Glitchy live video

Channels Fire TV
#1

Last night while watching a local channel live (I have an HDHR Quattro), and again while watching a different channel live this morning, the playback was glitchy. By that I mean I would get some pixilation and some short duration pauses a couple of times a minute. I could improve things by jumping back 30 seconds to build up a buffer, but I noticed dropouts (as if a split second of the content was removed).

Just trying to figure out if the problem is with the Quattro's reception, or with the connectivity from the Fire Stick to the DVR. Here's the relevant section of the DVR log from this morning:

2020/03/26 06:59:39.511642 [TNR] Opened connection to 10769449/0 for ch3.1 WCAX-HD [transcode=none]
2020/03/26 07:28:22.555484 [SNR] Statistics for ch3.1 WCAX-HD: ss=92%,90%-92% snq=100% seq=100% bps=6822144,5823488-12525312 pps=648,553-1190
2020/03/26 07:28:22.563449 [TNR] Closed connection to 10769449/0 for ch3.1 WCAX-HD

Is there anything to be gleaned from this?

Choppy Fire Stick 4k
#2

I ran a speed test from Fire Stick to DVR and measured ~250Mbps

Surround sound is turned off
I tried setting the decoder from hardware to software and no improvement
I tried turning tuner sharing on and off and no improvement (with tuner sharing off, the effect seems worse than with it on)
If I play back previously recorded OTA content, it is clean.

When I watch the same channel live from a browser window on a different device (1080p@10Mbps, transcoder just manages 1x) playback is clean.

FYI - I just now submitted diagnostics.

#3

So I tried a few other things...

Did a force stop and clear cache of the Channels app, then re-launched the Channels app. No improvement.

Did a force stop and clear cache of the Channels app, restarted the Fire Stick, then re-launched the Channels app. Finally, problem fixed!

3 Likes
#4

How did you force stop and clear the cache?

#5

From the main FireTV Home: Settings > Applications > Manage Applications > Channels DVR

From there, select Force stop, then select Clear cache

(I believe those are the menu/selection titles ... I'm operating from memory here ...)

#6

Thank you