That’s an interesting note, I have seen pixelation lately, thought it was just me.
My pixelation lasts about the first minute, then clears up. The pixelation is not present in the recorded file. I can play the file directly without going through plex with no pixelation.at all.
1 Like
Tried this on a show last night, worked for a while, and then playback stopped and completely crashed plex.
I still can’t watch any recorded material on a Windows 10-based browser.
I can’t watch live video either, but it works on Shield and on my phone.
Just shaking my head about so much instability after my six years with Plex.
I’m more concerned that it appears nothing is being done about this problem.
Direct question to Plex: are you working on the timeshift issue? Is there any progress being made? When can we expect to have usable timeshifting? I am truly concerned that the mess we have is how it’s going to be moving forward and I need to know so I can make plans. Football season is already a bust for me, not what I paid for.
1 Like
It looks like Version 1.18.0.1913 was released tonight. Dare I try it out? I guess so.
That the issue for me. I read the update notes and it doesn’t even appear they are trying.
2 Likes
Oh dear. 80 SOMETHING HOURS TO READ THIS THREAD!
Hi All,
Very long time Plex user, second time poster. (The last time was about a “Play Next” option in the music player! Got it that time. Let’s see how I go this time… Come in spinner! (Americans will need to google that term.)
Recently purchased a HD Home Run, works beautifully, easy and uncomplicated as it should be as it’s not doing the complicated bit.
I had no idea this thread had been going on for so long. So very sad it seems to have been “prioritised” for the team. Plex used to be simple and worked so well. Seems like with so many dev shops around the world, the Plex guys have arrived at a resourcing point where they can accommodate and implement commercially helpful edge functionality such as TIDAL but something that (probably) requires a code base change like properly fixing DVR functionality (as so painfully well outlined in this thread) is a bridge too far.
Sad.
I remember you guys. It used to be about the music. (or TV or Movie:))
Still love you though. Perhaps just fix it? It couldn’t possibly hurt as much as 80 hours of reading this thread containing the entire gamut of human emotion. I know… for all the ignorant fools I’d like to kill who start a sentence with “Can’t you just…”.
Wal.
4 Likes
Nicely put. JUST FIX IT, PLEX.
1 Like
@DaveBinM is this being worked on anymore? There hasn’t appeared to be any further progress in a long time. For a while this seemed like it was getting worked on and then boom…nothing. There clearly has been improvements…the part that is the problem is that not all supported client/server configs are working yet and it appears work on this issue has stopped.
1 Like
Looks like i spoke to soon, this weekend was a fail, failed to play from the beginning with a new issues a much more frustrating issues, playback freezes every couple of minutes and the only fix seems to be reboot the tv, forcing stop on the app doesnt fix it
Also video and audio sync is out on most recordings
Please plex please fix without fcking the rest of the program
About the freezing and video and audio sync – which server version are you running?
I have this issue as well.
My setup: I have a CONNECT Duo (HDHR5-2US), Plex Media server (currently at 1.16.1291). My media server runs on a 7 year old laptop repurposed to run the plex media server Core I7-3630QM @2.4GHz (8GB ram) , its hardwired to the router. I have a RCA Outdoor Yagi Satellite HD Antenna in my attic and my Connect Duo is Hardwired to NETGEAR - Powerline 2000 (which I have verified is consistently more than 100 mps connection.) I get all of the local station with no dropouts 99% of the time. (ABC, NBC,CBS, PBS, FOX, CW) I am very happy with my setup, except for my football watching experience since I like to watch these live, but time shifted so I can skip the commercials.
I watch plex from primarily two devices (roku string stick + (4k) and Roku Ultra) I play recorded content and full quality via direct play (and allow MPEG2) and I couldn’t be happier with the streaming quality, precisely the reason on bought the Connect DUO as opposed to something like the Tablo. ( 1080i transcoded by Tablo looked jerky to me.) But the Connect Duo with Plex and roku look excellent very smooth and sharp hd.
When I watch football games time shifted and I scan commercials, the Plex software would quickly get messed up and wouldn’t scan the commercials but consistently return to a particular place in the recording when I tried to scan. If I let it play, it would play the rest of the recording, but would mess up if I tried to scan! If I let the recording finish and it was in my library, then I could scan through it no problem, it was just the live recordings that have scanning issues.
This morning I updated by Plex Media Server software to the latest V1.18.0.1944. (prior was at 1.16.1291 ) And did some experimentation to see if there has been progress on this critical bug of time shifting. To my surprise there has been progress!!
From 8 to 9AM I recording “Sunday Today” and tried to timeshift the recording scan back and forward through the entire show. I even went to the other tuner and back to this recording. I even had the recording time shifting on two different rokus at the same time and it worked flawless.
Did a similar test on a recording from 9 to 10:30 for “Sunday Morning” this being a longer recording, again it work flawless, but at 10:29 I did see a little bug, I tried to time shift to the beginning and it was working great then to midway still working, then I tried to time shift to 10:29 (by this time it was after 10:30, i.e. the show had finished recording) and it went back to like 10:26, when ever I tried to scan between 10:26 and 10:30, it would just go to 10:26. ( I was unable to go to anytime between 10:26 and 10:30!) I scan back to 9:30, but the recording came up playing a few minutes too early, and scanned to several different times, and again each time when it would play, it was coming up a few minutes early than intended. But by this time the show was now in my library, I went to my “shows” library and I could play it flawlessly. So maybe I found end of recording bug, or maybe timeshifting gets messed up on long recordings, not sure at this time.
