Are you able to reproduce your issues consistently?
For me it tends to be more intermittent, where it goes away and comes back. Sometimes backing out of the player and reconnecting to the channel helps for brief moments.
I would say that while it does still happen with TVE channels, it is less frequent in comparison to the Custom Channels source.
I'm going to try to reinstall Channels like tmm1 suggested.
I'm able to reproduce my issues consistently when I'm remote to the server, ie slow connection. But it doesn't affect everything that I watch on channels, only specific things, like NFL on fox watching an in progress recording.
Makes sense. My issues have only been with home streaming, also while watching an in progress recording of NFL on Fox last weekend lol.
I was able to reinstall the AppleTV apps, but I won't know for sure if that resolves it until Sunday. If not, I will also try turning off Adaptive Bitrate feature.
When the player hangs I can always back out and start again. I have submitted diagnostics multiple times. Last was Monday or Sunday. I emailed [email protected] around that time too.
I'm not sure how you link those to specific problems so let me know if you need the mac address or serial number.
Thanks. I found a log where the adaptive change happened and I see that the player stalled. We will work on a fix for this.
If you can submit another diagnostics for the issue related to recording still in-progress, I would like to see if that's the same problem.
Just wanted to update, the apple TV seemed to work fine over the weekend, only a couple of stuttering but no hangs. The stuttering may have been network related. I'm not sure if anything was updated on the channels side other than the server update to 2021.10.09.1640.
Cheers
I just submitted diagnostics again, the apple TV hangs when the adaptive transcoding changes streams.
Finally found some time to look into this again. I did the speedtest from my iPhone while Channels was running on my Apple TV 4k (wireless, running tvOS 15). The speedtest showed Download=33.84, Latency=42.00 and Jitter=97.16. I'm guessing those numbers aren't good.
Just for kicks, I ran the speedtest from my desktop which is wired and got Download=72.79, Latency=8.51, Jitter =10.26.
But even when I try to watch in-progress recordings on my desktop using the built-in player, I get the same stuttering and buffering. If I'm watching a football game, I might be able to hit FF between 2 or 3 plays, but then the next time I hit it it buffers for 20-30 seconds. And then when it will start stuttering when I try to play it back, such that I have to hit pause and let it build up some cache so I can play it without stuttering.
So while I may have some networking issues, I also think I need to tweak the settings on the Channels software as well, since it doesn't work great just playing it right on my desktop that is hardwired to the Synology DS218+ where the ChannelsDVR is running.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Another data point:
As I was doing the speedtests I posted about above, I had a college football game paused. When I went back to it (watching on my desktop PC), it had built up enough of a cache that the playback was flawless for quite a while. But eventually I caught up to the cache and then was having stuttering and buffering issues again. However, by that point I realized the recording had finished, so I stopped the playback via the Channels website, located the file on my NAS and started playing it with VLC and it worked flawlessly, no stuttering or buffering, able to move around anywhere in the the recording with no issues.
Not sure if that helps with determining where the issue is.
This is also not good for a wired connection, even if itās only 100mbit. The throughput is low, and the latency and jitter are much more than expected on a local Ethernet link. Something odd is definitely going on.
I'm not sure if I did that speed test correctly. I used the IP I got from my AppleTV even though this test should just be about the speed for my desktop, but I couldn't find instructions for doing a network speed test of the desktop.
If you accessed the /speedtest endpoint using the Apple TV's IP address, then the test was between the Apple TV and the DVR server.
Which is why I said I don't think I did it correctly. If you can explain to me how to do the speedtest on my desktop PC to figure out the network speed between my NAS and my PC, that would be great, because I'm getting stuttering and buffering just picking a recorded show to watch from the ChannelsDVR software. Yet picking the same recording and playing it with VLC works great. So what settings do I need to change on Channels to reduce the buffering and stuttering?
From your PC, navigate to http://X.X.X.X:8089/speedtest, where āX.X.X.Xā is the device running the DVR serverāin this situation, Iām assuming thatās your NASāand that will check the quality between those two devices.
Also remember that if you are using a web browser on your PC to check the recordings, everything is likely being transcoded, which could add additional issues. You may want to see what is listed under Settings > Web Player > Server Quality on your DVR to see what your server is trying to transcode to while viewing in your PC. Also, actual log entries would help, too.
(After skimming the thread from start to finish, it looks like you might also have some bad networking in your setup. Perhaps you can also share your network topology?)