For a long while I was using a wifi connection (albeit a good one) on my Apple TV, and assumed that was why Channels would occasionally pause briefly.
However, I'm moved to a 1gbit wired connection, and it's still happening.
When it does, I can see the "Dropped Frame Output" field increases from 0.
I also sometimes see "Buffering Pauses" stat appear, and gradually increase.
I've tried restarting both the Quattro, and the Apple TV, to no avail.
Any ideas what could be happening here please?
Which version of the Apple TV? I had the Apple TV HD (the first one with the swipe remote, from 2015), and had occasional stuttering (not sure if that's what you mean by "pause"). Switching to a newer Apple TV cured it, so I suspect that older model couldn't handle certain streams from Channels.
It's the A2843 Apple TV 4K (3rd generation) Wi-Fi + Ethernet, so the newest one I think.
I see the same thing with my ATV's. They are the latest 4k models, all on ethernet. At random times any program we are watching be it TVE or OTA using the Channels app will pause for a moment, the menu bar will come up and then it will resume.
I turned off tuner sharing in the DVR app, so when it pauses on OTA that tells me the issue is not in the DVR server software, but in the ATV Channels app on the ATV.
Recorded shows never pause and no other app on my ATV pauses, so its something very related to any kind of live stream being handled by the ATV Channels app.
I guess with recordings there's no constraint on buffering - whereas on live tv there's always a tradeoff between buffer depth, and how long channel changes take (and how far behind 'live') you are.
Certainly I don't see any jitter on my wired lan that could cause the buffer to become empty, so it must either be the tuner experiencing an encoding delay, or the ATV software doing something strange/broken.
This also happens on my FireTV. But I am not sure I have ever seen it happen on TVE. With live OTA I get a short (1 or 2 second) pause and then it continues, although occasional it stops and will not continue. Sometimes I get a Tuner warning pop-up, so I always thought it was just a tuner interference glitch that Channels couldn't manage. Recordings made from OTA never seem to have any problems. These pauses are very random, sometimes don't see one for a couple of days, then I can get 2 or 3 within an hour.
On my FireTV, I have switched to using the Stream(HLS) instead of Direct option. I have not noticed any long pauses or lockups while watching live OTA TV. I am still getting some occasional Dropped Frames, but it doesn't pause the player. I can see glitch in the video when the dropped frames occur, but it just keeps on going. I expect I am getting some interference on my tuner signal, but the Stream option just seems more robust as far as the player is concerned.
