Weird playback issue

Channels DVR Server
#1

So I have been testing our ne HDHR Primes, ATV, Channels App and DVR for a week or so. Every morning while my wife is sleeping I watch live and recorded programs and all has been flawless.

So, tonight we were watching a program that was recorded on our old Layer3 system, which I haven’t disconnected yet, and the L3 DVR was being flaky (one of the reasons I want to get rid of it) so we switched to watch the program on the Channels DVR instead. This was the first time my wife has been exposed to it.

Well, of course, things didn’t work so well! We were watching a program that was still being recorded, and I started it from the recording. While we were watching the playback would stop for about 30 seconds and we would see a little circle of dots on screen, then the playback would resume, and this would repeat every few minutes.

Any thoughts? Right now I am looking like a fool for even considering switching systems.

#2

Here is the DVR log. We were watching and recording Criminal Minds on Channel 1002.

2018/01/24 21:00:00 [DVR] Deleting expired job 1516842000-7 The Amazing Race
2018/01/24 21:00:00 [DVR] Deleting expired job 1516845600-14 9-1-1
2018/01/24 21:00:00 [DVR] Starting job 1516849200-1 Criminal Minds on ch=[1002]
2018/01/24 21:00:00 [DVR] Waiting 8h59m59.9904256s until next job 1516881600-36 WGN Morning News
2018/01/24 21:00:00 [TNR] Sharing existing connection to 13276CF3 for ch1002 (clients=2, len=0)
2018/01/24 21:00:00 [DVR] Recording for job 1516849200-1 from 13276CF3 ch1002 into “TV\Criminal Minds\Criminal Minds S13E13 2018-01-24 Cure 2018-01-24-2100.mpg” for 59m59.9904256s
2018/01/24 21:00:00 [TNR] Closed connection to 13276CF3 for ch1032
2018/01/24 21:00:01 [DVR] Finished job 1516842000-7 The Amazing Race
2018/01/24 21:00:01 [DVR] Waiting 8h59m58.6905582s until next job 1516881600-36 WGN Morning News
2018/01/24 21:00:01 [DVR] Processing file-57: TV\9-1-1\9-1-1 S01E04 2018-01-24 Worst Day Ever 2018-01-24-2000.mpg
2018/01/24 21:00:02 [DVR] Finished job 1516845600-14 9-1-1
2018/01/24 21:00:02 [DVR] Waiting 8h59m57.1679065s until next job 1516881600-36 WGN Morning News
2018/01/24 21:00:03 [DVR] Running commercial detection on file 57 (TV\9-1-1\9-1-1 S01E04 2018-01-24 Worst Day Ever 2018-01-24-2000.mpg)
2018/01/24 21:24:46 [NAT] Successfully mapped port 8089 using natpmp
2018/01/24 21:26:56 [DVR] Commercial detection finished with 16 markers.
2018/01/24 21:26:57 [DVR] Processing file-56: TV\The Amazing Race\The Amazing Race S30E04 2018-01-24 Gotta Put Your Sole Into It 2018-01-24-1900.mpg
2018/01/24 21:26:57 [DVR] Running commercial detection on file 56 (TV\The Amazing Race\The Amazing Race S30E04 2018-01-24 Gotta Put Your Sole Into It 2018-01-24-1900.mpg)

#3

Bummer

Was this in the timeline area where the playback cursor is?

#4

Logs look normal on the DVR side. Sounds like the player was buffering which would indicate a network issue. Are you on Wi-Fi or did you hook up to the MOCA?

#5

Yes. I have seen it briefly when first starting a show, but that’s the only time until this.

Wi-Fi. I only have one coax running from the cable modem/router area in my home office to the family room, so I would have to disconnect the Layer3 DVR in order to use MoCa.

I won’t rule out a network issues, but I haven’t seen any issues with live or recorded playback from Channels on the family room ATV and no issues watching programming from any other app, so I have to wonder why it would happen only last night? It was just my wife and I in the house and she wasn’t using any device. I had my iPad open was idle for the most part, so network traffic was really limited to the stream to the ATV.

