[4.9.5.0] Live TV stream and ffmpeg process remain orphaned after client disconnects (TVHeadend)

[CrySoft 0]

Hi team,

I am experiencing an issue on Emby Server 4.9.5.0 where Live TV streams and their background transcode processes (ffmpeg) fail to close after a remote client disconnects or crashes during live playback.

Issue Description: When a client stops/closes Live TV abruptly, the Emby Dashboard correctly updates to show 0 active sessions. However, the server does not terminate the input stream from the tuner nor the underlying ffmpeg process.

As a result, Emby continues downloading the stream endlessly in the background, keeping the tuner on TVHeadend completely locked and unnecessarily consuming system resources.

Technical Observations:

• Network Analysis: Running tcpdump on the server shows active TCP traffic between TVHeadend (localhost:9981) and Emby (localhost:60042). Emby continues to send TCP ACKs to TVHeadend, reading the stream into a local buffer/transcoder even though no active client session exists in the Emby UI.

• Tuner Types Tested: Tested with both HDHomeRun emulation mode and M3U Tuner mode from TVHeadend. The orphaned socket/process behavior occurs in both configurations.

• Kernel Keep-Alive: Tuned OS TCP keep-alive settings (tcp_keepalive_time = 60), but since Emby is actively ACKing the packets from TVHeadend, the TCP connection is seen as healthy by the OS and is never dropped.

• Transcoding: Inspection of the process table shows an orphaned ffmpeg instance spawned by Emby that continues to run indefinitely for the Live TV stream.

Server Environment:

• Emby Server Version: 4.9.5.0

• OS: Ubuntu Server 26.04 LTS

• Tuner Backend: TVHeadend (running on the same host)

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Start playing a Live TV channel on a remote client.

2. Force-close the client app or simulate a abrupt network disconnect on the client side.

3. Observe the Emby Dashboard: the active session disappears.

4. Check TVHeadend / system processes (ss -tpn | grep 9981 or pgrep ffmpeg): the stream connection remains open and continues to pull data indefinitely.

It seems that the cancellation token / process teardown for the ffmpeg pipeline and the tuner reader object is not being triggered upon client session termination.

I have attached the embyserver.txt log file for review, no ffmpeg-transcode-* is generated for this specific issue..

Thanks in advance for your help!

embyserver-3.txt

[Uncle_Frank 0]

Yeah I been there years ago running TVH through Emby did the same thing but sadly lots of things do this and keeps a spot hanging on the Emby side. Even running Xtreme UI Panel or openwebif or dreambox url all does the same thing sadly. Still trying to wrap my head around the fact you use TVH lol that's so out dated and buggy as hell not to mention you can tail it and grap channels remotely without the owner knowing until they look at streams.

You must be using satellite tv, if not, wtf you on TVH for it's 2026  if your on an iks server you can run it through a plugin that uses VLC media player as the actual output to any client even HLS. But still why you on TVH ? I would never run TVH it's to exploited unless it's on a LAN.

Not trying to be a dick but if you are running satellite tv you should retire it and grab a cccam sub and run it through your own server or use an STB and run that through a linux STB server easily. Works great on Redhat.