Emby Live TV freezes and fails to recover from OTA signal errors; HDHomeRun tuner remains locked after playbac

[jwa_jwa_jwa 1]

Emby Live TV freezes and fails to recover from OTA signal errors; HDHomeRun tuner remains locked after playback ends

Environment

• Emby Server: 4.10.1.0

• Server OS: Windows 11

• Server: MOM-OLD-LAPTOP (10.0.0.8)

• TV tuner: HDHomeRun FLEX 4K (10.0.0.11)

• Broadcast: ATSC 1.0, MPEG-2 video / AC3 audio

• Test channel: WCBS-HD 2.1

• Clients: Emby for Windows 2.317.2.0 and Emby for Roku 4.1.70

• Comparison application: Plex, using the same HDHomeRun and clients

Issue 1: Live TV freezes and fails to recover

Emby frequently freezes during live OTA television playback, apparently following reception disturbances.

On Windows, video and audio can freeze completely without a buffering indicator. On Roku, playback sometimes freezes after approximately 10 seconds. Even after leaving the Roku untouched for 20 minutes, it may only display occasional frames, repeatedly freezing without audio.

Plex, tested on the same bedroom Roku, network connection, HDHomeRun, and WCBS-HD channel, continued playing despite visible pixelation.

This suggests Emby is not recovering reliably from interruptions or errors in the incoming live television stream.

During an earlier Windows freeze on October 21, the Emby server log showed that the client stopped requesting HLS playlists and video segments around 11:07:14 AM, although it continued sending playback progress updates.

The corresponding FFmpeg log showed that server-side stream processing continued beyond 11:15 PM [correction: 11:15 AM], at approximately real-time speed.

This suggests the playback failure occurred downstream of stream generation, although the precise cause remains undetermined.

Issue 2: HDHomeRun tuner remains occupied after playback ends

On October 21, I discovered that HDHomeRun Tuner 2 remained tuned to WCBS-HD and continued streaming even though no clients were watching and no recordings were active.

The HDHomeRun status showed:

• Virtual channel: 2.1 WCBS-HD

• Resource lock: 10.0.0.8

• Streaming rate: approximately 8–9 Mbps

Using PowerShell on the Emby server, I identified the process holding the connection:

• Process: EmbyServer.exe

• PID: 3928

• Local endpoint: 10.0.0.8:63727

• Remote endpoint: 10.0.0.11:5004

The HDHomeRun system log independently confirmed that Tuner 2 had opened a stream to 10.0.0.8:63727 at 14:59:57 in its log (approximately 10:59:57 AM EDT).

The Emby dashboard recorded the bedroom Roku stopping playback of WCBS-HD at approximately 1:20 PM.

The Emby server log confirms:

• 13:20:05.617 — Roku playback stopped.

• 13:20:05.621 — Emby removed the Roku live-stream consumer and initiated FFmpeg shutdown.

• The shared live-stream consumer count decreased to 1, not zero.

• 13:20:08.198 — FFmpeg exited successfully with code 0.

Despite no active playback or recordings, the HDHomeRun tuner remained locked by Emby.

I restarted only Emby Server, without restarting the HDHomeRun or changing network settings.

Immediately afterward, HDHomeRun Tuner 2 became idle:

• Virtual channel: none

• Streaming rate: none

• Resource lock: none

This strongly suggests that Emby retained an underlying live-TV stream or consumer after playback ended.

Expected behavior

• Emby should recover from brief OTA reception disturbances where possible, rather than remaining indefinitely frozen.

• When all viewers and recordings have stopped, Emby should release the underlying HDHomeRun tuner.

• A client playback failure should not leave a tuner occupied indefinitely.

Questions for the Emby developers

• Why would an HLS client stop requesting playlists and video segments while continuing to send playback progress updates?

• What recovery mechanism should handle interruptions or corrupt MPEG-2 transport stream data?

• Why did the shared live-stream consumer count remain at 1 after the Roku playback session ended?

• Can Emby identify and automatically clean up abandoned live-stream consumers?

I can provide the Emby server logs, corresponding FFmpeg logs, HDHomeRun system log, and screenshots documenting the tuner lock before and after restarting Emby.

I would appreciate an investigation into both live-TV playback recovery and the apparent failure to release tuner resources.

embyserver.txt

ffmpeg-transcode-575c3ebd-20ec-491c-8edb-e5ac45914d59_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-831b8c86-8ff5-4e9f-87dd-884970cf1141_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-999f2428-6e12-46fa-a8ea-c5bd6514edba_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-173278a6-01f3-4800-8345-f3fe9fe7c9ce_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-bff94ddd-f6a7-4f4c-8da0-6003d800cc6a_1.txt

Edited 4 hours ago by jwa_jwa_jwa

[Luke 43388]

Hi, please attach the ffmpeg log as well. t hanks.

[jwa_jwa_jwa 1]

Done!

[Luke 43388]

To answer the questions:

Quote

Why would an HLS client stop requesting playlists and video segments while continuing to send playback progress updates?

That's what we need to find out. It means the player has reached some kind of state that it's having a problem, but it hasn't signaled an error or everything would stop, including the progress reporting.

Quote

• Why did the shared live-stream consumer count remain at 1 after the Roku playback session ended?

• Can Emby identify and automatically clean up abandoned live-stream consumers?

Yes and there are improvements to this in the beta channel that hopefully will get backported to stable after a little more time in testing. It sounds like the roku playback session didn't actually end if it was still reporting progress.

[jwa_jwa_jwa 1]

Thanks, Luke. I appreciate the clarification, particularly that improvements to live-stream consumer cleanup are already being tested in the beta channel.

One additional finding: after the Roku stopped playing, the HDHomeRun FLEX 4K continued streaming WCBS-HD at approximately 8 Mbps, with its resource lock assigned to my Emby server (10.0.0.8).

I confirmed through Windows PowerShell that the TCP connection to the HDHomeRun was still owned by EmbyServer.exe. Restarting only Emby Server immediately released the tuner. So this wasn't merely a stale entry in the Emby dashboard; the HDHomeRun was still actively streaming.

I also discovered today that my attic antenna had tipped over, causing several channels to lose reception or experience severe pixelation. After correcting its position, reception returned. This explains the recent deterioration in signal quality, although it doesn't explain why Emby retained a tuner connection after playback stopped.

I'll continue testing on 4.10.2.0 stable with the antenna correctly positioned and report any additional playback freezes or unreleased tuner sessions.

Please let me know when the live-stream cleanup improvements reach the stable release.

[Luke 43388]

OK please keep us posted. Thanks.