# Tivo Plex Crashing



## OPTX158 (Feb 5, 2015)

Ok I looked on the forum and have not seen a dedicated thread to the topic. I have a tivo Romio. Got he plex App, but it crashes on both the romio and the mini's to often to be able to enjoy a show. I am super static that Tivo brought this application, Thank You Tivo. Now I just want to be able to use it. Has anyone been able to resolve this. Should we have a thread posting software version etc to see if there is a pattern?


Thanks


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## zebra1024 (Jun 13, 2015)

I have a Tivo Roamio pro and it also restarts while streaming a movie


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## OPTX158 (Feb 5, 2015)

Yes in my case, I will start the movie and then less than 30 seconds later it will completely crash, I have to manually re-launch. In other instances it will completely crash several times trought the length of the movie. No rhyme or reason for it to happen, chromecast streams without issues.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

You might try restarting the TiVo.

Scott


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## OPTX158 (Feb 5, 2015)

HerronScott said:


> You might try restarting the TiVo.
> 
> Scott


I will give that a shot.


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## OPTX158 (Feb 5, 2015)

Unfortunately it is not an issue that rebooting my devices could fix. Any other suggestions?


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## denniswebb (Mar 16, 2003)

I am also having this problem with Plex on my Roamio OTA. No issues with the Plex app on my Vizio tv (but it is so much nicer being able to use my Tivo remote, so I hope they resolve this soon).


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

I like Plex and have used it quite a bit so far on my Roamio but I do have to say it feels like a beta release. It's crashed quite a few times and tonight totally froze up my TiVo. I had to unplug it. Hopefully they roll out an update that's faster and more stable before too long.


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## werk (Feb 24, 2005)

OPTX158 said:


> Unfortunately it is not an issue that rebooting my devices could fix. Any other suggestions?


The first show I watched on Plex on TiVo crashed it repeatedly. I rebooted my TiVo, since then had watched 3 or 4 movies without crashing. Then, last night, I tried to watch the latest ep of the show that was crashing Plex, encoded the same way as the other....and BOOM, crashed again.

So, I went into Plex settings on TiVo and unchecked AC3 audio (which I had enabled myself) and the Direct Play and Direct Stream options...show played through fine. Might want to give that a shot. I'll do some more troubleshooting if I ever have some free time to narrow which option exactly is the one that's causing my crashes...


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

When Plex completely locked up my box last night, I was playing files ripped from DVDs I own. I had dumped the MPEG-2 files (with AC3 audio -- only 1.0 mono) right into an MKV file. I had assumed that such a file could Direct Stream since the TiVo can natively play back MPEG-2 encoded video (it's what OTA TV stations use). But based on the server's log file, I could see that Plex Media Server was transcoding the file on-the-fly.


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## spaldingclan (Aug 22, 2012)

I've gone back to pytivo as Plex is unusable for my roamio...crashes too often (about twice an hour)


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## werk (Feb 24, 2005)

werk said:


> The first show I watched on Plex on TiVo crashed it repeatedly. I rebooted my TiVo, since then had watched 3 or 4 movies without crashing. Then, last night, I tried to watch the latest ep of the show that was crashing Plex, encoded the same way as the other....and BOOM, crashed again.
> 
> So, I went into Plex settings on TiVo and unchecked AC3 audio (which I had enabled myself) and the Direct Play and Direct Stream options...show played through fine. Might want to give that a shot. I'll do some more troubleshooting if I ever have some free time to narrow which option exactly is the one that's causing my crashes...


Welp, I take that back. Crashed a few times last night watching a couple different shows.


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## OPTX158 (Feb 5, 2015)

werk said:


> The first show I watched on Plex on TiVo crashed it repeatedly. I rebooted my TiVo, since then had watched 3 or 4 movies without crashing. Then, last night, I tried to watch the latest ep of the show that was crashing Plex, encoded the same way as the other....and BOOM, crashed again.
> 
> So, I went into Plex settings on TiVo and unchecked AC3 audio (which I had enabled myself) and the Direct Play and Direct Stream options...show played through fine. Might want to give that a shot. I'll do some more troubleshooting if I ever have some free time to narrow which option exactly is the one that's causing my crashes...


Thanks for suggestion, On mine AC3 was not enabled, did not even know there was a setting menu until you mentioned it. Currently mine is unusable, surprises me that they would release a product that is not working for so many people. We have waited so long for the feature and now it is here, we cannot use it. One crash is one too many, chromecast works flawlessly, amazon firestick crashes also. Roku works flawless.


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## just4fn44 (Dec 28, 2006)

My plex app keeps crashing also. Maybe it will be better when tivo updates to newer firmware.


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## EmilGH (Sep 24, 2010)

The app is so painfully slow... you're not missing anything.

(I know that's not helpful, but after waiting for this for SO LONG to have such a dog of a piece of software is very frustrating...)


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## jtclark (Apr 22, 2005)

Unchecking Direct Stream in Settings seems to have taken care of Plex crashing for me. I also have AC3 checked.


