@bradbart948 said:
I’m surprised no one from Plex has chimed in. In this case I think the Shield is more to blame than Plex though.
It would be nice if someone from the Plex Team would comment on why this happens…if they can create a workaround…or it’s a Shield issue we’re going to have to wait for Nvidia to fix. So far nothing but crickets in the background…
Seems no one from Plex or Nvidia want to talk about it.
Do not be surprised by the silence. It is VERY rare for Plex/Android people to respond to anything as they prefer to do what they do in deep dark secrecy that makes the old KGB look open and forthcoming. Users respond to threads but developers almost never seem too. I do not even know who the Plex/Shield developer(s) (or the primary Plex support people for Android) are because they are so well hidden.
I do not have the problem presented here because I have all “sleep” functionality turned off on my Shield mainly because I use it as a server and “sleeping” seems to be a bad idea for a server of any sort.
I do think that the Shield should remain awake whenever an app is doing anything that requires output if for no other reason than output strongly implies that someone is interested in what the Shield is putting out to the world.
I also think that it is entirely possible for the Shield to be kept awake by Plex when playing mainly because I know that the Shield is mostly Android and Android can be kept awake by audio only applications. I believe the Pandora app on the Shield does not allow sleeping when playing audio. (At least I have never had it go to sleep on me even before I started using it as a server and turned off sleep.)
I still find the Shield very lacking as a Plex client, but that is personal preference, so I do not use it as such. In fact I find Plex lacking for my uses for audio so I mostly use other apps for my audio needs and some of those I even use on the Shield.
Once I configured my shield to also control my TV and receiver (CEC and IR
blaster functionality), I turned sleeping off on the Shield and I just
manually put it to sleep through the controller when I am done. That fixed
things for me.
But it is strange that the stay awake feature doesn’t work with Plex. I do
believe it is a Plex problem not a shield problem because other audio apps
function fine. For example, I could listen to music through the Google Play
Music app all day without sleep issues. There must be some intent or signal
passed by the apps to the Shield that Plex is not sending.
Seems like it should be an easy fix. But as others have pointed out, Plex
has a different business model and relies heavily on a take-it-or-leave-it
approach. They are actively working on improving things, but it’s all
somewhat secretive and there’s not even a formal way to report bugs except
to come on the threads and chat with other users.
+1. New Shield TV owner. Using as a plex client to NAS. Love the music streaming, don’t love it going to sleep after 20 minutes and shutting off receiver and TV in the process.
No solution yet. The devs are aware. They’ve already looked and things should be working correctly, but isn’t, so there is something very odd going on. They can reproduce the problem and are still trying to track down the cause.
I am bloody annoyed. Using Plex for music, and no screensaver at all. WTF. I have an older Samsung TV, (ES series) in living room - A stunning TV even now, but have to go through a mental series of button presses to get to “No Picture”. Yet I want pictures/screensavers, I have Aerial Screensavers, so like to watch them now and again. Who would want album art burnt onto the TV. Even my Fire TV in the bedroom kicks in with screensavers when playing music and radio. I cannot believe it.
To get around this, once I am in Plex (via sheild) I have resorted to pressing back, button to get to shield main menu, wait the 5 minutes and screensaver kicks in.
Plex/Nvidia and/or whatever third party work together and can get this fixed. I’m off to bed to listen to music on Amazon Fire TV and look at my screensavers now - huh!
It is annoying. What I do when I want a screensaver is I just push the home
button, go into settings–>screen saver–>start now. The music will keep
playing and you can have the screen saver. Still a pain, but maybe better
than waiting 5 minutes for it to kick in.
I also have a plasma TV and love the way it looks much better than LED TVs,
but technology has moved away from plasma and not all apps are considering
burn-in potential in their design
