Start Watching Recording in Progress from Beginning(Failing)

Live TV & DVR
1

I have been having issues with the Plex DVR and starting shows from the beginning while they are recording. Most of the time, it works properly, but about 30% of the time I will select “watch from start” and Plex will instead begin the show about an hour into the program (on a 3 hour show). I cannot rewind to the beginning, only to the point that Plex deems to be the “beginning” which is an hour into the show. This is a really annoying bug, because I now have to wait until the show is over before I can watch the first half. And just to be clear, the first half of the show always records, I just can’t access it until after the DVR is done recording. If I back out of the show and reselect “watch from start”, it’ll start at the same exact point, which is about an hour into the program. I’m assuming that the bug is Plex storing the wrong time stamp for the “beginning” because it’s almost always exactly an hour ahead of where it should start. So if the show starts at 8:00 PM, and I try to start watching midway around 9:30 PM, Plex will bring me to the beginning which is usually the shows progress at 9:00 PM. I don’t know if any of that makes sense, but if anyone else has this issue, please let me know, especially if you know a fix for it. Thanks!

Server: QNAP NAS
Player: Mibox (Android TV) I believe I’ve had this problem occur on our Fire TV also
Tuner: Dual HDHomerun Primes (HDHR3-CC)
All on most current software versions, and firmware versions.

****EDIT: Well, it’s been over a year since I posted this and it’s still not fixed. I’ve moved on to Channels DVR for my live TV and recordings. It works flawlessly and has commercial skip, but it doesn’t actually “cut” the commercials, it just flags them which in my opinion is better because comskip isn’t always 100% accurate. Their comskip detection is pretty freaking good though. Now the bad part, it’s $8 a month. But, you can use it on as many devices as you want, and you can stream live TV away from the home as well as schedule recordings and watch them. They’ve also got a really nice, classic gridview guide that’s incredibly fast. I’ve never had a show fail to record. If you’re tired of dealing with PLEX’s excuse of a DVR/Live TV server, definitely check out Channels DVR. They offer a free month trial also.

13 Likes
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Known issue that has been there since the beginning of playback of recordings in progress.

Plex just needs to keep working on this until they get it right.

1 Like
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It’s an incredibly annoying bug. Any show that’s over 1 1/2 hours, I basically don’t record if I plan on watching it that night. I just watch it live because there could be a possibility that I won’t be able to watch it until its officially over.

3 Likes
4

This happened again last night. It almost always happens when I record WWE Monday Night Raw (yes I know its fake lol). I go to start playing the recording at 9:38, I select watch from the beginning, and Plex starts the show 8 minutes into the program (8:08) instead of the beginning. It’s like Plex can’t start from the beginning for anything over an hour and a half long. Anything longer than an hour and a half and it starts pushing the start time forward more and more. This bug is driving me absolutely crazy. Any update on this bug Plex employees?

5

With the Football season starting in less than a month… this is a deal breaker. I can’t stand watching commercials and half time and come in late in the game. Hoping this can be fixed soon.

2 Likes
6

I have seen this issue multiple times while trying to watch the bachelorette. We miss the first 10ish minutes when we sit down to watch it from the start while it’s recording. Very annoying. Has there been any update or bug ticket started for this issue?

7

Plex DVR isn’t sports friendly at all. Besides this issue it’s not able to look at sub titles for matching. Example MLB Baseball where you only want to record “Phillies” games or NFL where you only want to record “Eagles” or Hockey when you only want to record “Flyers”, etc

For OTA it’s not a big deal as you usually only get your home teams broadcast but with cable and many sports channels including NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, ESPN it’s a problem. If you like college sports but only certain teams it’s even worse!

Plex is unusable for Sports without a LOT of hand holding to find/manage schedules yourself.

3 Likes
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This is makes DVR mostly unusable for us. I don’t mind the sports issues of the previous post but just not being able to watch what you record until it is over is a major letdown

2 Likes
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Yeah, I’m seeing this also, and it has me sad with football season starting now. I really home someone can figure this one out at some point!!

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I assume this is the fix for this?

  • (DVR) Keep the entire contents of programs currently being recorded or played in the live seek buffer (#8224)

I might check it out… I feel like the 30 second skip in plex is just a LITTLE bit slower than the HDHomerun app… so right now going to stick with that.

But if this fixes the issue… that is great.

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Yeah, that’s exactly what that’s for. If you’re recording something, even if it’s five or six hours long, you’ll always be able to play back from the start of the recording :slight_smile:

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Wow, I can’t wait to get home tonight to try this for the first NFL game tonight!!

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Is this working now? Anyone had a chance to test on last night’s game?

1 Like
14

This explanation of intenede function is great. But it doesn’t work consistently across platforms it appears. My windows 10 PC with Haug Tuner is slow, glitchy and seek does not work.

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Start from beginning/watch live option works only some of the time. Currently it’s not working at all. Too bad I was hoping to start NFL a bit late today and catch up, now I have to wait until the game is over.

When it does work, the skipping is awful on the Apple TV. You can’t fast forward 30 seconds, you have to pause and scroll to the approximate start. Very unintuitive, hope to see a fix soon.

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if this is not working, please try to get diagnostics so the issue can be investigated.

Would need logs from both the server and the Plex client app plus details of what was being recorded and when and what the plex client app being used and version

Ensure debug logging is enabled on the server in advance
See https://support.plex.tv/articles/201643703-reporting-issues-with-plex-media-server/

To capture the server logs see
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200250417-plex-media-server-log-files/

and for plex client app logging, please see the relevant section here
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201869908-log-files/
And

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Update: The development team for Plex for iOS are investigating the problem where selecting Watch From Start results in permanent buffering and the playback never starts.

There is no need to get logs for this at this moment as the issue has been reproduced and is under investigation

1 Like
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Im not sure if its the same issue but viewing a remote server, start from beginning will never work. it will just jump to live an you can’t rewind. When on that same server locally it works fine. This is only on fire tv’s. Apple TV and iOS devices work fine as well as Macs.

Tried it on 2 separate servers and multiple fire tv’s.

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could you get me logs from the server and the Plex for Android app on the Amazon Fire ? and screenshots

Is the remote server owned or shared?

could you test it with owned server

You should get this dialogue box when playing back an episode that is being recorded

Watch%20from%20start
Watch%20from%20start857×584 175 KB

logs - Plex Media Server
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201643703-reporting-issues-with-plex-media-server/
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200250417-plex-media-server-log-files/

logs - Plex for Android on Amaz
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201573117-android-android-tv-fire-tv-logs/on Fire

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Both servers are owned. One is ran from my office and another at home. I get the same issue whichever I connect remotely to. Local playback is perfect.

I get the “watch from beginning” dialogue and I click that but it never starts at the beginning, always live.

I will try and get the logs tonight if I can get to it.