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## OPTX158 (Feb 5, 2015)

jtclark said:


> Unchecking Direct Stream in Settings seems to have taken care of Plex crashing for me. I also have AC3 checked.


Jtclark you are my hero  Unchecking Direct Stream and selecting Ac3 seems to have taken care of the crashing problem on my end. Thanks for the suggestion!!!


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## zebra1024 (Jun 13, 2015)

Unchecking Direct Stream and selecting Ac3 worked for me as well. Thanks


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## ajwees41 (May 7, 2006)

I am also seeing the premiere box not seeing the net connection after exiting the plex app.


the box can see the internet, but all other apps think the net is down


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## Bonanzaair (Aug 26, 2006)

MY Plex is not crashing, but I had to reinstall the Plex Server, now I'm not getting Channels. My menu tree top is Movies. Any help?

Bonanza


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

Bonanzaair said:


> MY Plex is not crashing, but I had to reinstall the Plex Server, now I'm not getting Channels. My menu tree top is Movies. Any help?
> 
> Bonanza


The Tivo Plex app doesn't support channels.


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## bradleys (Oct 31, 2007)

shwru980r said:


> The Tivo Plex app doesn't support channels.


yet


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## colin5 (Jan 15, 2006)

My Plex on TiVo worked 1 time. The day I realized it was there, I streamed one show. Since, then, it won't get back off the ground. It says it has a connection error. I can select "retry" but that just puts me back in the same place. It happens on both of my TiVo's (one on wifi, one on ethernet in the same room as the server). Plex connects and streams fine to a FireTV stick in another room. I know I'm missing something simple, but I feel like I've tried every possible solution (restarting everything multiple times, re-connecting wifi, all the settings I could possibly change on the plex server, etc)


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## aceturnedjoker (Jul 3, 2015)

colin5 said:


> My Plex on TiVo worked 1 time. The day I realized it was there, I streamed one show. Since, then, it won't get back off the ground. It says it has a connection error. I can select "retry" but that just puts me back in the same place. It happens on both of my TiVo's (one on wifi, one on ethernet in the same room as the server). Plex connects and streams fine to a FireTV stick in another room. I know I'm missing something simple, but I feel like I've tried every possible solution (restarting everything multiple times, re-connecting wifi, all the settings I could possibly change on the plex server, etc)


Same here, I had if working for about 2 weeks and then one morning it wouldn't connect. I haven't been able to get the Tivo to see it, yet my TV, Phone, Laptop all have no problems connecting to it. If anyone has any theories, please let them FLOW!


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## koenip (Jul 27, 2003)

colin5 said:


> ...It says it has a connection error. I can select "retry" but that just puts me back in the same place.


Was running fine for me, multiple videos, multiple days. New Roamio installed and now I've got the same problem.


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## killjoy (Nov 6, 2015)

Has there been a fix or ETA for fixing this problem yet?

I too have a Roamio OTA that is not watchable when using Plex.


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

It was fixed long ago. Do you have the current media server installed? 9.12.18?

The tivo plex client should update to the current version 34 on its own.

Its been rock stable on my systems for quite a while now.


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## nexus99 (Oct 17, 2002)

New Plex/TiVo user. All new version. Plex continually crashes out of the UI. Tv shows and movies sometimes don't start. I can so times fast forward a bit to kick them off. Any thoughts?


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## t1voproof (Feb 6, 2010)

I gave up on using Plex on TiVo. I was having mainly audio/video sync problems. Plex works perfectly on my Roku.


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## Raindog2035 (Apr 8, 2016)

Plex was working great on my Roamio until a couple weeks ago. Since then it has been generally slower and has froze once and entirely rebooted the tivo once. I hope it gets fixed because it is much more convenient than using the chromecast which is my other option. Oh yes, and I also experienced the video/audio sync problems.


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## Meatball (Jan 12, 2007)

Having issues with Plex on Tivo as well when streaming video (seems to work fine with Audio) with the latest versions of the client and the Media Server. App will either crash or lock up playing MP4's and MKV's. Pretty sure it's not an issue with the files or the server as they play fine using my Roku's, so I'm assuming the culprit is the Tivo client.


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## jfalkingham (Jul 23, 2002)

I've opened numerous bug reports with the plex team on this. Have seen nothing to suggest a fix is imminent. I suggest if you want to use plex to open a ticket with them and TiVo.


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

Meatball said:


> Having issues with Plex on Tivo as well when streaming video (seems to work fine with Audio) with the latest versions of the client and the Media Server. App will either crash or lock up playing MP4's and MKV's. Pretty sure it's not an issue with the files or the server as they play fine using my Roku's, so I'm assuming the culprit is the Tivo client.


What are the stream contents of the videos you are playing. Can you give us the mediainfo data for one or two. I'd be happy to have a look and see if anything throws a flag.

I have been pretty happy with my Plex server and the tivo client on my Bolt. The one on the Roamios and Minis requires everything to be transcoded down to 720p and less than 4Mbit so I seldom use those.

What tivo and what are you running Plex server on?


