Tivo Stream 4K - July 2020 Update - Corrupt OTA streams

I just updated my TS4K with the July 2020 update. Good news is they added a lot of configuration capability on the remote, which hopefully will fix my Sony TV issues. Bad news is live TV streams coming from OTA via HD Homerun are all corrupt. I'm just getting either a solid colored screen, or that with artifacts, etc. None of them work. All my TVE streams work. I tried the current release, beta, and alpha, and tried uninstalling them all and reinstalling the current release, and rebooting the TS4K. Seems like something is broken. The OTA streams work fine on my Apple TVs.

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Sounds like they messed up MPEG2 playback.

Is there another Android app I could download to see if MPEG2 is broken there too, and its in their stuff and not Channels DVR?

I loaded the HD Homerun app and get the same results. So Tivo broke the TS4K for OTA. Hopefully it doesn't take them 3 months to fix it. Since that is their track record, and I now can't use it for the one thing I bought it for, I'm going to return it. If they eventually get it fixed, I'll give it another try. With all the Channels DVR folks happily jumping on board with the TS4K, they didn't think to have ONE of them participate in their testing???

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In Settings > Player > Video Player > Decoder, switch it from Hardware to Software.

(Edit: since @maddox marked this post, I figured I'd remove the Hybrid option, as users reported that decoder did not work with the new update, either.)

Software works... Hybrid didn't.

Hybrid doesn't work. Software does. What does that mean in the grand scheme? Is doing it via hardware more efficient? Is it more work for the software to do it that can reduce overall performance?

Hardware decoding means that there is a special chip or other hardware in the device that processes the video data—a sort of black box—that takes the encoded video stream and outputs a format that can be displayed, bypassing the CPU and saving time and energy.

Software decoding means that the CPU has to decode the video before it can be displayed, which takes additional time and energy that the CPU could otherwise use.

Reading the tivo forms, also seems the new update disabled access to Dev options.
No one has said it the update restores any of the Tivo things that users previously removed.
I went into the About, Update, expecting to see an option to disable auto update, like I do on my Shield, but there was none, it just started to download the update. I "Paused" it, then just unpluged the thing for now. The person who uses it is out of town for a bit anyway. Hopefully it won't auto update later. But, at least, I know that changing the Decoder to Software will work, just hope the CPU in the thing is good enough.

I didn't go check everything that was disabled, but Tivo Stream app came back and I'm guessing everything came back.

The good news is that the remote stuff seems to be greatly improved. They added more settings and I was able to move back and forth between my Sony TV and LG TV and it worked with both, and also correctly configured for my Sonos on one of them. What wasn't obvious is the LG was showing the Sonos audio system which is not connected to that TV. If I started the configuration of the audio system, and then immediately stopped it, then it forgot the Sonos. The first time I sat there for several minutes while it was trying to figure out my audio system and eventually canceled it. So minor usability problem, but it works on both and was a nightmare before and I never got it to work for audio on the Sony before.

On the Sony, when video is set to 1080p 60hz, it has a red lined down the right side of the screen. If I configure it for 4K 30hz, that goes away. It didn't do that before this update.

So for me, its more usable now since the remote is working. I guess I will hang on to it.

Maybe MX Player?

I bet they blocked this on purpose

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According to a Reddit post, the disabling of the developer options was "accidental", and should not have happened. It was expressed that it would be fixed in the next update, but no timeline was given. So, the TS4K is subpar until TiVo can demonstrate they care about their users ... or until Google releases their consumer version of the ADT-3.

This is exactly why I didn't buy the TiVo Stream. I wanted to so badly, but I don't trust TiVo. I've used their products since 2002. In 2019 I dumped the entire line of products I was using. They are not trustworthy. I guess we'll see if they make the update.

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yea. i only got one for my mothers bedroom tv cause it was the cheapest and best choice...wasn't going to risk one of those China generic Android tv boxes off ebay/Amazon. And not worth spending $200 on aanohter Shield for TV use maybe a few times a month.

I knew it was new device, and it does not surprise me at all, that they put out an update to make it more locked down and less possible for the user to de-bloat it into a non tivo device.

Did anyone submit diagnostics from the TiVo in hardware mode? Does it fail completely or pixelate with blocks of content missing?

It looks like this:

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I didn't submit diagnostics because its not a problem with Channels. It fails in the HDHR app the same way. Its completely pixelated or sometimes a mostly solid colored screen.

Well, when Nvidia released their first update for the 2019 Shield TV's it broke some things for folks, most notable for me was LDAC Bluetooth Codec support.

That was 6 months ago now...and they still have not fixed it.
I read in their forms, the next pre-update available, "HotFix" as they call it, which is NOT reversible and not fully certified....breaks a tons of things. Like Disney+ and PeacokTV app.

Point is, seems it is a common thing for companies of stream boxes, to take ages to push updates, and when they do, it breaks things, u have to wait many months, to get a fix, if ever. Only stream box that seems stable is Roku, but that is so limited and locked down, not much to screw up in that. (And i refuse to deal with Amazon's extreme bloat and forced ecosystem OS.)