Do you have your Roku configured to “Allow MPEG2” in Plex > Settings > Video? Roku isn’t exactly the fastest device when it comes to tuning, but being able to direct play helps.
On the specific device in question, yes. We have a Roku TV downstairs that plays MPEG2 wonderfully. Upstairs, we have 2 Roku Streaming Sticks and they don’t appear to handle interlaced MPEG2 very well, so we have those transcode. Direct playing (or direct streaming, I suppose) is quicker, but not by much!
I received an email about the free LiveTV trial so I thought what the heck. I’ve got ROKU Ultras and an ATV4K.
My server is an i7 4th gen with Hauppauge quad PCI card. GB switched network and rock solid WiFi for devices. I’m doing no transcoding for the ROKUs (MPEG2).
While I was able to set up the guide and scan channels, … and LiveTV does function, nothing seemed to work reliably when it comes to basic features like time shifting and tuning is extremely slow and fails frequently. Signal levels and quality are 90+, no problems with other solutions using the same OTA feeds. Also, it appears the guide data sometimes shows series descriptions instead of episode descriptions.
Found this thread and spent most of the time reading it with my jaw on the ground as the email sent by PLEX seems to completely ignore an almost 2 year long thread telling them that all the features they bragged about just flat out do not work.
SHAMEFUL is what I say. I’ll be sharing this with other folks. Looks like PLEX ignores their users and worse yet, sends out seriously misleading information as advertising for their product.
Hope someone gets fired over the misinformation.
How would tuning time be a function of the ROKU when it’s the server that does the tuning?
PLEX transcoding is really poor. I tried it on a ROKU and the PQ is terrible, especially on live action stuff. Without direct MPEG2 it’s unwatchable.
Probably because nothing seems to actually be fixed. 
I must admit I was very surprised to see that email. Indeed, they have really improved the Live TV experience over the last couple of months, but it definitely isn’t bug free. I still have weird issues attempting to skip back and forth and I believe these are still being worked on.
It seems odd that they’ve sent that email out before all of these issues are solved.
1 Like
Have you tried it on a ROKU or ATV4K? It’s virtually 100% broken with respect to time shifting and then there’s the guide…… The email was pure fantasy…
No I don’t own a Roku. I have a Sony TV which runs Android TV - and there have been decent improvements for this particular client over the past few months.
1 Like
Ya, I see that diversion in this thread. I tried to get the attention of someone named Dave in another thread (he’s posted here as well) but he doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge that the ROKU problems exist. Not my problem any further!!! Pretty sad that after almost 2 years a PLEX employee can still act like everything is fine.
Glad I didn’t have to pay for this 
I don’t know about other devices, but if you notice on the Roku, the stream isn’t being direct played, but direct streamed because of the .ts container. Between the stream having to be remuxed and that a Roku just isn’t the fastest device in the West, I don’t know if there is much more that can be done to improve the tuning/stream start time.
We almost always watch live TV downstairs on our Roku TV which handles MPEG perfectly, so there’s no need to transcode. If I do watch TV upstairs, live TV is transcoded at original quality and I haven’t really noticed any PQ issues. Of course, for sports, that’s usually being watched downstairs, so I can’t comment too much on that.
Specifically, which problems?
EDIT: Never mind. I found your posts in the other thread.
We found the bug while seeking a live program on the Roku. We’ll have an update posted soon. I’ll update this post when that has been released. 
UPDATE: The update is live, please give the Roku Preview channel a try!
3 Likes
I think that was also happening with non-live media…
I found it difficult to forward past the openings several times over the last few days.
Will install the update and make note of any difficulties.
Thx.
This was only related to Live TV. If you have other seeking issues, please open a new thread. There are no known issues for non-live media, but always happy to investigate.
Seems to have the same issue as before. Tuned to a channel and after about 10-15 minutes of watching, I tried to seek back earlier in the program. Seek bar was stuck at 8:41PM when it was several minutes past that. Seeked backwards and the progress bar updated appropriately.
Thanks for the info. We’ll take a look into this scenario. The issue that was fixed was resuming “Live” (after you were prompted to start from the beginning or watch live) and attempting to seek backwards. In that case, it would always resume back at the current live point.
Ah, I think I understand which issue was fixed.
Well, for this specific one, if you need video evidence or anything else, let me know. I’m pretty sure it happens every time.
Because after almost two years of people telling them it doesn’t work in this thread, more “evidence” is what they need. Can’t make this stuff up now can we.
Seeking/time shifting forward or back is broken. Also the progress bar is fouled. I left things on the same station for a few hours. Went to try a time shift and noticed the progress bar was still time stamped back to when the channel was originally tuned. Took a LOT of brass gumption to send out that email about how wonderful PLEX LiveTV was OH, using a ROKU and a W10 server, latest updates includes today… No, I won’t post insidious logs to a public forum. Taking the time to report easily repeatable bugs should be sufficient for the vendor to reproduce… This isn’t open source software. If you want to make a profit, then earn it!
1 Like
I tried the 6.5.0 Plex Roku channel, also at the same time using the latest PMS Version 1.19.1.2621. Roku was still laggy playing live TV, also the Roku was sometime very laggy scanning a recent recording. (i.e. not live) I haven’t tried a live sports event yet, mainly because there is no such thing anymore. Please keep working the Roku issues, you will make a lot of PlexPass subscribers very happy when you can make this thing robust. We appreciate your hard work and will be thrilled when you all get it better.
