Pluto TV freezing buffering all the time. FIXED

Channels DVR Server Troubleshooting
#1

Hello, I have a powerful windows server running Channels DVR. High speed internet. Super fast upload and download speeds on all devices both wired and Wifi. All of my OTA stuff works fine on channels DVR. I added the Pluto TV via the M3U playlist. All the channels show up on my desktop via the browser and also on my Firstick 4K's. I am having 2 issues:

  1. This happens on the Firestick and the PC web browser. Tune into one of the Pluto channels and it plays for about a minute then freezes. Sometimes it will continue. On the fire stick it usually just freezes.
  2. I setup a favorites list in the M3U-plutoTV list. They favorites show up in the web browser on the PC but they so not show up on the fire stick.

Using the native Pluto TV app on the firestick 4K or PC everything streams fine with no pausing or freezing. I do love having everything in the channels guide and am hoping there are some tweaks to stop the shuttering/freezing on the Fire stick 4K. and as mentioned the shuttering even happens on a wired PC web browser. For what it's worth I don't have shuttering/freezing on the Firstick 4K's with any other app. Only channels DVR with Pluto TV M3U playlist.

Pluto not working?
#2

Which playlist are you referring to?

This is a known issue if you use random urls instead of the docker setup.

#3

See:

#4

Thanks for the responses. I am using:
https://techzyon.com/epg/plutotv.m3u
https://techzyon.com/epg/plutotv_guide.xml

So it sounds like I need to setup Docker and create the list and guide that way. I have not setup Docker before but I imagine there is enough info on the net I could figure it out. If you all have any links to doing the setup I am all ears.

1 Like
#5

djelbert, I had the same issue using techzyon playlist. After installing and utilizing Docker the issue has largely resolved. (I have gotten one cutout in 3 days of Docker operations - I just jumped back into the channel to fix it). Fyi, for me Docker generated playlist changed the Pluto channel numbering. So anything I had scheduled to record based on the old channel numbering will fail/needs new recording scheduled for it using the new channel number.

#6

FIX - I have been using these instructions to get the Docker stuff setup for Pluto TV to create the M3U and XML guide data
setup docker: instructions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9AWYlt86B8
https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-windows/install-windows-home/
install the pluto docker image:
https://github.com/maddox/pluto-for-channels#set-up

This seemed to solve the problem with the freezing and the favorites list.

P.S. I am using a Firestick 4K. Had to clear the cache after the steps above.

  • go into the settings, applications, manage apps, find the channels DVR app and clear data and clear cache and force stop.
  • Then re-launch the app