Live OTA freezes

I see this in a few threads here, but can't quite figure out what to check next. I've got Channels on a 2nd gen FireTV, wired to my netgear router. I've got HDHR Quattro tuner also wired to this router. The DVR is on a PC, also wired. When I try to watch live, after 3-8 minutes, the stream freezes. I have to exit to the guide and select the channel again. If something is recording from the same channel, it records and plays back fine. I can also watch the stream fine on the HDHR app and in the Channels web viewer on the PC. I tried tuner sharing on and off, no change.

I have a Pihole on the network, but it is disabled for this test.

Below is from the HDHR log. You can see my most recent tests. 18:17 is with tuner sharing on. The DVR PC is 192.168.1.24. Then at 18:21, I try again with tuner sharing turned off. The FireTV is at 192.168.1.7. The 3rd trial at 18:51 is from the channels web interface on the PC which hosts the DVR.

20220205-18:17:41 Tuner: tuner0 tuning 4.1 WTMJ (8vsb:581MHz-1)
20220205-18:17:41 Tuner: tuner0 streaming http to 192.168.1.24:57109
20220205-18:20:38 Tuner: tuner0 http stream ended (remote closed)
20220205-18:21:15 Tuner: tuner0 tuning 4.1 WTMJ (8vsb:581MHz-1)
20220205-18:21:15 Tuner: tuner0 streaming http to 192.168.1.7:47105
20220205-18:26:09 Tuner: tuner0 http stream ended (remote closed)
20220205-18:51:00 Tuner: tuner0 tuning 4.1 WTMJ (8vsb:581MHz-1)
20220205-18:51:00 Tuner: tuner0 streaming http to 192.168.1.24:57854

Here's the relavant log lines from the DVR:
2022/02/05 09:53:16.031167 [DBG] Scheduling wake timer for scheduled recording in 7h35m13.9688323s
2022/02/05 12:17:40.700323 [TNR] Opened connection to 10734E8D/0 for ch4.1 WTMJ
2022/02/05 12:20:37.062246 [SNR] Statistics for ch4.1 WTMJ: ss=97%-99% snq=100% seq=98%,0%-100% bps=9193131,0-13296864 pps=787,0-1139
2022/02/05 12:20:37.064926 [TNR] Closed connection to 10734E8D/0 for ch4.1 WTMJ
2022/02/05 12:50:59.879792 [TNR] Opened connection to 10734E8D/0 for ch4.1 WTMJ
2022/02/05 12:50:59.890216 [HLS] Starting transcoder for channel 4.1 from 192.168.1.24 (encoder=remux, resolution=, deinterlacer=, bitrate=0)
2022/02/05 12:51:00.361668 [HLS] Probed live stream in 470.9071ms: mpeg2video 1920x1080 tt 2984323bps
2022/02/05 12:51:01.966464 [HLS] Session ch4.1-dANY-ip192.168.1.24 started in 2.5719798s
2022/02/05 12:51:01.981932 [ENC] Starting encoder for ch4.1 in E:\DVR\Streaming\ch4.1-dANY-ip192.168.1.24-2937819911\encoder-1-2104552045 at 1 (0.782067) (encoder=h264_nvenc, resolution=1080, deinterlacer=blend, bitrate=10000 segment_size=0.01)

I have a logcat from the fireTV, but it's 12k lines, I don't want to post that here...

Thoughts?

What version of Channels app?

Install the beta and submit diagnostics from the app when it happens

Now Version 2022.02.05.0538

Diag submitted: 16e4f1f3-93d3-4965-a319-52a61a67844b

Need client beta and client diagnostics

In the app under Settings > Support

Beta now updated to 202.4.2310. watched live, froze up, then I submitted diagnostic

Your device may be running out of disk space. Seems android deletes the tv buffer while it's being used

I've seen very intermittent cases where my server logs no data for x seconds while recording from my HD Homerun. There is nothing in the HD Homerun log. I've been blaming the cable feed as my network is solid. Recording all of the Olympics is stressing testing my system and I've seen this happen once since they started on Wednesday. The error showed on 2 recordings running simultaneously.

Are your HDHR and dvr plugged into the same physical switch?

DVR runs as a Windows 10 VM and the host is on the same switch as the HDHR. Lots of free Bandwidth as the server has a 10-GbE connection. There was very little activity on the VM host at the time of the data loss.

Does seem like a cable issue then. You could check the tuner status on the HDHR web page for signal strength/quality numbers

Modulation Lock qam256
PCR Lock locked
Signal Strength 100% (5.9 dBmV)
Signal Quality 100% (37.4 dB)
Symbol Quality 100%

I think they simply stopped transmitting data. Probably an upstream issue. I feel it's simply something happening in the FIOS data network.

I figured I'd chime in as the OP may be seeing something similar.

Seems android deletes the tv buffer while it's being used

Oh, how nice of Android to manage that for me. I'll try to delete some stuff, but there's not much on it already. It may be time for an upgrade to firestick 4k.

So that would even be an issue with tuner sharing turned on? Does it make sense that recorded tv would playback just fine? Sorry if these are dumb questions, just trying to better understand what's going on under the hood.

Tuner sharing wouldn't make a difference. The local buffer is still on the device.

How much free space does the device show, and how much is shown as used by Channels?

Maybe we can set a lower threshold to prevent this from happening. It seems to only affect older FireOS

I think that was the ticket. I added an SD card and moved a bunch of apps over to that. Before I moved them, there was ~500mb of space left of the 8G of internal memory. After I moved everything, I got to 1.5G of free space. At that point, the live TV issues disappeared.

Sorry, I never got the number of how much space channels was using. I'd look now, but the wife acceptance factor will go down if I interrupt the news.

I am seeing this on my Apple TV. OTA programs will randomly freeze for a second, the timeline bar pops up and then the program resumes. ATV is on ethernet, has plenty of memory available for caching. So far I have cleared the cache in Channels, force quit all other running apps, restarted the ATV but the problem persists. I am not using tuner sharing. I have seen this behavior on the last several beta versions of the app. Its not constant, maybe once an hour.

Just sent the diagnostics from the ATV. Hopefully captured the freeze that happened this morning.

Just froze again and I sent a fresh diagnostic.

Your signal quality is fluctuating

2022-02-10 09:12:35.608 [u=478.1MB f=1619.9MB] streamstats: strength=100% quality=77% symbol=100% rate=0b/sec

2022-02-10 09:12:41.221 [u=477.8MB f=1620.2MB] streamstats: strength=100% quality=22% symbol=0% rate=0b/sec recentsigbad=23%

interesting because when I look using Signal GH at those times my levels are stable with the quality around 87%

Maybe interference, an LTE filter may help. It definitely drops suddenly to 0% symbol and really low quality

I don't know if you're using a preamp or similar, but you may consider removing it if you are. (Or if you're close to the towers, maybe add a splitter/attenuator.) The HDHR tuners are quite susceptible to over-powering; unfortunately they only report 100% signal strength, even if it's over-powered and higher than that.

Of course, this could have nothing to do with your situation, but it is something that you may want to keep in mind when fine-tuning your HDHR tuners/antennas.