I’ve narrowed down a specific problem that started happening on my FireTV. I am watching a cable show (non recording). When a commercial starts the app pauses. I have to press Select once or twice to continue. It only seems to happen for a specific channel. May be others. It is the channel my wife watches a lot so it has become a pain point. Has anyone else seen a similar issue?
Could you submit diagnostics from the app (under Settings > Support) next time it happens
Submitted
Submitted another for next occurrence. Just in case you want to compare.
Please upgrade to v4.1.3 from the Amazon App Store. If it continues try Settings > Playback > Advanced > Surround Sound: Off
Thank you for the quick investigation! App updated. I had auto updates turned on. Not sure why it didn’t update automatically. I also turned off surround sound. I will monitor and reply here with an update.
It didn’t fix the problem. New diags submitted.
I also disabled detect commercials on the server. I realize it is for recordings. But just in case there was a side effect. Also disabled Commercial Skipping in app. Neither helped.
Experiencing the same thing here, seems to happen on certain channels. I watched both NFL games yesterday and never had any issues. Was watching ESPN and CNN today and would pause either at start of the commercial or returning from the commercial. Seeing this now on both 4.1.0 and 4.1.3 on Firestick 4K and 4K Max....testing FireOS TV now running 4.1.3
I have 2 Toshiba Fire TVs. No problem for years. It is happening on both. The channel is HGTV. I will report if it happens on other channels. It pauses at the start of the commercial break too often.
Still happening. Almost every commercial break. Here is another tidbit just in case it helps. When it does pause it remains paused. Even after the commercials end. I have to cause it to resume.
Sounds very similar, if not the same, to this: Pausing on commercial changes on Android TV (SHIELD 9) - Channels Android TV / Troubleshooting - Channels Community (getchannels.com)
I'm encouraged by your issue in the sense of misery loves company! haha...But seriously, I imagine it will help them narrow things down from the perspective that if it is the same issue, it's not specific to the shield. The one difference I see is that turning SS off didn't help in your case, whereas for me it seemed to fix things. I'm gonna turn SS off for a longer time and see if it actually does still pause.
[edit - It took about 3 minutes after disabling SS for it to pause. So, disregard what I said in that it seemed to fix it for me before. haha]
@ChannelRat My wife and I chuckled while reading your reply. It probably does help knowing it is not platform specific.
I would downgrade to an older version to see if it doesn’t pause. I am not sure if that is possible.
Here is some new behavior. I heard it once before. When it pauses the sound is all static. This happens very intermittently. It just happened. Diags uploaded.
As I mentioned, I thought disabling surround sound fixed it for me, until I tested toggling the setting again and seeing it pause with SS off. However, after that test, I too got horrible sounds (there's a clip in the other thread) and tmm suggested I reboot the device. It's been a few days and I haven't had any more pauses since I turned off surround sound AND rebooted my shield after doing so. YMMV of course given different devices, but maybe worth a shot if you haven't actually rebooted or power cycled.
At this point, I'm pretty convinced it's something in Channels itself and how it handles audio transitions during certain commercials. For example, I've noticed, when it was pausing, it almost always happened during a specific Verizon commercial. I have no clue why that particular commercial seemed to trigger the pause, but it was pretty repeatable!
I imagine the Channels devs will get it sorted eventually. Since it doesn't happen all the time for me, and the fact I actually don't watch a lot of live TV, I'll hang in there before exploring alternatives (which, I technically already did and found all the other options (plex, kodi, jellyfin) lacking, and settled on Channels).
It continues to happen after reboot. It also happens on my third tv which is Fire TV Stick 4K Max. I haven’t seen it happen on specific commercials. I will keep a closer look. I don’t have a non Fire device to test further. I agree it is probably an issue with Channels. Some edge case.
It is my wife’s favorite channel. I told her she probably wore it out. Lol. But I couldn’t fool her.