Streaming is choppy on iOS and Android

#1

It has worked great historically, but for the past few days Internet/Cellular streaming is extremely choppy whether on the iOS or Android app. At home, Playback Streaming Quality shows the checkmark next to Home Streaming Original which still works fine. I have Internet/Cellular Streaming set to 300Kbps already. I have multi-gigabyte fiber, so the upload speed is in the hundreds of Mbps even on WiFi. Please advise. Thanks

#2

While remote (cellular or Internet), run a speed test from the Channels app to your Channels server and post the results. You may want to test both cellular and remote wifi speeds.
App Settings > Support > Speed Test

#3

One way to diagnose this is that if you haven't updated the software in weeks, and it suddenly seems to be degraded, the reason may be environmental.

This may be:

  • Your home network
  • Your internet provider
  • The internet you're using when remote
  • Your computer
  • Your computer's operating system

There are many contributing factors to why things might change. But when the software hasn't even changed since it worked well, it's worth looking at these places first.

#4

I'm not having issues otherwise with my home network/ISP/Cellular/home computer/Windows.

Channels Version 2025.10.30.0047
iOS Speed Test (AT&T) 100.9 ms, down 41.3 Mbps, up 8.9 Mbps
Android Speed Test (T-Mobile) latency 89.68 ms, jitter 56.35 ms, download 120.01 Mbit/s

#5

With those speeds just set remote cellular quality to original. Does it play with original? If so your server may be swamped with something and unable to keep up the transcode.

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#6

Possibility
I would try playing back a recording first.
When trying to transcode a live airing it may have to switch the transcoder bitrate (adaptive) to keep up, which causes pauses/stutters.

#7

are you using hvec encoding? I was for months and started having problems after changing my linkpi to 60fps, so I changed back to 30fps and turned off hvec because some hardware will soon lose the license for it (or maybe already have)

#8

per Rice suggestion, switching iOS/Android to Original Quality on Cellular/Internet Streaming Quality fixed the problem, so I'll just go with that. I am not familiar with the transcode/hvec suggestions, but happy to adjust if you think it is still worth it and can point me in the right direction.

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