BETA: New HDHomeRun network tuning system to try out

Beta Community Apple Beta
#1

In the latest Testflight beta we have included an option to enable our new experimental HDHomeRun network tuning system.

Why is this interesting?

In normal circumstances we expect it to behave the same as the old one, but the magic comes when things are going wrong. The new system will notify you on screen when your antenna reception or network is causing problems that show up as glitches when watching Live TV.

How do I enable it?

From Settings go to the "Debug" menu and enable "New HDHomeRun Streaming".

What should I do if there are problems?

Please let us know below if you run into any problems and please submit diagnostic logs so we can look into it further.

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BETA: New Android HDHomeRun network tuning system to try out
Error Message: Tuner Reception Problems
Issue with Channels DVR giving "false" error message about reception problems
Bugs in Beta 4.15.2210
More than 2/3s of recordings are interrupted
Debugging unpredictable network issues
#2
#3

Using the new tuning approach I can’t tune 4K stations. I tried several and received response code 503 for each. This happened on both my iPad and ATV 4K. I submitted diagnostics from the iPad.

I do like the idea of better feedback from the HDHR. So, good stuff.

#4

Please make sure you keep the ability to turn it off. I'm so tired of developers trying to notify you of every little glitch that becomes worse than the glitch itself.

In fact, I'd like to see a delay put on the 'timeline bar' (not sure what the official name is) popping up whenever it has to buffer.

#5

Weird behavior on Apple TV: when tuning to any OTA channel, the playback popup/scrubber doesn't populate with guide info until after the channel tunes. Also, the title of the current program never shows up but the poster and "In x minutes:" info does.

Edit: upon further testing, this seems to happen no matter what the source of the channel is. When I turn off the "New HDHomeRun Streaming" option, the titles show up again for all channels.

#6

A screen notification doesn't do me much good when I'm recording and not watching. What I really need is an automatic switch to an alternate source for the same show.

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#7

Thanks for the diagnostics. I’ll look into what’s going on.

#8

Thanks for the feedback. Have you seen any of these notifications to experience how it feels?

#9

Very interesting. I’ll check it out!

1 Like
#10

Yeah, that’s definitely true. We’re always working on improving lots of aspects of the system. This change is improving the experience of live TV.

1 Like
#11

Is 111.1 one of those 4K stations? I see that your DVR was trying to tune to that channel and was getting a timeout. Could you turn off tuner sharing and see if you get a different error message?

I'm going to investigate why it's displaying the 503 error instead of something more helpful.

#12

Hi Eric

Yes, 111.1 is a 4K station. I tried again today with the latest beta and now it and other 4K channels do tune in.

FWIW, 111.1 is often slow to tune. I sometimes have to select it 2-3 times before I get past a weak signal message. Once tuned it plays fine though. I think the timeout seems to be 6 sec and for what ever reason that one channel takes longer than that.

I don't know if others experience the same with 4K stations taking longer or not. I haven't seen any mention of it in the forums and hadn't had a chance yet to report it myself. Maybe the timeout value needs to be increased by a second or two for the 4K channels.

#13

I also noticed that 6 seconds wasn't always long enough in some of my testing. If you update your DVR to the latest pre-release I've increased the timeout to 8 seconds. That may be long enough to make things work properly.

#14

8 seconds sounds good. As soon as I see the pre-release available I’ll upgrade and test with it. Thanks!

#15

DVR version 2021.03.12.1634 has the longer timeout. Can you see if you have any better experience tuning to 4K channels?

#16

8 secs is definitely better. I haven't tested extensively but I do still occasionally see the timeout hit even at 8. It's almost as if the HDHR is sleeping because it seems like the first attempt to tune takes longer and then subsequent tunings to the same channel happen very fast.

#17

Is the error message when the timeout happens any more understandable than before? Could you send diagnostics from the client app the next time it happens?

#18

This time it was simply weak signal. I’ll send diagram next time it happens.

#19

I submitted two dings this morning. In the first, I tuned to 111.1 and it just never tuned. No error messages or anything. I then hit Menu to back out and got the “behind the timeline” message. After that I successfully tuned to 111.1 without issue and quickly. A few minutes later I decided to try it again and got a weak signal message. So, I submitted a second diag.

#20

Could you log it to the DVR server log when the signal is poor during recording? That might be helpful to trace down signal issues with recordings.