide for some channels cut back to 12 hours or so. I manually do a guide refresh from settings to repopulate the guide and a few hours later, the problem returns. Based on team member comments that I’ve seen, I think those are incremental guide updates that are going sideways.
I’m really at the point where I think asking for a refund is the only reasonable course of action.
Plus there are many more bug and anomaly reports that are scattered throughout this abyss of a message board. I think that was part of the strategy for the “upgrade”. Dilute the topics so much that all the problems/bugs seem smaller.
Their current position that I’ve seen is they are rewriting things to provide a consistent interface across devices. While that sounds great, how did a new feature like LiveTV-DVR not start out consistent
Also, on the ROKU which is about as unstable as anything, they are giving a sob story about ROKU deprecating an API library they use. They make it sound as though the announcement was recent and caught them cold. The actuality is ROKU announced this change in October of 2015 or sooner. How does a feature that did not exist in 2015 get caught cold with such a change?
Bottom line is you can’t believe anything you see or hear with respect to features and fixes. The consumer is not part of the equation and they’ll get to things at their own pace without report. Sad way to provide a “service”. Acceptable for free software but not for subscription software. I really feel like they misrepresented their platform and committed theft by deception when they took my money for a Plex Pass. It’s no wonder they refuse to provide free trials.
I did not mean for this thread to become a metaphorical dump on the Plex team. Reading the replies here, I keep hearing a sense of frustration and helplessness from people who all they want is to get their DVR to a state where they can record and watch without issues. I want to also state that as a software engineer myself, I understand the complexity of bringing this functionality to bear. I think the frustration is in Plex’s willingness to introduce new functionality, write these wonderful blog entries and send email ads that portray Plex as a panacea for all your TV viewing needs but people who use the software everyday know it is FAR from that. To me it just reads cynical. Furthermore, I don’t see any kind of acknowledgement or reply from anyone from the Plex team here.
I will close with two more issues, the first one have been there for me for 6 months or so, the second maybe a couple of weeks now:
whenever I delete a recorded show from my iOS Plex app, the app 100% crashes. Then I start it back up, all good
whenever I tune to watch a channel live and eventually I am done, I hit the back button and plex says “Recording Failed”. WHAT RECORDING AND WHAT FAILED? I watched TV then stopped watching.
I get both those errors as well. The recording failed I presume to be from the way I believe PLEX does live TV. When you tune to a channel it starts a recording of the show as though you had scheduled it. When you end it that recording stops and I’m just guessing that some common software is misinterpreting that “premature end of recording”. Just a guess.
Add to the frustration that they develop features for LiveTV/DVR for other platforms like ATV before all platforms have feature already in production (ROKU)… When you look at the release notes for the most recent ATV client it looks like a large portion of the development focused on new ATV features and the ROKU is still waiting for the basic grid guide.
BTW, here is a failure ‘predicted’ for a recording in the future and unlike what you said, I have enough tuners to record everything in that time slot, there is no conflict here (I have the HD Homerun Prime).
How do I know what the heck is wrong? Plex are you listening?
It’s only a work around but I dealt with this by deleting the recording and adding it back. I may have needed to stop/start PMS and/or rescan my library. I was able to get some of the phantom errors to go away. Of course, it would be better if stuff like this never happened.