This afternoon I plan to record an NFL game and I plan to timeshift the game during the recording and see if it works after 2 to 3 hours or recording, I will let you know how it goes, but clearly some progress has been made on this bug, thank you Plex software guys, but I will have more feedback to come when I try to timeshift a live football game recording.
100% absolute fail on yesterday’s college games (except using Emby). Tested using ROKU Ultra and ATV for clients, latest server updates on an i7-4770 with non-blocking Gb wired interfaces, Hauppauge PCI quad tuners x 2 (8 tuners) and most recent client updates. No transcoding.
Still as broken as it’s ever been. Even if you successfully executed one or two time shifts it is not progress. Go forward and back, pause, … and do it multiple times and in succession and it WILL fail. This is a fixed or not fixed situation, there is no partial fix.
1 Like
It’s now worked for me about a third of the times. When I started an nba game about an hour late it worked perfect. I paused it, ffwd’d through commercials, even accidentally exited the game once, and while it wouldn’t resume my spot it started from the beginning and ffwd worked to get me where i needed.
The next times I tried starting a game that only had 30min left. When I clicked play on them I was never given any start from beginning options. In fact it just fired up a tuner and ignored the recording entirely…
Just a followup, this afternoon, I recorded a 3.5 hour NFL game, I started playing the file at 2.5 hours into the game, I started from the beginning of the game. I scanned various places and took note of what I saw at various time stamps, I played around with the live stream for about a half an hour, scanning was working flawlessly, I didn’t really care about the game, I just wanted to test things out prior live streaming a game really cared about. As I said in my previous post, I had version 1.18.0.1944, my prior version of 1.16.1291 was worthless for live streaming stuff, so something substantially got better between these two versions. There does seems to be a bug for when the file transitions from the grab folder (live recording) to when it gets moved to the final “shows” folder in plex. (at least from my 1 test this morning) Plex please fix this, but I can work around this bug by finishing the playback from the media library. The bug may be made worse if you extend quit time of the recording, I’m not sure, but I happy with the improvement! This is a critical feature Plex, please work on making it flawless!
Version 1.18.0.1913 in a docker
The new 1.18.0.1944 beta might fix that for you then.
Anecdotal results at best. I see it work randomly for 1 or 2 instances, then an hour later somehow I’m watching the previous quarter of the game. I put it through the paces with every new beta release and the only thing that’s really working is recording completely then watching the game, timeshifting as you please.
Another thing I can do is “start from the beginning” if I select an ongoing recording from the live grid, but I’d better not even think about FF or rewinding for a replay because who knows where I end up after that. It gets so bad I can’t get back to live and need to switch to my TV in-built tuner.
This is not acceptable.
2 Likes
I have not been keeping up with this thread since my last post because “Start Watching Recording in Progress from Beginning” has been working for me since September 29, 2019.
I am currently running the following versions:
Plex Media Server Version 1.18.0.1913 running on Windows 10 Professional
Plex for Android (TV) Version 7.21.0.12323 on nVidia Shield TV
Plex for LG Version 4.9.0 on two different LG TVs
I’m sorry to read that some people are still having issues with this.
I guess that I have been very lucky to be watching NFL Football the last 3 weeks and skipping through commercials, halftime, injury times outs, skipping to next play and also rewinding 10 seconds when the team breaks the huddle before the 30 second skips.
Good to know that there may be hope on some of the products with lesser market penetration.
I tested on some of the devices that in general have a much higher market penetration and presumably that would mean in more households. I tested again with the ROKU Ultra, Streaming Stick+, Streaming Stick, ATV4K, W10 PMS, all latest firmware and software available from all sources as of the time of the test. I reviewed release notes for these devices and the windows server as I was told there were documented improvements for all these failures but I personally could not find anything that applied to the specific failures I’ve been reporting.
Based on my tests there is 100% complete fail on any reliable time shifting and random occurrence of “start from beginning”. Common results are return to “random anchor point”, skip back to previous program, skip to end, frozen progress bar, and others. Exactly as it has been throughout this thread.
Sorry to report that I see no progress and given the overall market penetration of the devices I tested I’d guess that a very large percentage of users would report the same. I’m guessing many have just moved on. I only continue to test as I am providing side by side comparison data to people on request for various platforms and configurations.
Here is one VERY common failure. Entered a NEW program being recorded at the 9:07 mark without being given the option to start from beginning. You can see the progress bar frozen at 9:07 even though the actual time was 9:43 when I took this picture (watched show for 36 minutes). Yes, what is being viewed is actually the 9:43 point of the program. If I took another picture in a few minutes the time would change but not the progress bar. I can guarantee that time shifting will fail. This is a high runner failure when the bug concerning “Start from beginning” rears it’s head.
1 Like
