Premium Channels have blurry and blocky pixilation

Jules · April 28, 2020, 3:12pm

Firstly, I want to say that I purchased Channels DVR and had it for over two years but had an on and off-again relationship. In fact, I was one of the first adopters of it. When HDHomerun had Premium Channels, Channels DVR was quick to adapt to including the Premium channels in its guide. I have always been impressed with Channels DVR and the support they give is immediate and is second to none. But in March 2019 I decided to give Plex another try to save some money and Plex has been nothing but a frustration. Then recently I thought about Channels DVR and to my pleasant surprise it has improved leaps and bounds on functionality and now integrates with many TV Providers. I have DirecTV and YouTube TV and I was blown away how they accomplished this and immediately signed up again to give it a try but knowing that it was still in BETA.

The problem I noticed in some cases channels have blurry and blocky pixelation and, in some cases, it is very hard to watch. Generally speaking, local OTA channels are fine but Premium Channels such as Oxygen, IFC, and TBS just to name a few are difficult to watch. Naturally I started to scour the Channels DVR community forum for a solution and noticed many people have the same issue but also noted there was no real solution.

I started to think that I am running Channels DVR on my QNAP TS-251+ NAS and perhaps it is not powerful enough but then concluded Plex ran on it without an issue and I remember Channels DVR was running on it a few years back without issues.

So, I am sort of stuck on finding a solution with the pixelation issue. Does anyone know what is causing this? Are there debugging steps I should be taking?

I did attach a few examples of the issue.
Thank you in advance.

tmm1 · April 28, 2020, 4:17pm

Is the app set to Home Streaming Quality: Original?

What device are you watching from?

Helios2 · April 28, 2020, 4:23pm

I notice very few pixelation issues when watching TVE channels. It happens from time to time, but it is infrequent for me. I have my streaming quality set as original, and my DVR is running on a windows 10 server.

With that said, I have noticed times when a recorded program will have some pixelation as you described. I'm not sure what the issues is, but when this happens, I restart my Nvidia Shield and then the pixelation goes away (on the same recorded program).

It seems to happen to me once every week or two. A quick reboot of the shield is an easy enough fix though. Happens more on my tube model shield than on my pro model, but it has happened on both.

Long story short, my pixelation issues were not part of the recording, but an issue with the streaming player or connection of the player to the DVR.

Jules · April 28, 2020, 4:31pm

All devices are set to Home streaming Quality Original and this are:

NVIDIA Android TV
Apple TV (4K)
Amazon Fire TV
iPhone and iPad
MacOS (web interface)->I could not find a way to adjust Home Quality for this application but it is set to server Quality (1080p@ 10mbps)

However, all exhibit the same behavior with pixelation.

I hope that helps.

tmm1 · April 28, 2020, 4:33pm

Can you play the recorded mpg file directly with VLC on your computer running the dvr? Does it have the same issue there?

Jules · April 28, 2020, 5:25pm

I apologize for the delay but had to try a few things.

Here is what I found out

When playing an episode that was recorded on TBS here are the results:

When I use VLC on MacOS and play the episode via the network (file is on QNAP NAS), it is no longer pixelated but rather stuttered. It does not play smoothly.
I then moved the networked file to my Mac and played it locally and had the same effect, not pixelated but stuttered and would not play smoothly.
In either case Mac CPU is not getting over taxed at all so not sure why it does not play it smoothly.
I then tried the same on my Windows 10 machine and played the file via the network and same symptoms, no pixelation but stuttered playing and would not play smoothly.
When I use my Mac to play an OTA recorded file on the NAS it plays smoothly on VLC. No issue at all.

So it has something to do with the premium channels.

I hope that helps.

tmm1 · April 28, 2020, 5:33pm

Great, thanks. This means the problems are occurring during the recording process. Do you see similar issues when watching TVE streams live?

Can you click Help > Submit Diagnostics on the DVR web UI

Jules · April 28, 2020, 5:43pm

By TVE you mean the premium channels, the answer is yes. I still get pixelation. I did attach a picture of a show on the Oxygen Network.

I also did submit the diagnostics. Did you want me to follow up with an email describing the issue for the diagnostics I just ran?

tmm1 · April 28, 2020, 6:22pm

Diagnostics received.

Please update your DVR (click-and-hold the update button), then after the update make a new recording. After the recording is done, please submit diagnostics again.

The new version has better reporting of problems encountered while streaming TV Everywhere. My guess is there's something funky going on with your NAS that's causing these streams to be corrupted.

(Our TV Everywhere feature is not related to the old HDHomeRun Premium service that we supported in the past).

Jules · April 28, 2020, 6:38pm

I know your TV Everywhere is different from HDHomerun Premium and when I discovered your new service I was pleasantly surprised. I did have the HDHomerun Premium service before they discontinued it.

So this is what I did.

I went to the Oxygen Channel again and recorded something. I let it run for about 5 minutes then stopped it. Then I tried to stream that live channel at 1:36pm Central and started to noticed pixelation at 1:36:45

Then submitted the diagnostics and submitted as a235b7e2-9ad2-4327-9996-a9b67a4b8657 .

tmm1 · April 28, 2020, 6:48pm

2020/04/28 13:35:59.709660 [MTS] Statistics for "TV/Chicago P.D/Chicago P.D. S03E10 2016-01-06 Now Im God 2020-04-28-1332.mpg": skipped=113552 unhandled_packets=0 discontinuity_detected=0 transport_errors=4 invalid_pts=0 invalid_dts=0 saw_pcr=true saw_pmt=true highest_pts=233.165000

This skipped=113552 is bad news and means the stream is getting heavily corrupted while downloading. In the past we've seen this when either the DISK is failing, or there's a bad stick of RAM. I have a QNAP TS-251+ as well and have not experienced this problem.