Is it possible that the DVR doing the recording and running commercial detect at the same time for the earlier recorded shows caused an issue? Here is the info on the laptop that is hosting the DVR from the Channels DVR webUI.

[quote]OS LENOVO 2349RL4
Windows Microsoft Windows 7 Enterprise
6.1.7601 Build 7601
CPU
4 cores / Intel® Core™ i5-3320M CPU @ 2.60GHz
RAM7.68 GB
73.0% free[/quote]

Edit:
I ran an experiment this morning and had the DVR record three shows and watched one of the recorded shows whilw it was recording. The other two shows were short so those recordings ended and the DVR ran commercial detection and all was fine. No interruptions in the recording that I was watching.

Also, the ATV is connected to my 5Ghz network and shows 5 dots signal strength. I can try switching it to the 2.4Ghz network to see what happens. I’ll also try to swith it to MoCa and see if that makes a difference, but, of course, if I can’t replicate the issue it won’t really tell me much :slight_smile:

#6

OK… I switched to the 2.4Ghz network and tried watching live TV and it was terrible, so I switched back to 5Ghz.

I also ran two different speed test apps a few times on the %Ghz network and both showed ping times in the 10-20mS range, download speeds above 100M (typically above 110M) and upload speeds in the 12M range.

Edit:
I switch the ATV to MoCa and re-ran the speed tests. The results were slightly different. Ping stayed the same but download went up to 120M, upload stayed the same.

#7

The issue is almost certainly network related. I’m guessing it is worse when the DVR is both recording and streaming, because data is flowing at high rates in both directions and Wi-Fi is half-duplex.

#8

OK. I can’t really argue that, but is there a diagnostic app that I can run on the ATV to confirm? The DVR laptop is Ethernet to a gig switch and both Primes are on that same switch, so the Wi-fi shouldn’t be used for the recording, correct? It would come into play for the stream to the ATV, of course.

I do plan on connecting the ATV via MoCa but I need to convince my wife that it is ready for use and we can disconnect the Layer3 DVR and send it back :smile: She’s not a big technology fan as it is :flushed:

#9

Can’t you just put a splitter on the coax?

#10

Would that work with MoCa? I do have a splitter I can try.

#11

OK… After I typed I realized that was a stupid question :joy: I think I need another coffee.

I’ll split it later and give it a shot.

1 Like
#12

Hey Capt… make sure your DVR host is also on that 5G wireless if it isn’t wired.

My host every now and then will switch itself to the 2.4G and life sucks until I switch it back.

#13

Thanks! It is wired.

#14

I added a platter to the coax in our family room and had both the Layuer3DVR and the ATV connected via MoCa and we asttempted to watch a recorded show on the Channels DVR again. It was a complete failure! We were about 15 minutes into the show and the picture froze completely with the little spinning dots in the timeline. I did some troubleshooting and found that I had to reset the MoCa adapter in my home office, where the cable comes into the house and the cable modem and router are.

I had tested everything on MoCa yesterday morning and it was perfect, but when I want my wife to get used to it, it all crashed :flushed:

I reset everything and we went back to watching using Layer3 for the rest of the night.

This morning I decided to test everything again and watched the same recording that we were watching last night. Again after 15 mintues it froze and I did some checking on the ATV and it had lost all connectivity to the internet. I also noticed that the Recording and DVR tabs on the Channels app were gone. I looked at the log on the DVR and saw that the Bonjour service had crashed last night.