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## jfalkingham (Jul 23, 2002)

Plex needs an update from TiVo to be pushed out: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1089767/#Comment_1089767 there have been a ton of issues with the video playback since 2.4.3 and looks like plex team has been having a lot of fun with it.


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

jfalkingham said:


> Plex needs an update from TiVo to be pushed out: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1089767/#Comment_1089767 there have been a ton of issues with the video playback since 2.4.3 and looks like plex team has been having a lot of fun with it.


The updates being spoken of have already gone out. If you are having trouble with your plex install, post up some specifics and I will attempt to help if I can.

I am pretty happy with my installation and it works pretty well for the wife and I.


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## alevenso (May 9, 2016)

I used Plex with my Bolt this weekend - no issues at all. Make sure you are the latest version of Plex and that you are downloading from good sources or ripping correctly.


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## Diana Collins (Aug 21, 2002)

We are BIG Plex users (we have over 7 TBs on our Plex server) and while we have had a crash now and then, it certainly isn't anything like I'm reading here. We probably watch an average of 6 to 10 hours of Plex based content per week, 90% of which just plays with no trouble at all.

The vast majority of what we have are DVD and BluRay rips (with no additional compression or processing) and content downloaded from our TiVos with kmttg and encoded as MKV using VideoReDo Suite.

Maybe if we start collecting details about videos that fail, we might find some common trait that is causing the problem?


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## jfalkingham (Jul 23, 2002)

jcthorne said:


> The updates being spoken of have already gone out. If you are having trouble with your plex install, post up some specifics and I will attempt to help if I can.
> 
> I am pretty happy with my installation and it works pretty well for the wife and I.


Well now that I saw your reply and Diana's I knew the problem was with me! I played around in settings and noticed if I disabled 'direct play' it will play all of my videos fine. This option must have been enabled fairly recently as default because I never turned this on. So with this off, all videos work and stream.

Btw - I can only launch the plex app from Music, not Find TV, Movies and Videos. I'll reboot the bolt later tonight to see if that clears it up.


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## lew (Mar 12, 2002)

Diana Collins said:


> We are BIG Plex users (we have over 7 TBs on our Plex server) and while we have had a crash now and then, it certainly isn't anything like I'm reading here. We probably watch an average of 6 to 10 hours of Plex based content per week, 90% of which just plays with no trouble at all.
> 
> The vast majority of what we have are DVD and BluRay rips (with no additional compression or processing) and content downloaded from our TiVos with kmttg and encoded as MKV using VideoReDo Suite.
> 
> Maybe if we start collecting details about videos that fail, we might find some common trait that is causing the problem?


What parameters do you use when you encode content downloaded from your tivo?


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## Diana Collins (Aug 21, 2002)

We do no re-encoding unless required. We use kmttg to download, and use VideoReDo to edit out commercials and convert to MKV packages. But we keep the MPEG2 or MPEG4 encoding of the original recording (IOW, we output the video using "fast frame copy" in VRD). Our priority is quality over file space (we have four 6TB drives in a RAID 5 array, yielding 18TB of storage). Occasionally we have had to transcode some BD rips because the bit rate is too high for the TiVo Plex client. In those cases we use the new Plex "Optimized versions" feature to do the transcoding in advance.


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## NoNose (Nov 27, 2015)

PLEX had "Direct Play" ticked. PLEX didn't work! To my knowledge, that function was not set prior to the last TiVo PLEX update. As was previously stated, unticking Direct Play was all that was needed to resolve the issue.


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## Diana Collins (Aug 21, 2002)

Turning off Direct Play just means that nearly everything will be transcoded by the Plex Server. The Plex server has configuration information for all supported clients that specify a max/native resolution, supported codecs, supported container types, etc. If the profile of a recording 100% matches the defined capabilities of the client, and Direct Play is on, then the recording is streamed without transcoding of any kind...the file is simply streamed to the client as is.

Direct Stream comes into play when your recording uses codecs that are natively compatible with your device, but uses a container that is not supported (for example uses MKV when the client only supports MP4). Direct Stream and transcoding can be used together to selectively transcode the recording as needed. For example, if you client supports the container and the video codec, but not the audio codec, Plex will transcode JUST the audio if Direct Stream is enabled.

The Plex pages on Direct Play and Direct Stream are here:

https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200250387-Streaming-Media-Direct-Play-and-Direct-Stream
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/ar...Play-Direct-Stream-and-Transcoding-different-


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## flykev (Feb 10, 2013)

werk said:


> The first show I watched on Plex on TiVo crashed it repeatedly. I rebooted my TiVo, since then had watched 3 or 4 movies without crashing. Then, last night, I tried to watch the latest ep of the show that was crashing Plex, encoded the same way as the other....and BOOM, crashed again.
> 
> So, I went into Plex settings on TiVo and unchecked AC3 audio (which I had enabled myself) and the Direct Play and Direct Stream options...show played through fine. Might want to give that a shot. I'll do some more troubleshooting if I ever have some free time to narrow which option exactly is the one that's causing my crashes...


This fixed a similar problem where the app crashed at the end of the show or even when the stop button was pressed. Thanks!


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