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Stuttering on one channel

Added by NW User over 6 years ago

Hello all,

I have been using MythTV backend and some channels (I suspect were the high bit rates) would intermittently pause for few seconds. No indication of buffering or anything. I finally decided to switch and setup TVheadend. Lo and behold all those channels played with no issue. I watched Furious 7 with no interruptions with -31dBm! But I am having trouble with what was previously a reliable channel. Here in Portland, OR-US, OPB-HD transmits on 195.028MHz and I have -28dBm strength. It starts off fine but after a couple of minutes, begins to pixelate, freeze etc. I have issues with OPBPlus (another service on the same frequency). I really love OPB and feel bad that I cant seem to get it to work. I tried increasing buffer, reducing status period and still no help. Can someone suggest how to troubleshoot this or is it a known issue?

Spec: Intel NUC Core i7 with Hauppage WinTV dualHD.

Thanks a bunch!

Edit 1: I tried recording a video and then playing it back and the problem exists but this time it happily skips seconds worths of video. I could also see the Bandwidth fluctuating wildly just like during live streaming => the problem exists at the recording stage.


Replies (9)

RE: Stuttering on one channel - Added by Mark Clarkstone over 6 years ago

  • When the stuttering happens, what does the system log (in tvh webui) print (if anything)?
  • Is this over HTTP (via a browser) or HTSP (Kodi, Movian)?

RE: Stuttering on one channel - Added by NW User over 6 years ago

Hi Mark,

Got a bunch of discontinuity errors logged:

2018-03-06 20:34:01.891 TS: DualHaup/195.028MHz/OPB-HD Channel: AC3 #53 Continuity counter error (total 26)
2018-03-06 20:34:01.891 TS: DualHaup/195.028MHz/OPB-HD Channel: MPEG2VIDEO #49 Continuity counter error (total 29)
2018-03-06 20:34:02.051 tsfix: transport stream MPEG2VIDEO, DTS discontinuity. DTS = 77018466, last = 76216665
2018-03-06 20:34:14.308 TS: DualHaup/195.028MHz/OPB-HD Channel: MPEG2VIDEO #49 Continuity counter error (total 31)
2018-03-06 20:34:14.328 TS: DualHaup/195.028MHz/OPB-HD Channel: AC3 #53 Continuity counter error (total 28)
2018-03-06 20:34:14.428 tsfix: transport stream MPEG2VIDEO, DTS discontinuity. DTS = 78144591, last = 77045493
2018-03-06 20:34:14.643 tsfix: transport stream AC3, DTS discontinuity. DTS = 78073843, last = 75925365
2018-03-06 20:34:15.751 TS: DualHaup/195.028MHz/OPB-HD Channel: AC3 @ #52 Continuity counter error (total 22)
2018-03-06 20:34:16.090 tsfix: transport stream AC3, DTS discontinuity. DTS = 78206323, last = 75913845

I have tried both browser on Win Laptop and Kodi on my RPi Zero. Both give issues. Kodi atleast plays for a few minutes before stuttering. Browser sometimes refuses to even start playing OPB :(

RE: Stuttering on one channel - Added by NW User over 6 years ago

Few follow up questions.
1. Is occasional pixelation (no stuttering) on my Kodi directly related to signal strength or else what is that related to? Is there any setting on tvheadend that will help, say, buffer or such. My Corei7 definitely can take more load, I feel.
2. What is the dBm signal strength that you would say is a touch and go for pixelation issues.
3. How is the streaming technology for tvheadend compared to MythTV, technically. Is there a document that delves into this?

RE: Stuttering on one channel - Added by Mark Clarkstone over 6 years ago

NW User wrote:

Few follow up questions.
1. Is occasional pixelation (no stuttering) on my Kodi directly related to signal strength or else what is that related to? Is there any setting on tvheadend that will help, say, buffer or such. My Corei7 definitely can take more load, I feel.

It can be from a number of things, signal driver/hardware issue (inc cabling). Check that your pc isn't suspending/low powering the usb tuners when idle.

2. What is the dBm signal strength that you would say is a touch and go for pixelation issues.

This is hardware specific, some tuners are better with lower signals.

3. How is the streaming technology for tvheadend compared to MythTV, technically. Is there a document that delves into this?

htsp. I'm not even sure how MythTV works!

RE: Stuttering on one channel - Added by NW User over 6 years ago

Hi Mark,

My main problem still exists. OPB begins to stutter after few minutes of perfect broadcasting. I dont know why it is only services in OPB that are troublesome. Please help me.

EDIT 1: even OPB-FM, another service on the same frequency has the same issue. This is an audio channel with static background. So, I think it might not have to do with the bitrate. Maybe the center frequency is different for OPB in Portland but then it worked like a charm on MythTV?

RE: Stuttering on one channel - Added by NW User over 6 years ago

Can someone please help me on this. I would really love to troubleshoot this and understand any channel specific settings that will help me view OPB. Thanks!

RE: Stuttering on one channel - Added by NW User over 6 years ago

Hello all,

I noticed something interesting. I turned on my htpc and attempted to watch TV. Interestingly multiple channels very stuttering and the webUI was listing too many CC errors. I shutting down my HTPC, restarting my kodi frontend. Nothing worked.

I then stopped tvheadend service and booted up mythtv-backend. After switching the frontend on Kodi, I watched the same channels and there was no issue at all on any of the channel. I then shutdown mythtv-backend and restarted tvheadend and rebooted my HTPC and Kodi. This time the channels are playing with no freezing. Its been 10 minutes and not a single CC error.

I think there is something wrong with the way tvheadend is probably initializing the Hauppage compared to myth-tv. Can somebody guide me on what this could be? Please.....

RE: Stuttering on one channel - Added by NW User over 6 years ago

I just upgraded to 4.2.5-49~g8973d48e5~xenial and that seems to have helped the stuttering on multiple channels but OPB is still messed up. Can somebody please help.

RE: Stuttering on one channel - Added by NW User about 6 years ago

For future users, I got this fixed with a wget to the OPB channel on boot through cronjob. Dont ask me why but it helps. Its been months now and it has worked like a charm.

Note: To handle occasional TVH daemon crashes, I also have a cron job to wget the OPB channel once every 15 minutes on all the tuners. Maybe an alternative is to perform wget as part of TVH service itself on start of service (to handle crashes) but I havent gotten to it yet.

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