No audio on Apple TV recording playback; same file has audio in VLC

Channels Apple TV Troubleshooting
#1

I have an NFL Live recording from October 20 that plays without sound in Channels on Apple TV. The audio section of the playback stats is completely blank

The same original file plays with audio in VLC. The DVR server’s media information identifies a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track. I tried both Default and Legacy audio drivers and restarted the app, with no improvement.

I submitted diagnostics from the Apple TV app on October 21 at approximately 3am Mountain Time, immediately after reproducing it. It confirmed submission but didn’t display a reference code.

The recording came from an IPTV custom source and hasn’t been repaired or converted. I have the original available if it would help.

Can you help determine why Channels isn’t detecting the audio during playback?

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The recording completed, but the DVR log shows a detected discontinuity followed by automatic video-timestamp rewriting. I don’t know whether that’s related to the missing audio during Apple TV playback.

2026/10/20 14:01:00.003496 [DVR] Starting job 1792526460-ch9100 NFL Live [Hidden Signal test] on ch=[9100]
2026/10/20 14:01:00.739877 [DVR] Recording for job 1792526460-ch9100 from M3U-HiddenSignal ch9100 into "TV/NFL Live/NFL Live Hidden Signal test  20261 2026-10-20-1401.mpg" for 59m59.994798317s
2026/10/20 15:01:00.053847 [SNR] Buffer statistics for "TV/NFL Live/NFL Live Hidden Signal test  20261 2026-10-20-1401.mpg": buf=0%-6% drop=0%
2026/10/20 15:01:00.094292 [DVR] Finished job 1792526460-ch9100 NFL Live [Hidden Signal test]
2026/10/20 15:01:01.530668 [DVR] Processing file-1151: TV/NFL Live/NFL Live Hidden Signal test  20261 2026-10-20-1401.mpg
2026/10/20 15:01:01.658383 [MTS] Rewriting video timestamps for file-1151: NFL Live Hidden Signal test  20261 2026-10-20-1401.mpg
2026/10/20 15:01:16.058196 [MTS] Statistics for #1151 "NFL Live Hidden Signal test  20261 2026-10-20-1401.mpg": discontinuity_detected=1 transport_errors=0 saw_pcr=true saw_pmt=true highest_pts=3609.412000
2026/10/20 15:01:16.721275 [MTS] Finished rewriting video timestamps for file-1151 in 15s```
#2

Please make a 5 minute recording of one the channels you are having problems with and upload it to: https://www.dropbox.com/request/MMjICRc053JJpSBPDIfQ

#3

A clip covering approx minutes 44–49 showed the bug. It initially had audio, including after several seeks. After another forward seek, audio stopped. Enabling Show Stats showed no audio information (Show Stats wasn't enabled from the first, only after the audio stopped).

Seeking backward or elsewhere didn’t restore it, and exiting playback and reopening the clip still produced no audio.

This clip was copied directly from the original MPEG-TS packets, without re-encoding or remuxing. I submitted fresh Apple TV diagnostics at approximately 10pm Mountain Time after the failure.

Filename uploaded: NFL Live - Hidden Signal - 2026-10-20 - minutes 44-49 - audio change.ts

#4

One other note: after fully backing out and reopening the clip again, audio returned, then went silent again. This time Show Stats was enabled throughout, and the audio information remained visible after sound stopped.

#5

@eric Just checking that you could access the Dropbox sample. Were you able to reproduce the audio loss? I also found another recording with a similar audio-format transition, if another example would help.

#6

Try the latest Testflight beta. It should fix the issue for you. The video stream is non-compliant (it switches audio codecs without changing the PID or changing the PMT version), but we were able to work around it.

#7

It works! Thanks!!