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Help/Troubleshooting/Playback problems

Maximum streams reached: what a connection really is

Your service counts streams, not devices. Here is everything in mtivi that quietly uses one.

2 min readUpdated 20 Sep 2026

Most playlists allow a fixed number of streams at once, often one or two. Going over shows Maximum streams reached. It is your service’s limit, and the app is reporting it rather than hiding it.

What counts as a stream

Uses a stream Notes
Anything playing Including the mini player and Picture-in-Picture.
Each Multi-View tile Four tiles are four streams.
A recording Whether you are watching or not.
A download in progress Pause it to free the slot.
Casting The cast is a stream, and so is anything still playing on the TV.
Another device in the house A second TV, a phone, a browser player.

Clear it

  1. Close playback everywhere else

    Other TVs, phones, and any web player on your service’s site.

  2. Stop recordings and pause downloads

    Both are in the Planner and the Downloads collection.

  3. Wait a minute

    Services often hold a finished session open for a short while before releasing it.

Set the recording concurrency to one on a playlist that allows one stream, under Settings then Recording. mtivi then never tries to run two captures and the conflict prompts stop.

It happens with nothing else playing

Then a previous session was not released, which usually clears within a few minutes, or the playlist is being used somewhere you do not know about. If it keeps happening, ask your service how many streams your playlist allows and whether it is in use elsewhere.

Related reading: what a connection really is.

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