[quote]2018/01/25 21:15:00 [DVR] Starting job 1516936500-9 Top Chef on ch=[1463]
2018/01/25 21:15:00 [DVR] Waiting 8h44m59.9878577s until next job 1516968000-36 WGN Morning News
2018/01/25 21:15:00 [TNR] Opened connection to 131B881C for ch1463
2018/01/25 21:15:06 [DVR] Recording for job 1516936500-9 from 131B881C ch1463 into “TV\Top Chef\Top Chef S15E08 2018-01-25 Restaurant Wars 2018-01-25-2115.mpg” for 1h14m59.9878577s
2018/01/25 22:30:00 [TNR] Closed connection to 131B881C for ch1463
2018/01/25 22:30:00 [DVR] Finished job 1516936500-9 Top Chef
2018/01/25 22:30:00 [DVR] Waiting 7h29m59.4832838s until next job 1516968000-36 WGN Morning News
2018/01/25 22:30:00 [DVR] Processing file-64: TV\Top Chef\Top Chef S15E08 2018-01-25 Restaurant Wars 2018-01-25-2115.mpg
2018/01/25 22:30:00 [DVR] Running commercial detection on file 64 (TV\Top Chef\Top Chef S15E08 2018-01-25 Restaurant Wars 2018-01-25-2115.mpg)
2018/01/25 22:43:39 [DVR] Commercial detection finished with 16 markers.
2018/01/25 22:54:27 [ERR] bonjour: Failed to unpack packet: dns: overflow unpacking uint16
2018/01/25 22:54:32 [ERR] bonjour: Failed to unpack packet: dns: overflow unpacking uint16
2018/01/25 22:54:37 [ERR] bonjour: Failed to unpack packet: dns: overflow unpacking uint16
2018/01/26 06:00:00 [DVR] Starting job 1516968000-36 WGN Morning News on ch=[1009]
2018/01/26 06:00:00 [DVR] Waiting 12h59m59.9863522s until next job 1517014800-8 Hell’s Kitchen
2018/01/26 06:00:00 [TNR] Opened connection to 131B881C for ch1009
2018/01/26 06:00:06 [DVR] Recording for job 1516968000-36 from 131B881C ch1009 into “TV\WGN Morning News\WGN Morning News 1999-08-30 2018-01-26-0600.mpg” for 3h59m59.9863[/quote]

I restarted bonjour on the DVR, but also had to restart the home office MoCa adapter in order to get things running again.

The bonjour crash happened hours earlier, so it seems that is not related to the freezing and MoCa adapter crash last night and this morning, but I would appreciate any insight into why that may have happened.

On the MoCa side, as I was thinking things through this morning I was trying to figure out why everything worked fine yesterday morning but not last night and this morning and it dawned on me that yesterday morning I had disconnected the Layer3 DVR and the only traffic over the MoCa connection was the ATV. Last night and this morning I had both L3 and ATV connected through the MoCa and both were streaming since I had recordings going on the L3 box and were watching on ATV. So, I have come to the conclusion that if I want to use MoCa I need to either us eonly one device, or get better MoCa adapters. My end game is only one device, but the MoCa adapters are Layer3 branded, so I assume that they are not the best available, so I may replace them anyway.

So… That was long winded, but, are there any recommendations for MoCa adapters? Doing some Google searched it seems that Actiontec gets the best reviews.

Thanks for the help!

#15

I use ActionTec. I have 2 ECB6000 and 1 ECB6200. It’s been fantastic. My house was built in ‘86, and that cabling has been good. I get 600mb on my ATVs.

I use a Holland GHS-3PROM 3way splitter.

If your current gear has MoCA 1, you will definitely want it off your new MoCA network, or it will slow it down.

The only difference is that I already cut cable completely, so I don’t have those devices on my net.

You may also want a MoCA filter, to keep your signals in house.

#16

Thanks! From the MAC on the L3 adapter it looks to be made by iQuest out of New Zealand, but I can’t find any info on them, so I will replace them just in case.

According to Comcast they did install a MoCa filter in the access box outside of our house, so I should be good there, but I’ll double check.

#17

OK…

I received the Actiontek MoCa adapters and put them in place of the Layer3 adapters and we’ve gone two mights with no failures! We’re finishing up some older recordings on the Layer3 DVR and it should be offline later this week!

Thanks for the input!

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