DVR - ffwd and rewind lag

Channels Apple TV
#1

I’ve had issues for some time with fast-forwarding and rewinding recorded shows through the Apple TV app. Whenever I use the seek function, the program will will rewind or fast forward by a minute or two, then seems to freeze for several moments before it continues to rewind/ffwd. I also occasionally experience this when pressing the 15sec/30sec skip function in succession but it freezes up less frequently there.

My current setup is:
Apple TV 4 (not 4K) via wired ethernet
HDHomeRun Connect
Dell Optiplex 160 running win7 (DVR service) via wired gigE
Seagate 1TB Barracuda connected via USB 3 enclosure (DVR storage)
All routing/switching is gigE

It’s just frustrating enough that I’ve been trying to troubleshoot it myself for some time. I’ve tried swapping out the DVR hard drive for an SSD, made no difference - nor did upgrading the hard drive enclosure from USB2 to 3.

My suspicion is that the bloated MPEG2 files are a lot for the app to process through and that perhaps compressed MP4s would be more ideal. Would swapping out the HDHR Connect for an Extend give me smoother seek performance with my recordings? Any other ideas?

Many thanks!

#2

The issue is that the ATV4 only has a 100mbps Ethernet port, which severely limits how fast the video data can be downloaded while seeking around

#3

Thanks - so would this mean h264 seeking (from an HDHR Extend) would be smoother?

#4

It might. Try putting the ATV4 on wifi to see if it helps. The WiFi on those models is faster than the 100mbps port. If that helps, you might consider upgrading to the ATV4K which has a gigE port.

#5

@hammsammich When I moved my Apple TV 4 from ethernet to WiFi (802.11 AC), the speed increase of seek times was incredible. I was shocked. I was upset because then I ran all my Apple TVs on wifi because it was so much better, but I traditionally don’t like running things like that on my WiFi, lol. It was worth it though.

Once I picked up a 4K with gigabit ethernet, it was just as fast, and I could keep the Apple TVs off WiFi.

#6

Interesting - I too generally like keeping stuff wired so that wifi doesn’t get congested. I’ll give ATV wifi a shot.
Thanks guys.

#7

Following up here, I tried both AC wireless and converting a show to MP4. Both approaches were much more responsive in seeking, with the edge going to MP4. That said, I think a 4K Apple TV with gigE is the way to go for me.

Thanks again for your help.

#8

I have a 4K ATV on Gig Ethernet, and up until about 3 weeks ago, I had very responsive seeks from the DVR. (I suspect that is when the ATV updated to tvOS 11.3)
I was exeprimenting with MCEbuudy to convert the recordings to MP4 to increase the responsiveness of seeking fw or rw based on above suggestion.
I found that even when I pasted the mp4 file into the directory the MPEG2 file came out of, the recording fails to play on the ATV. Is there something that needs updated/refreshed in the database after converting original recording and replacing with the newer smaller file?

#9

I have seen slow response on the commercial skip. A significant delay or lag before the program starts playing after a skip. My setup is similar to the post above. I will try Wi-Fi. The idea of upgrading to ATV4K seems like it would improve the speed, however, I have been using an ATV4 with this service for ~15 months, and it is only in the past month or weeks I have experienced this. Is there anything else (tvos upgrade?) that could have impacted the performance?

#10

@themapletonmasons I couldn’t guess why you’re suddenly getting lag on MPEG2 over ATV 4K, though that is disconcerting. When I tested MP4, I used Handbrake for the conversion (h264, AAC audio - ATV presets will do it). I didn’t do any database changes, I simply renamed the mp4 file to exactly what the mpeg2 file’s name was, including the mpg extension.

1 Like
#11

@Phillip
My personal belief is the tvos 11.3 update. It seems to line up with the timing of it, I as well have been using channels/plex for a year, and this is recent. When I first updated to the ATV 4k, I didn’t notice any fwd/rev lag unless i moved like 5 or 6 mins down time line. If comskip hadn’t marked the commericals. I could fwd 30 seconds per click several times without any pause. I would start with 4 clicks (2 mins) and see what was on then click a few more times without any lag.

Of course tvos 11.2 is no longer signed by apple so we can’t downgrade to it for testing.

I did try plex, and it is lagging as well. It must have something to do with 11.3 , didn’t apple add HDR support with this rollout?

#12

@hammsammich
I’ll try renaming the mp4 file back to mpg and try that.
I never thought of that simple of an approach. I figured channels would recognize a new video and redownload meta info from the filename.

My belief is if the file is smaller, it should either stream with a lower bitrate, or transefer a larger portion of the file to buffer, enabling faster fwd/rev.
Was that your experience?

#13

@hammsammich
did you use custom renaming feature?
or simply just rename the files by hand ?
I was looking at the custom renaming feature and was not sure what the 5 digit number following the air date in the file name was

#14

Just to clarify, I have ATV4, not ATV4K. I tested by unhooking wired LAN and connecting via WiFi, and the lag on FFwD disappeared. This is a workable solution, but again odd as this has been working via wired LAN without lag for over a year.

#15

@themapletonmasons I didn’t use any feature to rename, I did it manually. I just copied the exact full name of the original mpeg2 file (including .mpg) and applied that to my h264 file, then replaced the mpeg2 file with the h264 version. It was good enough for testing - proving a lightweight mp4 will seek much more responsively than a bloated mpeg2.

#16

@Phillip Yeah this was the suggestion Maddox made since AC wifi has a lot more bandwidth than 100baseTX. Testing over wifi myself, I found it worked quite a bit better. I couldn’t guess why your wired connection worked well earlier as I never had a totally smooth experience with that setup.