Locast buffering issues

for the past week or two, locast pretty often keeps freezing to buffer (but the buffer keeps expanding). eventually, it will start playing again...and if i ffwd, i can skip to live (over the buffer that has just built up), but eventually it'll happen again. this almost never happeened before a week or two ago, and doesn't seem to be an issue on any other source aside from locast. can anyone assist on this? i've asked on the discord but gotten no real help there...

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anyone? this is incredibly frustrating...

Can't compare since I discontinued locast, but what clients?

I have issues with TVE using the DVR web UI player and gave up getting any help with it as "it's not a supported client".

Do you have problems with recordings playing back or just live viewing?
Certain channels or all?
More info would be helpful.

just live viewing, recordings seem fine. seems to happen on all channels (all locast channels, anyway). perfect example is right now, though...trying to watch the olympics on nbc. started on locast and it was literally unwatchable. stopped to buffer every few seconds to every few minutes. switched to the TVE NBC feed and it has been running for about 30 minutes now flawlessly. this mirrors what i've seen when watching baseball games using my mlb.tv container...those run perfectly as well. only locast seems to have this issue.

the two clients i use the most are ts4k and ccgtv.

edit: i just skipped back a bit to watch a replay of something and went back to live, and now the tve feed is doing it too...but not as bad as locast was. it's almost like there's an issue with the client getting ahead of the server somehow...

Hopefully the devs will chime in with some suggestions.

I've had too many issues watching locast/TVE live in the web UI player (my Channels client) that I don't use it much anymore. Also had problems 'chasing live' while watching an in progress recording. I now either record it with Channels or watch live (rarely) on my Cable & OTA TiVo's that buffer the live TV.

Locast was bit-rate starved, too unreliable and after it launched in my area they removed channels, so I cancelled.

I'm using Locast for locals these days and I've not seen any issues. Watched NBC most of the evening.

Most likely depends on the area you're in with Locast and its CDN there.

what market?

the funny thing is that it has been perfect for the most part since i signed up, save for a few "too many streams" issues i had a few months ago that they resolved. i have terrain issues so locals via antenna aren't an option.

after that minor glitch on the tve feed where it stopped to buffer when i caught back up to live, it hasn't happened again since. the locast feed would have been (and was) unwatchable it was buffering so often.

I would suggest watching from their website and if you experience issues there to contact them. They do seem pretty responsive.

Phoenix

watching from the roku locast app, the buffering issues are not present (or at least are greatly reduced to the point where i haven't noticed any yet while having the stream on in the background while i'm getting work done).

this seems to be a channels issue (or at least a locast API issue), IMO. i'm not sure how to proceed on this without the devs weighing in.

Can't do anything with diagnostics and a timestamp of when the issue occured.

i submitted them a while ago (one of the first few times i saw it) and mentioned it on the discord when i did.

certainly willing to submit them again, just tell me which logs you need and i'll send them. shouldn't take long, this is happening over and over any time i try to watch any locast channel.

I looked at those and didn't see anything. It is hard to comb through logs without knowing what time the problem occurred at.

If there was a widespread locast issue, more people would be reporting problems. If there's buffering that usually means the network connection between you and the locast CDN is not good. Usually that happens because of non-standard DNS servers being used, or VPN client on the DVR which is affecting the network path.

i get that, but it doesn't make me feel any better. there's definitely something going on with my particular install that i need to get figured out, because like i said it's basically unwatchable right now. locast is one of the major reasons i have a channels sub, so without it it's more difficult to justify the cost.

no vpn on the dvr, and i have it hardcoded to send all locast.org and locastnet.org requests through google's DNS servers.

Don't use third party DNS. You should be using your ISP DNS so you end up routing to the CDN that's close to your ISP. Instead you're trying to use a CDN that's close to google.

i'll try setting it to use frontier's DNS.

hilariously enough, the roku (which i thought was using the google dns servers as well) is using my smart DNS which is overseas...so if there were a problem, i'd think it would be there and not with google's DNS. odd.

using frontier's dns hasn't helped. just submitted logs, 6:16pm approx pacific time.

and again. submitted more logs, 6:20pm Pacific