Can you record from CSPAN and then check the Log tab for the [MTS] entry and see if it says skipped=0 or not?

Jules · April 28, 2020, 7:22pm

So I did tune to CSPAN, hit record then check the logs. If I read this correctly there are skipped=81780 packets.

I ran the QNAP diagnostics program and RAM was fine not tried all the disks.

BTW, on my QNAP NAS Channels DVR is storing files on an external drive. Perhaps I should move them to the main drive.

Here is the log.

2020/04/28 14:06:39.888107 [HLS] Stopping transcoder session ch6007-dANY-ip192.168.1.225 (out: 1m29.814778s, finished: false)
2020/04/28 14:07:56.914453 [DVR] Waiting 52m3.085565606s until next job 1588104000-78 Two and a Half Men
2020/04/28 14:08:01.964809 [DVR] Starting job 1588082400-ch6007 Coronavirus Briefings & Events on ch=[6007]
2020/04/28 14:08:01.966324 [TNR] Sharing existing connection to TVE-DTV for ch6007 CSPAN (clients=2, len=0)
2020/04/28 14:08:01.967941 [DVR] Waiting 51m58.032079581s until next job 1588104000-78 Two and a Half Men
2020/04/28 14:08:01.991477 [DVR] Recording for job 1588082400-ch6007 from TVE-DTV ch6007 into "TV/Coronavirus Briefings & Events/Coronavirus Briefings & Events 2020-04-06 2020-04-28-1408.mpg" for 1h51m58.033805827s
2020/04/28 14:08:02.155395 [IDX] Generating video index for job 1588082400-ch6007
2020/04/28 14:08:08.490518 [MTS] Statistics for "TV/Coronavirus Briefings & Events/Coronavirus Briefings & Events 2020-04-06 2020-04-28-1406.mpg": skipped=81780 unhandled_packets=0 discontinuity_detected=0 transport_errors=0 invalid_pts=0 invalid_dts=0 saw_pcr=true saw_pmt=true highest_pts=190.073000
2020/04/28 14:08:08.491249 [DVR] Job cancelled: 1588082400-ch6007 Coronavirus Briefings & Events
2020/04/28 14:08:08.587183 [DVR] Starting job 1588082400-ch6007 Coronavirus Briefings & Events on ch=[6007]
2020/04/28 14:08:08.587305 [DVR] Waiting 51m51.412703722s until next job 1588104000-78 Two and a Half Men
2020/04/28 14:08:08.588361 [TNR] Sharing existing connection to TVE-DTV for ch6007 CSPAN (clients=2, len=0)
2020/04/28 14:08:08.588525 [DVR] Recording for job 1588082400-ch6007 from TVE-DTV ch6007 into "TV/Coronavirus Briefings & Events/Coronavirus Briefings & Events 2020-04-06 2020-04-28-1408.mpg" for 1h51m51.412595482s

tmm1 · April 28, 2020, 9:08pm

Yes, please try a few things and see if you can find a setup that makes skipped=0

Try changing the disk first, and if that doesn't work perhaps you can find an old computer or something to install a test DVR on and try recording on there.

jpblanch75 · April 28, 2020, 9:48pm

That would be a great thing to do. Also, Can you go to the website directly with your PC and live stream the channel without issue?

I'm curious maybe a misunderstood. Are you using a Prime Tuner with a cable card? I ask because I'd like to know how you got TVE to work on that QNAP. I have a TS431+ and could not add TVE to it which is why I started using my Shield.

tmm1 · April 28, 2020, 10:14pm

The TVE feature requires an Intel CPU on NAS. The TS-251+ has an Intel CPU. The TS-431+ does not.

jpblanch75 · April 28, 2020, 11:20pm

Ah yes thanks.... I read that wrong.

Jules · April 29, 2020, 1:37pm

jpblanch75, I am sorry for the late response but was preoccupied working on my problem. Let me describe my setup; I have a NAS QNAP TS 251+ (8GB RAM, 6TB internal drives) with three external drives (6, 6 and 4 TB). From a TV programming setup I have an OTA antenna on the roof, plus DirecTV and YouTubeTV.

Originally I had Plex running on this NAS and programs were stored on my second external drive. I had no issues with quality of the recording. So I went ahead and put the Channels DVR server on the NAS and also stored TV Shows on the same external second drive. What I noticed was anything recorded by OTA was fine but and TVE channels were pixelated and blocky and this was due to packet loss. (tmm1 stated in my post it could be NAS related with bad memory or a failing hard drive)

So I switched from storing programs on the second external drive to the internal drives and from what I can see thus far; no issues but need much more extensive testing.

I also have Channels DVR server running on a spare Mac mini 2014 and it seems rock solid.

So for some odd reason, TVE shows that were recorded on the external second drive were losing packets. Not sure why.

I also have an NVIDIA Shield TV but running Plex on it was problematic and would always need to reboot it. When I was running Channels DVR Server back in 2018 and early 2019 and debating to install it on the Shield TV or my NAS, and tmm1 responded and stated use the NAS. And come to think of it; way back in 2018 to early 2019 I had no problems with Channels DVR server recording shows on my NAS's second external drive. Remember I stopped using Channels DVR from March 2019 until now. So tmm1 must be correct; and the drive is starting to fail.