Taking up too much space

Channels Fire TV
#1

Hi,

New to using Channels. I really want to like using it, but I’ve been experiencing lots of stuttering, and intermittent crashing, especially on my Fire TV stick. Today, the app on my Toshiba Fire TV has been telling me that my TV is critically low on space because of my apps. I have a handful of apps installed, and the TV says that I’m only about half full on storage. However, the cache of the Channels app has become enormous, to the tune of around 1.5 GB in size. This is only while watching a recorded program. I haven’t even used it to watch live TV today. I’ve been able to watch for a minute or so a couple of times, and then the TV would complain that I’m out of storage. Tuner sharing is off, surround sound is off, and the streaming is set to be 720p at 6 Mbps (I get the least amount of stutter/artifacting), the DVR is set to use software transcoding (Mac Mini).

Any help would be most appreciated. Thank you!

#2

1.5GB = less than 15 minutes of video.

#3

Did you try clearing the cache for the Channels app?

Usually we recommend that the apps are set to Original streaming quality. If that's causing stuttering it means your network is not able to handle the bandwidth required. Are you on WiFi or Wired?

#4

I’ve been clearing the cache fairly regularly. Normally the cache is no more than about 60 MB or so, which is why it struck me as odd to see that it had ballooned to such a large amount.

Setting the streaming to original doesn’t affect my TV too much (wired to switch with HDHR Prime), but setting it on my Fire TV stick on wireless causing a great deal of stuttering/buffering, and occasionally freezes the app altogether.

As I write this, the size of the cache has grown even more, up to 3.06 GB. I’m going to try to clear the data and cache, uninstall the app, and then download it again to see if things get any better.

#5

As a comparison, the HDHR app gives next to no stuttering, and the cache size is around 11 MB.

#6

The cache is used for the live TV buffer, which resides on the device when in Original mode.

If you use one of the other modes, the DVR server will transcode/remux and store the buffer on the DVR. So if you're concerned with disk usage on the client then a setting other than Original would be better and should not increase your cache usage.

#7

Please submit diagnostics after stutter happens

#8

Now that I’ve uninstalled, restarted, and reinstalled the app, the size of the cache has gone down significantly. Currently it’s at 1.23 MB. Must have been some kind of glitch that occurred. At the time, I wasn’t watching live TV, but a recording from the DVR when the cache was growing out of control. Weird.

I’ll submit the diagnostics the next time it occurs. Thanks for the help!