Screen goes black after ~5 mins

Channels Android TV
#58

@Damon_Coursey I replied directly to you via the email you sent in to support, but I wanted to address this directly here on this thread as well.

Basically, the hardware powering Smart TVs is just not very good. TV manufacturers consistently under power the hardware powering their smarts. We've consistently recommended against using it and have recommended using a dedicated streaming device instead as they're almost always more performant in both CPU and RAM.

Channels requires a bit more power than a normal streaming service app does. It does a lot more, and handles a lot more types of video.

I know this seems complicated because we let you install it, but the fact is, many customers live on the Android TV built into their TV just fine, and many do not. It just all depends on what they're doing with it.

This is just the unfortunate state of Android TV. The wide variety of hardware it runs on DOES have a bottom to it, and that bottom is almost always running on Smart TVs. So overall, we do not recommend, and we will not optimize the app, for Smart TVs.

I just wanted to make sure what we've been saying for years was transparent and communicated here on this particular thread.

#59

Thanks for the reply Jon. I do understand what you're saying. I guess my issue is that it DID work fine, for a few years - it was only a recent change that broke it. I forget who the dev was that was replying on this thread - but he thought it was due to a SDK change, or something like that, that Google had made.

To me, this isn't a hardware issue, as it was working totally fine for quite some time. What I really want, as a paid service, is to have some kind of commitment to addressing the issue with the android client.

EDIT: I guess I just want some certainty. If you don't plan to address this particular issue then it would be good to know that it WON'T be addressed. Then I can make the decision whether or not I stick with things as is, or I look for a new solution.

Thanks.

#60

We don't have any way to replicating this problem, which means we don't understand why exactly it's happening. As such, it's impossible to provide certainty on whether a fix is possible.

It's been helpful to narrow down that v4.6.3 works and v4.6.4 broke. But there were many beta builds between those two, so we need someone to volunteer to "bisect" each of those builds to figure out exactly which one introduced the problem.

Let's start with these two. Do either of these builds have the problem?

https://cdn.channelsdvr.net/apk-beta/channels-dvr-406161747.apk

https://cdn.channelsdvr.net/apk-beta/channels-dvr-406222204.apk

Kids Fire tablet missing movies and episodes
#61

Thanks Aman, that is very useful. I don't mind testing this out, when you'd mentioned it earlier I was too busy and it was too difficult trying to find the exact builds, so I really appreciate the direct links to the apk's.

When I have some spare time I'll do some testing and report back!

#62

I've tested both versions. They both seem to be ok. First one I got to 25 mins in, and figured that is ok. And the second one I got to 20 mins and figured that is ok.

#63

Okay. I suspect the next build is at fault. Though I hope not because it includes several 100k lines of changes.

channels-dvr-406290132.apk

1 Like
#64

I hate to do this to you, but yep, that one reproduces the problem.

#65

Does the issue occur every time at the same spot in a given recording?

#66

I'm not sure. I will do some more testing, but might not be able to do it until tomorrow.

#67

@tmm1 just did it twice and they both went black at around 8mins and 50 seconds.

#68

Okay so if you play that recording again, fast forward to 8min then in 50s the screen goes blank?

#69

If I fast forward to 8mins, it keeps playing past 50 seconds. From memory it ends up being a similar amount of time again before it goes black.

1 Like
#70

Weird. I would expect it to be related to the video data.

#71

When it goes black, I press the back button, then click Watch and it will carry on from where I left off and I get another roughly 8 minutes. I just have to keep doing that till I get to the end of the program.

1 Like
#72

Just want to add that I also doubt this is due to underpowered hardware. It happens on fairly recent high end Sony models and worked fine before the update noted above. Since the time to blank screen is fairly constant is this some kind of memory leak?

2 Likes
#73

Yeah a couple of my Sony Google TVs are only a year old. And they were all working fine until that particular update.

1 Like
#74

Is there anything else you want me to test out for you?

#75

No. I'm afraid we don't have a clear path forward on this right now.

#76

Just to record that rolling back to the previous versions works for me too. It is not a very satisfactory resolution as I have to turn off auto-updating for all apps on my TV.

#77

I have always been a Plex user, and I was very excited when they finally got live tv/dvr implemented. Unfortunately they did a really crap job and it was basically unusable, and they really were poor at spending the time to fix issues. That's why I looked around and landed on Channels, it just worked, and it was great! I was happy to pay the monthly fee because it worked so nicely. I love that you can reliably watch an in-progress recording, you can seek back and forth, it remembers your progress, allowing you to switch to another tv/device.

But with this recent issue I've gone back to see if Plex has improved. It seems like they have improved things somewhat, I haven't had any random crashes when watching in-progress recordings, I can seek back/forth without issues, which is progress. However it's still a bit useless in that you have to watch an in-progress recording from the guide, if it's finished and doing commercial detection, you have to wait for it to turn up in your library before you can watch it. Also, I don't believe you can switch to another device and pick up where you left off.

Even though Plex has its issues, the screen not going black every few minutes is a big win, especially with the wife!

All that said, I would prefer to use Channels, so I do hope this can be resolved. I found having auto-updates turned off was too annoying for all my other apps.