Constant buffering on Fox News channel

@jpblanch75 We need to do a reset. Are the issues you are having on all devices or just on your Sony TV? If it’s only on your Sony TV, it’s unlikely that other people are having the same issue you are.

Right now, I would like to understand from the rest of the community if there is a wide-spread issue with multiple people having the same issue with certain TVE channels.

If it’s true that these transcoder streaming issues are only with your Sony TV, it’s becoming clear that there are some fundamental bugs in the IO layer of the Sony TV that we do not see on any other devices that is impacting all of the ways that we locally cache content during playback. This would explain why you are seeing these hangs and there really isn’t anything that I can think of that we can do about it.

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@eric Without the transcoder involved @mhartman and I seem to have the same exact problem with buffering which watching TVE. We also seem to have the same OTA issues that he linked to in this thread.
I also have the same issues with the FireTV in regards to the OTA linked in this thread and buffering while watching TVE.

The transcoder issue could be just with my Sony Android TV.

So to repeat.... I experience the SAME problems with both the FireTV and my Android TV while using the original stream.

Transcoding, I only have a problem with the Sony Android TV.

@eric I see this error transcoding with the Sony Android TV:

2020/03/30 23:22:05.002785 [HLS] ffmpeg: ch13.1-dANY-ip192.168.5.10-1-h264-aac-8000-256-720-6-40--linear-false-false-0.01: [hls @ 0x2f378c4c00] Timestamps are unset in a packet for stream 0. This is deprecated and will stop working in the future. Fix your code to set the timestamps properly

Is that not a problem?

No, it’s not an error and not a problem.

So that's it.... "sorry can't help you?" I'm outta luck?

Yes, it appears there are fundamental issues with the Sony TV that causes normal IO operations to hang. There’s not a lot we can do about that and it’s not a platform that has a lot of users so it doesn’t make sense for us to purchase one in the hopes of finding a workaround for whatever the problem is.

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Just great, so it doesn't matter that this h=is happening on the FireTV 4k stick either? As i said it happens on both.

I have the transcoder going right now and it just buffered 2.5 minutes into the time bar.

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It's not a SONY thing! It's an ANDROID thing! It happens with the transcoder on, off, FireTV, Android TV . Sound like a CHANNELS problem to me.

@mhartman It looks from your logs that the hardware decoder may have locked up. Could you switch to software decoding in the app to see if that makes a difference?

Now its happening on my Apple TV 4k as well. I have the transcoder set to 8 mbps like you asked just like the FireTV. hmmmm... must be a Sony problem because its connected to my Sony TV. Oh and it happens without transcoding.

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This sounds just like the issue i had with many tve stations giving a 403 no permissions error error during commercials. it would lock up or just buffer and the bar came up.

but it was resolved in sever update shortly after not to long ago.

i have been playing Fox News for 20 minutes now and, only sometimes when there is commercials, is there a slight buffer happen when i changes/loads new commercial. that happens on many TVE stations though.

i have a 2019 Shield Pro (using Hardware decoder) and the 2019 Tube TV model (set to Hybrid decoder) Quality is set to original.

It is random usually once an hour. I use to get the same commercial issues you did.

@eric just to clarify, would you like me to test using the software decoder with 8Mbps or using the software software decoder with the default Streaming Quality? When the issue happened yesterday it was set to the default Streaming Quality so just trying avoid making too many changes at once.

Played for 4hrs.....only time it has any sort of buffering for me was very short, ~2 secs here and there during commercial breaks.

Maybe it a regional issue that only affect certain users in certain areas?
That type issue has happen before.
Sorry, but i can't seem to re-produce this so, can't help.

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@eric been streaming FNC for an hour using 8 Mbps and the software decoder without any issues.

I gather from reading this thread- Stream error during commercial break TVE that this is a regional issue caused by insertion of commercials; is that correct? How can we continue to help you test? I also don't experience the issue on my Apple TV so is this isolated to the Shield/Android video player?

Mine on my shield, happens during the live broadcast, not during commercial breaks.

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Sometimes I get 2 hours before it happens. I just had it happen on Fox News about 15 minutes ago.

I think that's a good data point @jpblanch75. My stream has been going uninterrupted since I started around 10:30am this morning.

I agree, that tells me that it isn't the stream itself.

Just because the issue is intermittent does not necessarily mean the problem isn't the stream. It could just as easily be the stream, and the problems with it are only occasionally introduced by the networks' composition of the stream between the content and various ad inserts.

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It has nothing to do with the ads.... tmm1 already fixed that. The fact that I had a problem when mhartman didn't is the reason why I said it's not the stream itself unless we are pulling from a different source.