"failed to download..." errors

Channels Fire TV
#1

Currently traveling outside of the country. I'm in a hotel with a very decent connection and I'm trying to connect and watch HD MSNBC. A few times over my visit, I'll just get a black screen in the middle of watching a live stream and bold text declaring it "failed to download..." and a long URL. Then I have to go back and reselect the channel. I'm using XFINITY streaming via HDHomeRun.

Any way I can improve this?

From the logs:

2022/09/21 21:36:40.650380 [TNR] Opened connection to 132791FD/0 for ch661 MNBCHD
2022/09/21 21:36:40.650974 [HLS] Starting live stream for channel 661 from xx.xx.xx.xx (bitrate=0)
2022/09/21 21:36:41.906528 [HLS] Probed live stream in 1.25545339s: h264 1280x720 progressive 1300836bps
2022/09/21 21:36:46.330743 [HLS] Session ch661-d132791FD-5b98c16a0bdd started in 6.223638159s
2022/09/21 21:41:43.209116 [HLS] Stopping transcoder session ch661-d132791FD-5b98c16a0bdd (out: 5m4.063422s, finished: false)
2022/09/21 21:41:43.210604 [TNR] Closed connection to 132791FD/0 for ch661 MNBCHD
2022/09/21 21:41:43.213024 [SNR] Statistics for ch661 MNBCHD: ss=98%-99% snq=100% seq=100% bps=3752748,613632-3917920 pps=321,52-336
2022/09/21 21:41:43.213042 [SNR] Buffer statistics for ch661 MNBCHD: buf=0% drop=0%
#2

Please go to Settings -> Support -> Submit Diagnostic Logs from your device and let us know when it's been submitted so we can have a better idea of what was going on.

#3

done

#4

Please do that process from the app after you experience the issue again.

#5

Well that's egg on my face -- I missed the nuance of "device" -- will do.

#6

done the right way now from the app.

#7

Any luck with the logs?

#8

What was the error that you saw right before you submitted the logs?

#9

Picture froze then Screen went black, just text that said failed to play with a url to a stream. Giant white text on black background. Fire stick.

#10

And that happened right before you submitted the logs? I’m not seeing that…

#11

Yes. I got the error, hit the back button to get to the settings screen, and submitted the logs from the fire stick. Happened often on this trip (from a hotel in Costa Rica) on multiple channels, with both the current and beta apps. I was not able to try from my iPad to see if it was firestick specific. When I’m back there I will try again.

#12

I apologize about this. I was looking for diagnostic log messages we have in the iOS apps that weren't in the Android app. I have just released a new beta build of the Android app that has the log messages I need. Could you upgrade to the lates Android beta and then report diagnostics again the next time you have this happen? I'm sorry for the confusion here.

#13

Hello @eric. I'm experiencing the exact problem as described here. I recently replaced my ethernet-wired FTV gen 2 boxes (which worked reasonably flawlessly) with 4k wireless Max sticks. It seems that the latest sticks (running FireTV 9 API/28) reset their wireless connection exactly every 12 hours, regardless of what the device is doing. Of course, this results in the stream terminating, with no errors on the server side.

I've observed this via my Ubiquiti UniFi admin panel. Here are the historical connection stats of the FTV Max stick, as seen by the AP:

|Date/Time|Duration|Down|Up|
|Dec 07 2022 8:08 pm|11h 59m 35s|13.4 GB|310 MB|
|Dec 07 2022 8:08 am|11h 59m 10s|2.79 GB|98.3 MB|
|Dec 06 2022 8:08 pm|11h 59m 58s|13.4 GB|330 MB|
|Dec 06 2022 8:08 am|11h 59m 45s|83.9 MB|34.4 MB|
|Dec 05 2022 8:08 pm|11h 59m 49s|11.6 GB|300 MB|

An older FTV stick I have (running FireTV 5.1.1 API/22) does not experience the same connection resets, and stays connected for weeks/months:

|Date/Time|Duration|Down|Up|
|Nov 27 2022 12:03 pm|3h 23m 8s|5.91 GB|91.5 MB|
|Nov 14 2022 5:43 pm|12d 18h 1m 43s|82.8 MB|33.2 MB|
|Oct 25 2022 7:22 pm|11d 4h 35m 29s|335 MB|95.7 MB|
|Sep 18 2022 11:38 am|21d 34m 46s|613 MB|186 MB|

Clearly the reset issue is a Fire TV Stick problem and is outside of the scope of the Channels app, but perhaps some sort of reconnection scheme could be implemented to avoid the hard termination.

HTH!

2 Likes
#14

To add to my above observation -- the stream termination only occurs on a live stream. Recordings play just fine during the wireless connection reset.

Also (this may have been coincidental), I noticed once that the Channels app crashed and the Fire TV rebooted when the wireless reset occurred while a recording was paused.

#15

Quick follow-up... The latest version of the Fire TV app (4.6.2) adds a direct/streaming option to live TV channel playback (buffering the stream on the server vs. the client). Setting this option to 'Stream' fixes the above issue when the Fire TV Max refreshes its WiFi connection.

I was sort-of expecting this, as recordings (as previously noted) were immune to this problem.

#16

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