Choppy/pixelated recordings?

Beta Community DVR Beta
#1

HDHomerun Prime with DVR running on late 2012 Core i7 2.3 MacBook Pro Retina with upgraded AC WiFi card.

Recordings appear choppy or pixelated every 20 or 30 seconds along with an audio glitch. I’ve only been using it for 3 days but so far it seems like it may only be on 1080 recordings, though I haven’t recorded/watched enough yet to know for sure. All 3 recordings of “ABC World New with David Muir” though for the last 3 days have this issue. Issue is encoded in the recording itself, openning .mpg with VLC displays the same issues as watching it on ATV.

Any setting I may be missing?

This app is incredible by the way - thank you.

Choppy recording playback
#2

Sounds like a bad network link between the DVR and the HDHR. Would recommend you plug it into the router if possible.

#3

Or could be a bad antenna signal on some channels. But I presume you’ve tried watching those channels on the ATV and they have no issues.

#4

Watching the channel live is not a problem, it only seems to be certain recordings (and so far only 1080 ones). If I watch the same channel (in this case ABC) live the video is flawless. It sounds like a possible bandwidth issue then? I do plan on getting a dedicated Mac Mini to have connected to the router.

I took a look at the attached devices on my router and noticed HDHR priority was set to low, I have changed it to “Highest”, maybe that will help if it is in fact a bandwidth issue but on my Mac’s WiFI I have 800+Mbps to the router so not sure that is the problem.

HDHR is using a cable card if BTW.

#5

Oddly, I’m watching a Jimmy Kimmel recording, also in 1080 and also on ABC and no issue on the last 2 recordings. It may actually only be an issue with the specific show “ABC World News” if that’s even possible? In both cases, they are the only shows recording at the time and nothing else is running on my Mac at those times.

#6

I suspect ABC and other networks are doing something to some of their signals on purpose. We can watch Designated Survivor live just fine, but the recording is horrible. Meanwhile, The Voice records and plays back beautifully.

Edit: Happening to Grey’s Anatomy too, but Dancing with the stars is perfectly fine. Both on ABC. Unless I’m coincidentally getting interference during those particular shows, I’m convinced ABC is bit blocking them.

#7

Abc is not blocking any ota broadcasts. You are getting signal interference at those particular times. It might help to adjust your antenna.

#8

This happens to my set up as well.

  • Both HDhomerun and PC are connected to my Nighthawk router
  • PC has an AMD A10 7700k chipset with a Asus GTX 970 GPU

Doesn’t seem to happen on every recording, but i’d say approximately half. And I have never noticed it on live channels.

#9

There is absolutely no way for ABC or any other station to know whether you are watching live or recording.

Usually this means the network connection between your DVR and HDHR is not as good as the one between the ATV and HDHR. Or it could be that the DVR server isn’t able to keep up, because of resource exhaustion (cpu usage too high, memory running out, disk too slow, etc).

#10

Perhaps you can try the tuner sharing beta in Beta testing next Apple TV release and see if you get similar issues watching live tv once the streams come through the DVR

#12

FYI - My problem has been fixed - the issue was I didn’t have enough resources, I was writing to a network drive that would easily crumble under high bandwidth, since installing a DS716+II (and hence Channels running on the same drive it’s recording to) it runs perfectly smooth. It has gotten glitchy when I tried to copy 200gb of data to the NAS while a show was recording and Video Station was indexing. Can’t blame it for that one…

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#13

I highly discourage anyone from using a remote drive for their DVR. The bandwidth requirements are too high to make it work reliably.

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#14

Tried recording with Plex, both Designated Survivor last night and Grey’s Anatomy tonight. I get the exact same issue, and on no other shows even on ABC.

It is not my network, nor is it interference. That would be much too coincidental. ABC is enforcing the record block bit.

I challenge someone else to record them and see.

#15

I record ABC shows myself, as do other users. There is no “record block bit”, nor is there any way that ABC can know whether you are recording or watching something live. The signal is broadcast from the TV tower in all directions, and anyone who can pick it up can do anything they want with it.

Perhaps you can try recording some daytime soap operas on your ABC channel and see if you encounter the same issue? I’ve heard cases where certain lamps, lightbulbs or other appliances (which you might be using during primetime hours) can cause interference.

#16

It is interference.
I live in a busy neighborhood with tall buildings and am not much more than 1 mile from the broadcast towers. So the signal is loud and bouncing around all over the place. But there is heavy traffic during prime time hours, which can cause multipath interference (the signal interferes with itself from a different direction). Even with signal metering apps like Signal GH, It took me almost 2 months (and 2 antennas) to fully adjust my antenna placement so that I got all of the channels perfectly at all times during the day.

Also, I can record any show on ABC without issue.