Live hdhomerun legacy channel viewing stutters unless paused

Channels DVR Server Troubleshooting
#1

I've got my HDHomeRun Legacy on the same 10 Gigi switch as both my 4k firestick and channels DVR running on snology DS218+. And all is working great except that there seems to be a buffering problem when watching a live channel. It will stutter and momentarily flash the progress bar then run fine for a minute (sometimes less/more) and repeat.

At first I assumed it was because my firestick was using wifi for streaming but it only slightly improved after I bought and installed the ethernet adaptor for it.

I noticed that if I pause the live viewing for say minute or so, most of the stuttering goes away. Seems like there might not be enough buffering in the channels app on the firestick. It gets annoying real fast and sucks when I like to change channels. Also seems like some channels are worse than others but they never stutter when watching them live directly from the HDhomeRun viewer on my Ubuntu PC. Hence why I think this is a buffering issue on the channels viewer running on the firestick.

#2

What do you have for your Quality setting? Do you have Tuner Sharing enabled?

Could you submit a diagnostic log after you've experienced this?

#3

Quality setting on what app? I don't see a Quality setting in the channels player app on my firestick? Is there a setting in the channels DVR app running on my DS218+?

What app has the Tuner Sharing setting?

I sent a diagnostic log the day I submitted this topic, maybe within hour. I'll send another right after sending this reply.

What is really strange, the other firestick I have using wifi stutters much less frequent... Could the actual OTA channel signal be dropping out... or maybe a bad firestick (refurbished)... problem is I don't see the dropouts when watching directly from Ubuntu/HDHomeRun app...

Thanks for the help

#4

On the fire stick in the Channels app under Settings > DVR > Home Streaming Quality set it to Original

#6

Its already set to "Original"

Speed test reported:
Download: 89.36 Mbits/sec
Latency: 1.56 ms
Jitter: 0.30 ms

Tuner sharing: off

I have to say your channels-app is very responsive running on firestick... much better than Hulu... My wife can't stand the stutter so like to figure out what the issue is... then you have a long term customer and be recommending to others... tech support is awesome!

Also notice some pixelation of the video stream when it stutters... I also lose audio during the stutter.

#7

Ran HDHomeRun again from Ubuntu PC and watching for much longer does finally show also stutters... just much less frequent...

From the HDHomeRun app:
The sign strength stays 100% but Signal Qaulity waivers up and down.. 100 to 77%
Symbol Quality stays 100%. Would a new better antenna fix this?

#8

After looking online for this type of issue with existing HDhomerun owners... seems more like my existing antenna feed is saturating the tuner with too high signal strength... using a weaker antenna where the signal-strength now down to 98% seems reduce the stuttering. Noticed the other tuner has almost no stutter with SS at constant 99% and SQ stays in the upper 94. Again the SS and SQ values are as reported from the HDHOMERUN config app that I installed on my Ubuntu. There is also a Symbol Quality % value but it stays at 100% for both tuners.

Is there a way to configure Channels DVR to use tuner-1 over tuner-0? Does Channels DVR able to detect both tuners are available and use both at the same time for example when one is recording show on channel 4 and me watching live on channel 11? I wish it would say how many tuners it sees available (even better which one its using for the active stream)? What does the Tuner-Sharing setting do/purpose?

#9

When the DVR tunes a channel, it will indicate which tuner it is using. Look for the [TNR] line in the logs; it will indicate the device and tuner used, such as A1B2C3D4/0 would be tuner 0 (the first tuner) on a device with ID A1B2C3D4.

By default each client opens its own direct connection to the tuners for streaming live TV. With tuner sharing enabled on the client, connections are instead initiated by the DVR server, and then streamed to the client from the server. It's an extra hop in delivering a stream to a client, but if multiple clients are requesting that channel, or a client is requesting that channel and the DVR is recording it, too, then only a single stream is ever used for each channel desired.