Unable to tune to channel (again, more research now)

[timwoj]

@tachtevrenidis

Similarly, PMS and Plex Client could negotiate to figure out whether they are in the same LAN and PMS can instruct the Plex Client to connect to HDHR directly via its IP (PMS know the IP of HDHR). Of course, while this is happening, PMS also starts capturing from the same tuner and channel and eventually ask the Plex Client to pivot back to getting the stream from PMS instead of HDHR directly. This way you achieve fast tune, and can also offer seek capability etc.

This is a difficult nut to crack since we also store all of the segments on the server to enable time-shifting. If we were to talk directly to the tuner from the client, we would need to store those segments on the clients itself. That becomes a rather large multiplier for the amount of work needing to be done by each client team. Like I said before, we have work in the pipeline to improve tune times. I just can’t give a timeline for when that will be merged into a release.

@Smokindog

Have you had a chance to look at this? Other things begin to happen as well like loss of time shift capabilities

I haven’t. I’ll try to get to it later today. I also need to update my Roku to the latest version, since I barely use it as a live TV client.

[tachtevrenidis]

if you were to add a limitation that you can’t seek the first 10 secs of the stream but your channel tunes in 2 secs, I think that might be a trade off willing to live with.

Speaking of this, is there a limit of live tv buffer that plex enforces? For example if I tune to watch live TV an then pause it, will it stay paused forever? (no right?)

[Smokindog]

This also is an issue on the ATV4K.

[timwoj]

if you were to add a limitation that you can’t seek the first 10 secs of the stream but your channel tunes in 2 secs, I think that might be a trade off willing to live with.

It’s not just the first 10s, because if you’re tuning directly from the device you have to remain tuning directly from that device or you’d see an awkward handover to PMS.

Speaking of this, is there a limit of live tv buffer that plex enforces? For example if I tune to watch live TV an then pause it, will it stay paused forever? (no right?)

We have a limit of 90 minutes of playback buffer right now. Whether or not it stays paused forever depends on the client. I know the SHIELD/Android client has a bug where leaving it paused for a long enough length of time causes PMS to give up on the client. I can’t remember how the other other clients handle it.

Here are some more fail to tune an hour or so later after a restart. You really should be able to replicate this.

I looked through this second set of logs for a few minutes this evening, and it looks like there’s a session stuck while it’s trying tune. As you make a request to tune, there’s already one trying to start up, so it kills it and tries to start up the second, which then hangs for a while. This then repeats.

Dec 21, 2018 05:45:55.395 [8260] DEBUG - Request: [192.168.110.30:53001 (Subnet)] POST /livetv/dvrs/7/channels/4.1/tune (13 live) TLS GZIP Signed-in Token (Smokindog)
Dec 21, 2018 05:45:55.396 [8260] DEBUG - DVR:Subscription: Starting a new rolling subscription for session ba199fe8e176758fecb6e11e91a5fca5 channel 4.1.
Dec 21, 2018 05:45:55.396 [8260] DEBUG - DVR:Subscription: Cancelling a current rolling subscription for the same session identifier.
Dec 21, 2018 05:45:55.396 [8260] DEBUG - DVR:Subscription: Cancelling grab for subscription 6080: 'Live TV - Session' on channel 5.1
Dec 21, 2018 05:45:55.396 [8260] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Cancelling operation for 'Live TV - Session' on channel 5.1 with status cancelled.
Dec 21, 2018 05:45:55.447 [8260] DEBUG - DVR:NewSchedule: Scheduled an operation 'Live TV - Session' on channel 5.1 on tuner 1 between 2018-12-21 05:42:48 and 2018-12-21 05:48:06
Dec 21, 2018 05:45:55.448 [8260] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Starting grab immediately for 'Live TV - Session' on channel 5.1 and we're 187 seconds in already.
Dec 21, 2018 05:45:55.448 [8260] DEBUG - DVR:NewSchedule: Scheduled an operation 'Live TV - Session' on channel 8.1 on tuner 0 between 2018-12-21 05:44:26 and 2018-12-21 05:49:26
Dec 21, 2018 05:45:55.448 [8260] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Setting timer to stop grab of 'Live TV - Session' on channel 8.1 in 211 seconds.
Dec 21, 2018 05:45:55.448 [8260] DEBUG - DVR:NewSchedule: Scheduled an operation 'Live TV - Session' on channel 11.1 on tuner 0 between 2018-12-21 05:44:57 and 2018-12-21 05:50:08
Dec 21, 2018 05:45:55.448 [8260] DEBUG - DVR:Grabber: Setting timer to stop grab of 'Live TV - Session' on channel 11.1 in 253 seconds.

Those three sessions at the end were ones that you had attempted to start previously but should have been killed and removed from the schedule. I know we have a couple of issues open right now about grab operations getting stuck, but both of them are around sessions that died unexpectedly. Like Elan said earlier, we are heading into the holidays and while I can spend a little time on it, I can’t devote my complete attention to it until after the new year (or my wife may kill me).

[Smokindog]

@timwoj

I can’t devote my complete attention to it until after the new year (or my wife may kill me).

Just remember, ALL our wives and family are threatening bodily harm against us because this doesn’t work!!!

BTW, I’ve switched to the newly released Preview, opened a first impressions thread, and see no reason to go back from there so I’m good if you transfer this work to the Preview. Please let me know!

[tachtevrenidis]

I have not been able to reproduce after the last PMS update…

[Smokindog]

Still a HUGE issue here. It’s mostly unusable. Which PMS update? I’m running Version 1.14.1.5488

@elan

Can you get someone knowledgeable working on this before New Years? It’s been a real problem and reported since the first Beta of these changes (October-ish???).

