Blackouts & Lost Connection

Channels Apple TV
#21

Chronix10, Nice router. I really like the Asus routers and am on my second Asus model. However, based on my experience with Asus and Channels, don’t be too quick to rule out the router/network.

I currently have a Asus RT-AC68P, which is a step down from your RT-AC86u. Different router but I found there are situations where I could max out the router and cause problems for the Channels app. For example, I used to have an Apple TV with a network connection right into the router. I found that when I ftp’d a large file to a router USB drive, the Channels app would skip and freeze. When I connected the same AppleTV to my core switch the problem stopped. The HD mpeg2 OTA files from channels are some of the highest bandwidth files you will use so it will stress your network and expose any shortcomings.

Good Luck. Scott

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#22

That is a fancy router, I only have an AC1900, and it works fine with channels on 5ghz.

Asus did publish a new firmware on 4/12 that had some stability patches. Have you tried that update yet?

#23

So I have been fighting this issue for 5months and I think I finally fixed it. I haven’t seen it for a week at least.
My setup: everything in the house that can be wired is wired(if it has an Ethernet jack it is plugged in). Only thing that is wireless is my phones and tablets etc.
What ended up solving my problem was the combo of the follow two things:

  1. Set my router to only do DHCP on the first 100 IPs. So 192.168.1.1-100. Then all the devices I watch channels on I set static IP outside of this range. i.e. Apple TV, iPad etc.
  2. Turned “off” tuner sharing in channel’s settings.

After I did those two things I have had zero issue. It has only been a week. But before I did those two things I couldn’t watch live tv for more than 5-10min before “connection lost” would appear. I’ll update this thread if the issue comes back. But I am hopefully this fixed the issue. Good luck everyone.

#24

I get a similar thing with my HDHomeRun Prime…I have the Channels DVR and iOS apps. Not sure it’s the same but it always happens when one of my Apple TVs hogs the connection even though no one is watching. It would be great if you guys can add a timeout feature/option to close the connection after a period of inactivity. It’s the ONLY thing that my family complains about since moving to Channels and getting rid of cable boxes.

#25

I was having the “Connection Lost” message every day from mid-April to early May.

I reviewed log from Channels DVR and HDHR Prime to find that it looked like an issue with the HDHR. I contacted Comcast because it appeared there was an issue with the MCARD. The MCARD came but I didn’t replace it because the issue stopped after 5/8/2018.

I didn’t realize I could look at the Channels app log on the Apple TV until now. Over the past week, I come home to the “Connection Lost” message when I leave Channels streaming a channel while I’m out of the house.

Today, It looks like it had no issues from 11-2 then the Channels log reports “The Internet connection appears to be offline.” yet within a few moments finds the DVR server and adds the tab back in.

Tuner sharing has been disabled or enabled and issues persist.

I’m operating with three Google Wi-Fi points and connected via Wi-Fi, but experienced the same symptoms when running on a Netgear Nighthawk X6 R8000 gigabit Ethernet connection. It doesn’t seem to matter if I have it connected via Ethernet or Wi-Fi. It has happened on all five of the Apple TVs I have in the house, Ethernet or Wi-Fi, obviously not all streaming content at the same time, but that points to something software OS or application level, IMO. I’ve literally changed everything about my network but this issue pops up periodically and I’m not sure where to go from here.

Where may I send the log?

#26

That sounds pretty frustrating. If you’re seeing “internet connection offline” that’s coming from the OS. Are you google Wi-Fi plugged into another router or cable modem? What is handing out dhcp addresses in your network?

#27

In the either case of Google Wi-Fi or the Netgear, DHCP was managed by the router, not the modem-router upstream. Also, for devices connected via Ethernet, they were connected through a gigabit switch, which was also replaced for troubleshooting.

I did submit a support request with Google as well, they cannot find any drops in network connectivity according to the logs, so they’re looking at something hardware/software related with the endpoints, naturally. :slight_smile:

I guess, now that I can see the ATV logs, I’ll watch those and see if I can get more detail or if it’s always the network being reported as the issue.

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#28

You can also try the VLC or InstaTV app to compare and see if it triggers the same problem. That would help narrow down to Channels vs tvOS

#29

A post was merged into an existing topic: Recording Status Bug

#30

Hello. Lately, I’m getting Connection lost again. This happens only in Channels. All other apps are functioning while watching live TV. I can watch HD or SD channels and have the issue. It can happen in minutes or it can go for a couple hours then Connection lost. It does not happen in Insta or Plex, though Plex does this differently. I can also watch streaming apps such as Netflix or ABC or HBO for hours and not have a single issue. It seems to be something in Channels causing a fault somewhere to display the Connection lost message. When looking at the log, it all appears to be that the Apple TV has the issue with maintaining it’s connection but I find that hard to understand since all other streaming apps can handle the data stream volume without issue.

I look forward to your feedback!

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#31

All other apps use much lower data volumes. A typical internet based (or Plex transcoded) stream is 4mbps, whereas the raw HDHR stream is up to 18mbps.

You could change the Home Streaming Quality setting to force the DVR to transcode to a lower rate. That would mimic how Plex works.

#32

I attempted to change the stream from original to anything else and it was choppy. When on original, it plays the stream without being choppy. I’ve got it set back to original again and since posting, I haven’t had the Connection Lost message even after hours of unattended playback. It’s so difficult when it cannot be reproduced with a specific action. Thanks for the follow-up!

#33

I had this as well in particular with the HD DVB-T2 channels.. I could never figure out why it got worse in the evening and was fine in the morning. Turns out to be UK based 4G interference. Of course morning and during the day people where at work..

I resolved the issue by buying a inline 4G filter for £10 and haven't had any signal quality issues since.

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#34

Hi There,

In the last couple of weeks, I have started to get randomly lost connection errors and an issue where the video lags the sound for about 30sec and then catches up.

I have tried several things and what I noticed was when I turned off the DVR and only used the tuners connected to the channels app via my apple tv I had very occasional issues. As soon as I restarted the DVR it happened again.

I have deleted the guide data that is updated via HDhomerun subscription and then updated again it seems to have solved the problem. However, Im not convinced I have fixed it.

Can you help?

#35

Update your Channels app to v5.2.1

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#36

Hi @tmm1 I updated to 5.2.1 and still get the issues

#37

Please submit diagnostics from the app immediately after it happens

#38

@tmm1 thanks, I have just submitted a diagnostics

#39

Right now you have tuner sharing off so it's connecting directly to your HDHR

I see it tried to tune channel 2 but failed to get a response from your HDHR:

HDHomeRun: Could not tune to http://192.168.18.4:5004/auto/v2 after 30s -> Tuner Unreachable

#40

Does the official HDHR app work on the same device?

Did you try restarting the tuner and making sure the firmware is up to date?

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