No. It uses HLS but not transcoding. The effect is a server-side buffer.
We fixed an issue that was causing it not to work in the latest beta.
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Yes, I saw that fix posted.
Still not sure of other unintended consequences.
Just another question if I may:
With this setting I think Now ALL active clients will be recording all the time to the Server.
If five people in the house are using Channels all 5 will be recording to the Server.
I think I read that "Recording" is either CPU or IO Processor intensive.
So the laptop and/or my external WD drive will be working hard.
Is that all correct ??
Thanks for a great product and your responses.
If all are watching Channel 5 they will share the stream.
I tested this HLS but the time bar pops up periodically... very annoying.
Plus this does not work on my Samsung ULTRA 21 so it is not a viable solution.
No, the server is not recording, only buffering to disk temporarily.
Recording is not CPU intensive, but does require IO.
The laptop will not be working hard, but it will require about 2MB/sec of data transfer per viewer. Most drives will be able to handle 20-30MB/sec or so without issue, so you should be fine.
Can you submit diagnostics from one of the app after this has happened for a bit so we can see what's going on?
I'm not seeing it anymore maybe I was seeing things .... BTW it works on my Samsung s21 Ultra just had to update to latest beta.
I did some monitoring so you are right when watching the same channels each client started an instance of FFMPEG to remux the stream even though it shared the tuner it did not share the stream ... so using HLS will tax your HD to an extent.... also CPU. the 2.4% is cpu being used. My Server is an I7 with 32 gig ram.
So I am testing HLS. It seems to be working as expected. The buffer is limited to 60 min for each channel being served. It is a couple of seconds slower at starting a channel, but otherwise it is fairly responsive when moving around the buffered area. I think this might work great for clients that have limited memory. My server did not have any problems with serving two streams and looked like it could do several more.
I am having one major glitch after playing a channel for more than 2 hours. When I stop the channel, the client crashes and I have to wait a few minutes for it to recover. Doesn't seem to happen at all on shorter buffer times. I have tested this on a Google TV Chromecast and a Firestick 4k Max.
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I just added more storage to my FireTV 4K max .. and since I have 3 connects I turned off tuner sharing on all clients and everything is humming along. I can see a problem when using HLS if you do a lot of recording and have multiple users like I have. I was just testing HLS but did not find it an efficient alternative.
Thanks to all for replies.
I think I will stick to simply Recording if I think I may need to Pause/Rew for more than the 15 min or so I get on my Onn streaming boxes.
So easy !!!
But that HLS option is still interesting as another solution.
This is very surprising. Could you Submit Diagnostics from the app the next time this happens?
Diagnostics submitted. After playing a channel for about one hour, I stopped the player. It stayed on the last video screen for about 30 sec and then it crashed but automatically restarted. I couldn't get any channel to start playing again for about 3 minutes.
@Michael_Birk I was unable to get anything useful from the diagnostics so I have just created a new beta build that should help out here.
Could you install the new Android Beta, then replicate this issue and then Submit Diagnostics again? Hopefully we'll get to the bottom of it.
Thanks! I think this will solve some issues for me with my Fire TV setup. When I watch live events (usually sports) I sometimes either start watching late and attempt to "catch up" via skipping commercials/time outs/dead time, or I will need to pause during the event to attend to something else, and come back later to catch up.
With the tiny buffer on Fire Sticks, this just doesn't work and I end up missing several minutes of the event. A larger buffer may be just the solution I need.
I works pretty well, aside from having to re-format the Thumb Drives once to twice a week.
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I added additional storage to my FireStick 4K max using a 124 gig Flash Drive and it works great ... one thing I did notice if I use one of those NIC usb hubs ... I got some pauses ... because the NIC and Storage use the same usb port. So what I did was use just an OTG Cable for the Flash Drive and use wireless to connect o my DVR server.
I'm wondering if you meant 128gig. Also, curious how you got the FireStick to format a drive bigger than 32 gigs.
Yeah 128 gig but it only shows 121 usable ... I just inserted the usb Flash rebooted the FireStick 4K max and formatted internal storage ...
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Yep, this is why I suggested that there should be some kind of compatability matrix type information here on the forum that details what does / doesn't work with all the various Android devices. I got laughed at though. The Shield works great, the MiBoxes didn't work. Of course, I had no way to know that until. I found that the Tivo 4k Streamer actually worked far better than the MiBoxes.
And then you see posts like this where people are expecting all functionality to work with low end devices and that's just not how it works.
Interesting, my FireStick 4K Max tells me to go blow if I put anything over 32 gig in it. Last time I tried was like 3 weeks ago, maybe there was an update that allows it now.