[BUG] Fast-Forward Live TV Allowed Into the Future, Then Appears Stuck

[Tigga5 42]

@Luke thanks for fixing some of the time shifting functions in the universal app. 

After a few seconds of testing though I can say it still needs some work. It still allows you to fast-forward indefinitely, and if you stop at a point in time in the future then it just freezes and appears unresponsive until you rewind back to a valid point in the timeline. That creates a frustrating experience when watching something that's nearly live and trying to fast-forward through the commercials. It would be great if the timeline would resume play once you reach the end. like the ATV version.

[Luke 42505]

Hi, we'll take a look at it. Thanks.

[knoll126 11]

I noticed the same scenario and would love for it to not let you fast forward anymore. But at least if you are doing it in the 10 seconds chunks it will catch up once it hits that "fast forward time", if that makes any sense. For example if you are live, you fast forward 10 seconds, it takes 10 seconds to catch up from my experience. 

[Tigga5 42]

@Luke@sa2000

So it's been six months with with no reported progress... Should we just assume that unresponsive freezing is the intended behavior for Live TV? It's impressive that we can still fast-forward into next week, but it would be even more impressive if the app could handle a simple 30 second commercial skip without falling apart.

Edited May 1 by Tigga5

[sa2000 767]

4 hours ago, Tigga5 said:

So it's been six months with with no reported progress... Should we just assume that unresponsive freezing is the intended behavior for Live TV? It's impressive that we can still fast-forward into next week, but it would be even more impressive if the app could handle a simple 30 second commercial skip without falling apart.

I have just done some tests with Emby for Android 3.5.32 with Emby Server 4.10.0.10 with Live TV streaming.

Fast Forward +10 when direct playback used did not show any problem

However, when transcoding, there was a freeze for a long time. Minutes later streaming resumed,

Is this similar to what you are seeing?

 

[MBSki 1125]

10 minutes ago, sa2000 said:

However, when transcoding, there was a freeze for a long time. Minutes later streaming resumed,

Is this similar to what you are seeing?

This has been my experience with in-progress recordings since transcoding is the only way to get FF/RW to work. I never waited long enough to see if it ever resumed.

[sa2000 767]

9 minutes ago, MBSki said:

This has been my experience with in-progress recordings since transcoding is the only way to get FF/RW to work. I never waited long enough to see if it ever resumed

My test was without having a recording in progress - I will do some more tests next week with recording in progress to see if it is exactly the same behaviour

 

[Tigga5 42]

16 hours ago, sa2000 said:

Fast Forward +10 when direct playback used did not show any problem

That's interesting because I was under the impression that time-shifting wasn't possible with direct streaming. I just tried testing it to verify and the only function that works is the pause button. Fast-forward and rewind will move the timeline, but it doesn't actually affect the stream. So it looks like there's another small bug. But beyond that I'm curious to know how you're even time-shifting with direct streaming enabled in the first place?

 

16 hours ago, sa2000 said:

However, when transcoding, there was a freeze for a long time. Minutes later streaming resumed,

Is this similar to what you are seeing?

Yup. Assuming you were watching live and tried to fast-forward into the future before it froze, then it sounds like you've reproduced it.
 

[sa2000 767]

On 02/05/2026 at 10:46, Tigga5 said:

But beyond that I'm curious to know how you're even time-shifting with direct streaming enabled in the first place?

I was not timeshifting. What I said was that clicking on "Forward +10 seconds" did not cause a freeze when direct streaming but did when transcoding

On 02/05/2026 at 10:46, Tigga5 said:

Yup. Assuming you were watching live and tried to fast-forward into the future before it froze, then it sounds like you've reproduced it.

Yes. I need to look at the diagnostics I captured