New User Problems

Channels DVR Server
#1

Hi - I have been trying Channels DVR this weekend after using SageTV for many years. It looks very promising. I have an HDHR-Quatro and HDHR-Prime plus TVEverywhere setup with Channels and everything has been running mostly great except for two things:

(1) TV playback sometimes gets frequent pauses while watching either of the HDHR sources (it's not my network or settings) - I can tell you that my SageTV DVR running on a very similar PC does not have this issue with the tuners, same network, same switches - this does NOT happen with TVE channels

(2) I cannot get any ripped movies or TV shows to show up in my library - previously this was working, but I changed Channels to run as a service, then I deleted the folders from the Channels DVR library setup, I re-organized some files (re-named) and added the folders back - now I can't get anything to show up - not sure if it has something to do with running as a service or something else - the library folders for movies and tv are on a network share

Some background: I work as an engineer at a company making networking equipment (33 years experience) and have been a heavy user of cablecard and OTA tuners for over 10 years, mostly with SageTV and WMC with Ceton, Hauppauge and HDHR equipment.

Any thoughts on either of these issues?

#2

What device and platform for playback?

#3

This is kind of scary. You really should not mess around with the Channels DVR data folder.

Also, you don't say what sort of "network share" the data folder is on. When Channels is running as a service it runs under the "Local System" built-in account. This account may not have access to the network share. (I may be making a rash assumption that this is all on Windows.)

#4

Thanks to both for the quick replies -

My playback devices are Nvidia Shield or FireTV 4K (new version) - both are using wired gigabit ethernet

jtanderson - I think you are correct (yes it's Windows 10) - my network shares are not going to be accessible under the local system account - I will have to change some settings in the services to run as a different user to get to the shares (the files are actually on my other DVR server for SageTV) - thanks for pointing that out (btw - I only modified the library movies and tv folder, not the DVR data folder)
Update: that was it - changed service credentials and now movies and tv are back - thanks

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#5

For the playback issues it could be worth checking these settings on your windows PC:

#6

Please click Settings > Support > Submit Diagnostics > Video Player from the app after experiencing the playback issue.

#7

If you have an Intel Ethernet controller I would also suggest you turn-off the "Energy Efficient Ethernet" option.

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#8

I had to update the Realtek driver to get access to all of the Advanced Property items (like above); I have turned off Flow Control and Energy Efficient Ethernet as suggested - I have adjusted these items before for my other DVR PCs, but the Channels DVR Server PC is a re-purposed desktop PC and has not been "network optimized" - for my other DVRs, I had Energy Efficient Ethernet and Flow Control both enabled, but we'll see what happens here...

BTW, for some reason, after I changed credentials for running the Channels DVR Service, the "glitching"* has seemingly decreased significantly, not sure why, but now I have that, new NIC driver and a couple of new settings - we'll see what happens - thanks!

  • when Channels DVR experiences a "glitch", the time bar pops up for a second, then goes away
#9

Update: it appears that if I pause the playback of live TV for a couple of seconds, then resume, then the "glitches" now go away - so it may be that the live TV playback buffer size is a bit small for my situation - is there any way to increase the size?

#10

live tv buffer is stored on the client device.
So, if you can extend your internal storage of your client device, via usb stick or sd card, that can help.

Some devices, you can't expand the storage.

#11

Inconsistent network speed could also cause this (although I readily admit a larger buffer would compensate, that also adds delay for the start of playback, which is likely why Channels’ doesn’t have a large buffer historically.

I’m not sure if the android clients have the details info option so that you can overlay statistics on the screen, but if so you could at least confirm that running out of buffer is the issue.

One final note, I’m not a SageTV user so I’m speculating but if it transcodes content it’s likely going to be coming across the network at a much lower bit rate than what Channels is doing, at least for HDHR sources. That’s one reason why Channels often exposes network throughput issues that don’t cause problems for other apps.

#12

OK network working well - pausing playback of live tv for a couple of seconds seems to avoid any issues, but I've seen two new problems - (1) sometime today the guide for the entire HDHR Quatro (OTA) disappeared - missed a recording - I had to manually go to the admin web page and re-download the whole guide; (2) Earlier this week I had a situation where the HDHR Quatro 4K could not apparently tune a channel, so a recording was missed and it was unable to use the HDHR Quatro in any manner whatsoever - however, I was able to watch the Quatro from a PC using both the HDHR app and the Channels Web page method - had to reset the HDHR Quatro 4K to correct