I was very excited to see the 1st generation FireTV added to the supported devices, and promptly installed the Channels app. It mostly works great and I love the interface and integration with Channels DVR so far. However, I’ve found that there is some “glitchiness” when watching channels (live or DVR) that are HD quality. Every 10-20 seconds the audio and video glitches (for lack of a better term) which makes it fairly unwatchable. The audio part of the problem is definitely more noticeable. This doesn’t happen with SD channels, not does it happen using the HDhomerun app on the same FireTV/tuner (HDHomeRun DUAL). All devices are connected via Gigabit Ethernet, there is no Wifi at play here. I’m happy to gather any other useful info that might help track down this issue!
Is your HDHR a legacy DUAL, a newer CONNECT or the latest DUO?
Please try watching a channel, then go to the Player Settings tab and click Submit Diagnostics > Player and let me know when you’ve finished doing that.
Also what does your audio path look like? I’m aware of an issue when using bluetooth speakers.
I just sent the player diagnostics. My FireTV goes through a Denon AVR before the TV, set to output Dolby Digital (not Plus) over optical to the AVR.
Also, thanks for the super-fast reply!
I’ve never tested my FTV1 with optical SP/DIF as my Onkyo AVR has enough HDMI ports. When I was using the FTV1 over HDMI I had no glitches with HD channels. HD channels in the UK are h264 whereas most SD channels are mpeg2. I’m sure @tmm1 will figure it out - he always does 
In the US ATSC 1.0, I believe that both HD and SD are an MPEG-2 transport stream with AC3 audio encoding. My experience with other apps (Amazon Prime, Netflix) on the FireTV 1 was that using HDMI for video+audio resulted in only stereo audio getting sent, whereas using HDMI video + optical audio allowed the Dolby Digital surround sound signal to be output. I haven’t reviewed that in years, maybe a software update has changed things.
At the moment the FireTV app only sends out stereo. There’s an update today (v1.0.14) that should help with some of the problems. I’m also working on Dolby audio passthrough.
FTV1 HDMI definitely supports multichannel up to 7.1. My AVR will convert it to 3.1 anyway so I still get sound through the centre speaker. I havent noticed it was only stereo anyway. I haven’t tested an HD mpeg2!sream cos we don’t have them here. I believe the GPU deinterlacing is only on mepg2 channels so I have never had an HD deinterlace stream. Maybe that is a root of the problem but I’m sure @tmm1 has tested HD mpeg2 extensivley as the developers live in the US.
It’s certainly worth you switching over to HDMI audio and see if that makes a difference.
Unfortunately 1.0.14 didn’t help, and I think it made it a bit worse. I sent a couple more diagnostic reports in case it helps.
Per the other suggestion, I did try switching to straight HDMI audio instead of optical and it made no difference.
Are you using FireTV gen1 as well? And a legacy HDHR, or a newer one?
This is a Gen 1 Fire TV plus the old HDHR-DUAL. 
I’m willing to upgrade one or both sides of that if need be, but I thought I’d try using my old stuff first since it looked like it should be working.
Oh looks like you have two different accounts on here. I thought someone else was commenting as well, so I wanted to check if they had the same setup.
I’ve released v1.0.15 today. Can you update to that, and enable the Surround Sound option on the Player Settings tab to see if it makes any difference.
I don’t have a gen1 FTV here (been trying to find one but they’re so rare these days), so I haven’t been able to test extensively on it. It seems to work though in @shepherdr and @maddox’s testing. Can you maybe make a quick video with your phone of the issue so I have a better sense of what it’s doing? The logs don’t really show that much information. You can email it to [email protected]
Crap, sorry I didn’t realize I had 2 different accounts. The Google auto-login made it transparent. I’ll give it a test later this afternoon and get a video for you if it is not behaving better.
If you decide to upgrade the FTV please do not get the FTV3 (the dongle one) - get the FTV2 off eBay. The processor is very poor for the FTV3. The only benefit is HDR and h264 deinterlacing - mpeg2 deinterlacing is done on the GPU in Channels for the FTV2. The downsides of the FTV3 are that you lose the ability to run certain apps - mainly games such as SevZero. You have to buy a USB-ethernet adapter if you have less than AC WiFi. You have no additional storage options (well you can use USBOTG but that’s another story). Also an ironic side effect of the FTV2 only supporting UHD 30fps is that it actually drops to 24fps for movies and shows which is the native framerate anyway for anything I’ve seen shot in UHD. The FTV3 displays 24fps UHD at 60fps.
I am on holiday at the moment so will have a look at the latest versions on my FTVs when I get home tomorrow.
1.0.15 seems a little better with surround sound disabled, but there are still a few minor audio glitches from time to time. I’ll try to grab a video. One thing I noticed with this issue is that every time it hits one of the hiccups, the on-screen-display pops up as if something is re-init’ing or responding to an event.
With surround sound enabled, however, the video freezes up and halts as soon as the buffers fills and the stream starts.
I’m happy to keep testing this on the FireTV 1, but I did break down and order a Shield TV which hopefully will be a far better experience.
I’ve played with the FTV1 for a bit this morning. Played live and recorded h264 HD and mpeg2 SD. Can’t make it misbehave. Works perfectly for me.
I have a ftv1 arriving in the mail today and will be able to run some tests here.
Reproduced video freeze when playing AC3 audio with Surround Sound enabled.
With Surround Sound off, everything seems fine. Haven’t seen any glitches yet, but will keep testing.