[tachtevrenidis]

@Smokindog,

since I can’t repro so far, it might be a plex issue specific to hauppauge. It seems like @timwoj is looking into it. No need to tag folks repeatedly :-). Unfortunately it is the holidays and people want to spend time with their family. Can’t blame them for that!

Kosta

[Smokindog]

@tachtevrenidis

Most people are working this week and given the impact this has (leaves feature unusable) and the amount of time it’s been going on I have to respectfully disagree. If it were my team they’d be working OT this week for paying customers. I’m glad it appears to be working for you but for many others it is still unusable.

I can blame them for ignoring this since early October.

[webdeveloper02]

Let me know if I can help contribute logs to this… In the past few releases (Beta Channel) I’ve seen similar behavior, where it would appear that the shows were recording, including showing up in the activity drop-down, and a recording would progress (in the circle indicator) all around then be stuck “spinning” - this would happen to several shows at a time, and after a day or two there would be 10-20 shows ‘stuck spinning’ in the activity drop-down… my temporary work-around has been to add crontab entry to restart PMS at 4:30am every day:

30 4 * * * /usr/sbin/service plexmediaserver restart

Update: My tuners are (2) SD HDHomeRun Connects, and (1) SD HDHomeRunt Connect Quatro – for a total of 8 tuners. Since there isn’t a way yet in Plex to setup all these DVRs to pull in the local OTA Guide and merge it with the SD HDHomeRun Premium Guide, I’ve just got all 3 devices set to use the Premium TV Guide. So the issue wouldn’t appear to be not having enough tuners, nor specific to a single manufacture (e.g. hauppauge), assuming I’m seeing the same bug?

Update 2: Current version of PMS is 1.14.1.5488 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS w/ the latest apt-get update & apt-get upgrade run… all 3 tuner devices have the latest 20180817 firmware from SiliconDust…

[Smokindog]

Again this morning I tried to use my setup to watch LiveTV and was faced with the tuner timeouts. When I could get a station tuned I had no ability to time shift. There is definitely an issue between the player and the server. The tuners work fine.

Looks like we’re slipping back to old habits. No interaction, no dialog, users are asked to provide more data (spend THEIR time) and then it goes into a black hole.

I didn’t want to believe those who said it was more of the same that @elan popped in to quell the uproar, the most active threads were then closed, and we returned to the status quo.

PLEX released a bug laden product leading up to perhaps the period of peak use and now are leaving people hang. This is exactly what people were screaming about.

We were promised more transparency… When/how do you plan to fix this. The Holidays are no excuse. PLEX created this mess. This is a PAY feature…

[tachtevrenidis]

that sounds nasty!

[heimdm]

I don’t think this is your issue, but I had issues where it would just sit at 100%, and then the movie would never get processed or appear. My plex is virtualized, and the fix was removing a VMware Snapshot, that I forgot I had taken prior to an upgrade. Once I made that fix, it hasn’t had that issue.

[Smokindog]

Nope, not my issue in general but I have seen that as well I’m not running a virtualized environment either!

In the closed threads and others you’ll see that there is a widespread issue of not being able to tune to a station.

The most frequent error in the Preview app looks like this.

This is also a frequent occurrence when you do get a channel to tune.

OR you can get tuned in and get this. YUP, watching a station on LiveTV via ROKU 4660 and Server thinks nothing being watched. Look at the bandwidth vs the “NOW PLAYING”.

[elan]

@Smokindog

Looks like we’re slipping back to old habits. No interaction, no dialog, users are asked to provide more data (spend THEIR time) and then it goes into a black hole.

Hey now. I specifically warned you that things were going to be a bit quieter than usual, given the holidays, and now you’re coming back with this? I would kindly ask that you continue to have patience. Otherwise, it’s possible there’s a mismatch between the level of service you are looking for and that which we can provide, and as always, you’re free to cancel your Plex Pass if you’re unhappy.

@Smokindog

Can you get someone knowledgeable working on this before New Years?

That’s not going to happen, I’m sorry. People are traveling and with family. I promise once everything gets back to normal after New Year’s, the issue will have our attention.

[tachtevrenidis]

(this can wait till you are back from vac!)
@timwoj,

I still can’t repro (yeah!) but here is a question. What is the reason behind sometimes tuning to a channel taking 3 seconds and others 15 seconds? Here I am talking about same PMS, same client (Shield), nothing else recording and me trying to watch some live tv. And I am also talking about the same channel (usually the channels delivered to my house in h264 by comcast tune faster which makes sense since the stream is smaller). But here I am trying to compare apples to apples and it seems like the time it takes to tune varies by a lot! Just asking!

[tachtevrenidis]

@timwoj,

ok I repro-ed (but I was not in a position to gather logs). I am starting to think that this has to do with how long PMS has been running. I had not restarted since the last PMS update and all has been good. Then a couple of weeks later, I get it again. I have since restarted again (only way to fix it) and now, again, I can’t repro. I don’t know if this helps you!

[heimdm]

Started getting this tonight. Rebooted plex and the issue seemed to go away.

[mw0dcm]

Hi all!!
I’m getting it on a Linux based PMS. My system has 3 Hauppage WinTV Duo-HD receivers attached. and after a few recordings have gone through over the last 24 hours, it only allows 2 devices or 1 device and one revording to be done. The rest get the “Unable to Tune Channel, please check your TV antenna!!” and I know for a fact that the channels are good on the signal etc.
Transcode and a few other items really need looking into!!

Dave

[tachtevrenidis]

@Smokindog has hauppauge and he experiences something similar…