Channels App dropping frames on all sources

Channels Apple TV
#1

Hello all,

I'm having some issues with an installation of the Channels app on one specific Apple TV HD in that every single channel including virtual and recorded library content is dropping frames to the extent its unwatchable.

This is only happening on one ATV, none of the others including an identical HD model has this issue and no other apps have this issue, assuming it was either a software fault I've uninstalled the Channels app, reinstalled it, switched video drivers, installed the beta version (slightly better) but to no avail.

Getting frustrated I factory reset this specific ATV and didn't restore from the iCloud backup/layout it so the only app on the device was the Channels app and anything that ships with tvOS. No luck I've switched network cables, switched between ethernet and WLAN, I even switched HDMI cables but again, no luck.

Its probably something obvious but if anyone has any pointers I'd appreciate it, I've had a look at the logs but can't see anything obvious - although I did notice that it was decoding h264 using a software decoder rather than a the hardware because h264 wasn't whitelisted, that wasn't expected but then I don't really know.

Thanks in advance.

#2

This is a known issue in tvOS 15.1.1 and is fixed in tvOS 15.2 beta

There is also a TestFlight beta of Channels app with a workaround on getchannels.com/beta

#3

Thanks for getting back to me.

Being a tvOS issue would make sense – I did wonder if this might be the case and the issue began manifesting itself a week or more ago and I’ve been racking my head to figure what changes/updates might have occurred, although wouldn’t I see this occurring on the other TV’s around the house using tvOS 15.1.1 ?

I’ve also tried the latest TestFlight beta and sadly it’s still very much an issue. I’m tempted to enable beta builds of tvOS just to bump up to tvOS 15.2 - I’m enrolled in the beta programme but I don’t install them.