Tvheadend

Random stab in the dark, but have you fiddled with the Packet backlog option (in Tvheadend)?

No sir, i have not. If you dont mind pointing me to where that is located in the TVH web interface i will look into what it does!

Config -> General -> Base. Should be in 4.2.

Thanks man. I just checked the box for "Use pack backlog:". I will test shortly and report the results!

Unfortunately the problem remains. An update though, this seems to be any kind of HD data produced by the Pi with TVH plays choppy on the Shield TV. Let me explain. I went as far as to record a TV show as BOTH .ts and .mkv. I then copied those HD video files to my NAS and even locally to an external thumb drive. I tried to play both on the shield tv and BOTH are just as laggy and "slow motion". These files play fine on other devices, just not on the Shield TV running kodi..

Andrew Maccon wrote:

Unfortunately the problem remains. An update though, this seems to be any kind of HD data produced by the Pi with TVH plays choppy on the Shield TV. Let me explain. I went as far as to record a TV show as BOTH .ts and .mkv. I then copied those HD video files to my NAS and even locally to an external thumb drive. I tried to play both on the shield tv and BOTH are just as laggy and "slow motion". These files play fine on other devices, just not on the Shield TV running kodi..

If you have an mkv that plays fine on the shield, try comparing them using something like ffprobe.

Sorry for my ignorance. I have searched online and downloaded a package that contains ffprobe. The whole download is called ffmpeg. I dont see any way to install ffprobe though..

Andrew Maccon wrote:

Sorry for my ignorance. I have searched online and downloaded a package that contains ffprobe. The whole download is called ffmpeg. I dont see any way to install ffprobe though..

It's included with ffmpeg packages. you just need to run ffprobe <file>.mkv on a file that works and one that doesn't.

Thank you sir. My results are fairly similar except for the bitrates. See below:

.mkv file that plays fine has a Bitrate of: 1493 kb/s
.mkv file that is recorded by TVH has a bitrate of: 12513

As you can see, the bitrate of the file recorded by TVH that does NOT play well has a significantly higher bitrate than the file that does play fine. I am not sure how to interpret this however.

Thanks for the ongoing help everyone!

Andrew Maccon wrote:

Thank you sir. My results are fairly similar except for the bitrates. See below:

.mkv file that plays fine has a Bitrate of: 1493 kb/s
.mkv file that is recorded by TVH has a bitrate of: 12513

As you can see, the bitrate of the file recorded by TVH that does NOT play well has a significantly higher bitrate than the file that does play fine. I am not sure how to interpret this however.

Thanks for the ongoing help everyone!

Is this over wifi?

It is not. My whole network is wired into a gigabit router. The only "wireless" portion of this entire setup would be the ATSC-T antenna being used to pick up the local over-the-air TV channels.

Have you tried using the pass profile?

Thats the problem, the TV Headend FRONT END Client only supports HTSP streaming. I dont see a way to change this. If i log into my TV Headend server and disable the HTSP stream profile, my front end wont work at all. I looked it up online and it seems to state that the Kodi TVHeadend Front End client ONLY supports HTSP. Is there a way to change this?

Andrew Maccon wrote:

Thats the problem, the TV Headend FRONT END Client only supports HTSP streaming. I dont see a way to change this. If i log into my TV Headend server and disable the HTSP stream profile, my front end wont work at all. I looked it up online and it seems to state that the Kodi TVHeadend Front End client ONLY supports HTSP. Is there a way to change this?

If you have the Kodi Simple IPTV Client addon you can point it to your tvh playlist at

http://user:pass@ip:9981/playlist

Thanks. I got this configured. It picks up the channels and plays but unfortunately the problem remains. The HD channels are very laggy and seem to go from "slow-mo, to super speed (to catch up), then slow speed again, and so on and so on". The same problem as before.

It seems the shield might not be able to handle high bitrate streams? It's a weird one!

Have you tried the TVheadend live channels app? This integrates wtih the live channels application for AndroidTV and streams using HTSP. My Xiaomi Mi Box has much lower specs than the Sheild and plays 1080p 9Mbps HDTV Streams from Sky NZ without issue, this might allow you to eliminate teh kodi issue... The other option is to try SPMC whcih is an unofficial fork by the former Kodi Android maintainer; The Mi Box struggles with Kodi 17 but SPMC is smooth and runs fine.

I have two Nvidia Shield TV, one 2015 and one 2017, I run Kodi (current version is 17.5 I think) and they both play everything I throw at it.
Have you tried this: Adjust display refresh rate to "on Play/Stop".

(EDIT: Sorry, did not see post... Use an Ethernet cable and not wireless, any better?)

I have adjust the refresh rate settings yes, i have tried all the options including play/stop

Wireless is not in use anywhere in my setup. It is all wired cat5e to a gigabit router.

Andrew Maccon wrote:

I have adjust the refresh rate settings yes, i have tried all the options including play/stop

Wireless is not in use anywhere in my setup. It is all wired cat5e to a gigabit router.

Fred would you be willing to test a file sample from Andrew on your shield? To see if yours has the same issue?

Thanks Mark, great idea!

Just wanted to say that I have exactly the same choppy/lagging issues with the same setup (Shield TV etc), so I'm watching this thread with interest!

I did manage to fix it for a while by changing from NFS to SMB shares on my Synology NAS, but the problem has re-appeared!

But is seems as though the problem is back again now for some reason.

It's always been like this, but everything else is fine. i.e. MKV movies and TV shows that were not recorded through TVHeadEnd!

It's driving me nuts, and it's been like this for months!

Cheers

Will.

Hey Will. Thanks for the input. Misery loves company! I really hope we can figure this out. One update i do have though. I did some testing today. As of now it APPEARS that this laggy issue only happens with 1080p at 30 fps. I just watched college football games all day that show as 720p 60 fps (i found this by hitting 'O' [as in Oscar] while watching the laggy stream).

This might be a dumb question but this is beyond my knowledge. Can i force this to be 60 fps? I am thinking maybe since the stream is only 30 fps it is laggy? Or maybe this isnt even a valid question, maybe it is 30 fps because that is normal and that is the way it is being broadcasted over the air? Let me know what you guys think. I am thinking that maybe the shield cant "handle" 1080p stream at 30 fps?

Thanks all.

Sure I can test any file you like, post a link and I will play it

Andrew Maccon wrote:

I am thinking that maybe the shield cant "handle" 1080p stream at 30 fps?

One way to find out :p

Fred Fred wrote:

Sure I can test any file you like, post a link and I will play it