The fix that was mentioned was only specifically to do with the Watch from Start prompt not being shown sometimes. There are other fixes coming in relation to actually starting at the beginning.
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So I do think it is partly a client issue. I am now able to watch from beginning in the web client and Plex no longer tries to grab another adapter on my Haupagge card like it did before through tvheadend tvhproxy interface. But on my Android TV client it gives me the prompt but then goes to live TV. I am current version on server and clients
Thanks for communicating the situation to the community. It’s mutch appreciated and I look forward to further improvement on this issue.
Still the same after update on Plex… I am switching to Channels DVR because it has really good commercial skipping technology (better than Plex), and it just works when I watch anything while it is also recording. No glitches, no pauses, no trans-coding problems, it just works. Plex has some tough competition these days and it isn’t stacking up to Channels DVR (or even Emby) at this point in time.
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As others, I also have issues in which the Watch from Start is not consistently working. However, when it does work, fast forwarding and rewind does not work 95% of the time, and when it does work I can not usually FF more than one or two 30 second sections at a time before it stops working altogether. I created a new post Issues with fast forwarding Live TV show currently recording as the issue is similar but with more issues than just Watch from Start with more details provided. This thread is primarily dealing with Watch from Start, but is anyone able so successfully fast forward a currently recording TV show at all? Please feel free to reply to the other thread if these are different issues that should be kept separately.
Wondering if “(DVR) Live session buffer data could be pruned prematurely, resulting in live TV being unable to seek back as far as expected (#10430)” in this latest PMS Beta update might be addressing this problem …
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You beat me getting to this thread to ask the same thing. Regardless, I love seeing that there are Live TV and DVR fixes coming through with each release. Right now this has me more excited, and frequently checking for new releases, than any enhancements could!
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We have resolved a number of server issues that have contributed to this. There is one known issue outstanding in the android client, which should be resolved soon.
If you still see this on any non-android clients, please let us know!
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StSimm1 - can you please confirm if the fixes you are referring to are only related to the Watch from Start when a TV show is currently recording, or other issues related to watching a show that is still recording such as not having the fast forward or rewind working correctly (see post I created below).
It does seem that “Play from beginning” actually does now take you to the beginning of the recording which is great. I can also manually pick times in the recorded section to scrub to without issues. I did notice that when using the 30sec forward and 10sec back “scrubbing” buttons, I would at times get thrown to a random section in the video. If I’d hit it again, it would go 30sec/10sec from what would have been the proper time of the initial scrub. I can get any logs or whatever might help, but this is definitely progress and manually choosing a spot on the timeline has worked every time I’ve tried so far, so that’s a usable workaround.
EDIT: I lied, the manual choosing of a spot in the timeline has the same issue as 30sec/10sec scrubbing. I’m picking a spot toward the end of the recording and every 2nd-3rd time I scrub, it starts playing a part of the recording that’s 20+ minutes earlier. Click the same spot again and it plays the proper section.
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I’ve just updated to the latest version and I haven’t had a good experience.
I tried 3 different clients, here are the results:
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Sony Android TV - “watch from start” did not take me to the start of the recording, instead it went to the current live point. I seeked backward and it took me to the start of the recording, I attempted to skip forward and the picture just froze and never recovered.
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Android Client (Mobile Phone) - exactly the same behaviour as number 1.
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Web Client - “watch from start” did take me to the start, I was able to seek and scrub once or twice, but then it just gave up and sat there with a blank screen with the yellow spinning circle.
Today’s beta server is doing timeshifting correctly so far for me today, Win10 server, Roku client. It’s a good start, at least.
Early results are looking good for me. I do have a HDHR Extend, so my LiveTV is h.264 in .ts. Scrubbing/Timeshifting/watch from start is working on a recording in process, 45 minutes in, when using a Roku client (direct stream), from a web client (Chrome, transcoding) and PMP on Linux (also direct stream. I know, PMP on Linux is not supported, but it is working!)
It isn’t working from an Android client, but I know this is expected at this point. I’ll be also testing on a longer recording as I can.
Thank you!
Edit: Just for fun, I disabled transcoding on my Extend so it’s mpeg2/.ts. It is still working with the same scenarios with the direct stream. I can’t test direct play on my Roku due to a bug in the current Roku Plex client that crashes the Plex app when trying to direct play live TV (including watch from start I’m finding.) I’ve been told that this will be fixed soon in the Roku Plex app, and I’ll test direct play then.
This is the type of thing that extends the frustration. Yes the title of this thread is about “Watching from beginning” but the thread has morphed into the DVR 101 capability of time shifting once you can begin to watch from a previous point in time. Yet we’ve got to parse words and “releases” as to what may potentially work or not.
This latest release fixes nothing for a W10 server with Hauppauge quad PCI cards serving without transcode (MPEG2) over a wired network to a ROKU Ultra (2018).
Stop making this like a legal T&C document.
Plex Media Server 1.16.5.1554 on win10 pro, roku 6.3.13.5830 preview client over wifi operates correctly! I can start from beginning properly, seek in the video midway through recording (time shifting) properly, when the recording “stops” on schedule, the video on that channel that is still being recorded is seekable too, past the recording and then rewind back into the actual scheduled recording seemlessly. Bonus was pressing pause and client timing out after 5 minutes, resumed live properly, and allowed seeking properly. So bathroom breaks are possible again!
Thank you plex for finally finding and more importantly solving the problem! I’m a happy customer again.
Goullngh - Have you tried doing this on a show that is over an hour long?
Recorded a 3 hour football game tonight and within the first hour the Watch from Start worked as well as 30sec fwd and 10sec Rewind.
However everything stopped working after the first hour. When I hit Watch from Start it went back to a spot that was at the one hour mark, not the beginning. Time shifting became buggy and eventually error out. After the two hour mark it really became worst where the watch from start went to two hour mark and all the time shifting was non functional.
Edit: This was on a W7 machine running server 1.16.5.1488. I am going to update to the beta version and try again on 3 hour game.
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I have not tried on a show greater than one hour yet, but I will and will let you know what I find.
Edit: I set a recording for a 2 hour news type of broadcast that has time stamps located in the video for checking seeks against the timestamps in the client player. This is on the same setup that I listed in my previous post (Plex Media Server 1.16.5.1554 on win10 pro - wired gigabit, roku 6.3.13.5830 preview client over wifi, HD Homerun Connect DUO tuner - wired to a gigabit switch, even though it has only a 100Mbps connection). I started interacting with the recording after it had recorded for 1 hour 17 minutes of the broadcast and stopped interacting 10 minutes before the end of the broadcast. For this testing I was in a “try to break it” mode - doing things I would not normally do during an interaction with an in-progress recording.
Comments regarding “watch from start” functionality (the main topic of this thread): When I first hit watch from start, the player seeked back to the beginning, loaded the start and started playing properly. When I first hit the fast forward button, the player seek was a little strange and seemed to take me back to the beginning again instead of fast forwarding, however, that “glitch” was unreproducable after that first interaction using the fast forward button… After that first interaction I was able to seek forward and backward in the ongoing recording without issue verifying time stamps with the ticker in the recording including seeking past the start-of-interaction point into the freshly recorded video as well. The roku graphical client buttons all seemed to work as expected as did the remote buttons. On the remote, I mainly use the joystick button for timeline interaction and not the fast forward and rewind buttons since you have to stop the fast forward and rewind actions after you hit them (which is a small gripe of mine on the roku client).
Comments unrelated to the main topic but possibly relevant: After the “watch from beginning” testing, I tested play from “live”. Even though this was an ongoing recording, if I hit play from “live” and then tried to interact with the video timeline seeking back into the video earlier than the live start, the player UI “looked” like it was allowing me to seek back into the recording but video wise, I could not seek earlier than the point in the recording that started my “live” interaction. This was a little frustrating and potentially confusing for a user since it appeared like the user could go back before the live start, and since it’s an ongoing recording that the user recorded, it might be intuitive that they “should” be able to seek back into their recording even though they started from a live point. However, if I exited the “live” playback and reselected the ongoing show and selected “watch from start” again, I had experienced no issues interacting with the recording forward and backward and forward all the way up to the live point and back again.
Comments regarding the roku client: I noticed in the roku client that if I started seeking and then subsequently hit the start from beginning graphical arrow button that the recording would go to the beginning but the time line that I had interacted with did not update until after exit of the UI buttons to the recording and then back in again.
I’m happy with this progress and solution so far. Plex team, please don’t break this again! 
Still completely broke here.
Smokingdog, what versions are you running? Last you posted was PMS 1.16.5.1488 which this is definitely not fixed in.
I’m running the latest version and definitely still having the same old issues.
