TvH Client Freezing

Hi all,

CE 9.2.2 and Odroid N2 plus HDHomeRun. I have HDHR setup via IPTV in TvH for our FTA TV Channels.

Everything is working except for the random freezing with watching FTA TV. It does not freeze CE, you just get the buffering circle with a number in the middle that does not change. To recover you just press stop and go back into the same channel and continue watching until the next time. Might happen a couple of times each day and seems to happen when you watch the same channel for a long time.

Kodi log does not show much:

2020-05-06 19:05:29.874 T:3469734784  NOTICE: CVideoPlayerAudio::Process - stream stalled
2020-05-06 19:05:30.574 T:3450860416 WARNING: CRenderManager::WaitForBuffer - timeout waiting for buffer
2020-05-06 19:05:42.252 T:4064148928 WARNING: Previous line repeats 22 times.
2020-05-06 19:05:42.252 T:4064148928  NOTICE: CVideoPlayer::CloseFile()
2020-05-06 19:05:42.253 T:4064148928  NOTICE: VideoPlayer: waiting for threads to exit
2020-05-06 19:05:42.295 T:3900371840  NOTICE: CVideoPlayer::OnExit()
2020-05-06 19:05:42.295 T:3900371840  NOTICE: Closing stream player 1
2020-05-06 19:05:42.295 T:3900371840  NOTICE: Waiting for audio thread to exit

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

TIA

Greg

Have you had this working previously using 9.2.1 ? or whatever.

Changed Crazycat Modules ? TVH

I had been using HDHR setup as a TV Adapter and a DVB-T Network in TvH until Silicon Dust updated the firmware on the HDHR which stopped TvH finding any adapters. So I setup HDHR as IPTV instead and now I’m getting these freezes when watching TV. Nothing else has changed, same CE version, same TvH versions same drivers.

Don’t know if it is important but last night while watching TV it froze at exactly 5PM and then at 7PM and the logs confirm it. Strange exactly 2 hours apart and on the hour. Maybe it means nothing.

TIA

Greg

Sorry Greg I’m trying to get my head around your setup with Hardware HD Homerun .

So you have TV Headend Client installed and use IPTV in settings when setting up via browser.
This HDHR has an IP on your network and you use that IP to connect via TV Headend Client which is installed on the N2.

So you still have TV Headend Server on the N2 or is there a server software on the HDHR?
The HD Homerun is now plugged into what ?

Is there any transcoding happening in settings.

I’m sorry for the questions but i’ve not used this hardware.
I’m still using the old PS3 seperate box as server only.

I’ll try to explain.

The HDHR is on the network and I have a script that reads all the channel information into a m3u file. The m3u file is referenced in the IPTV setup.

The m3u file contains the IP of TvH and references each channel. See the m3u here.

TvH client and server are on the same N2 box.

No transcoding anywhere at all.

The HDHR is just plugged into power, antenna and ethernet.

Any other questions please ask as I would like to get to the bottom of this issue.

Greg

@gregeeh
Just confirm the version number TV Headend Server you are using.

HTS Tvheadend 4.2.8-36 ~ CoreELEC Tvh-addon v9.2.121

I am using HDHR quad tuner device with Tvheadend server 4.3* and continued to use Sat>IP setup.
I have very little problems with this now since I changed the settings to suit the new HDHR firmware.
In fact I suspect that any ‘glitches’ I now see (very rare TBH) are likely due to atmospheric conditions, but of course cannot be sure.

*I tried 4.2 and 4.3 and 4.3 was much better than 4.2 for some reason.

Seems this is very outside the normal use case that anyone here will have encountered - which makes it almost impossible for anyone to fault find your setup. Maybe you would be better going back to square one and trying the more normal arrangement and tweaking your settings as JohnBoyz did.

My personal experience is that SAT>IP works flawlessly with TVH4.2 if the server is on a seperate box to the client. When I had them on the same box there were frequent freezes but this maybe related to other hardware problems because I was using the poorly supported S912 based VIM2.

Shoog

I have checked my HDHR device and the SNR is all over the place.
It is dropping, at times to 0.
This is apparently what is causing the disruption of the LiveTV stream.
It is worse on HD channels.
I changed my aerial to a different device and the SNR was stable and no picture corruption.
So it seems, my device at least, has a problem but I now wonder if you have the same problem?
As an aside, the corruption of the signal is worse on TVH server 4.2 than it is on 4.3. In fact 4.3 is just about usable here, but 4.2 is definitely not.

Maybe you could check your SNR for your HDHR device and post back?

Can you expand on this statement? Do you mean the modulation setting (QAM)?

Yes … the Qam/Auto setting …
Having said that it might seem that TVH is somehow loading the signal causing the SNR to have huge variations, with 4.2 being a worse offender than 4.3. Thus 4.3 pic stays up better.

I suppose all I can really say is that the SNR is dropping to the floor at times with 4.2 and not as far or as often with 4.3. It seems worse with HD channels than SD channels.

Which of them is really at fault is beyond me, but HDHR don’t seem interested in fixing it, or even allowing us to use the old firmware!
THAT I cannot understand.
It is as if they did something deliberate to muck up TVH use.

Here are no SNR figures in TvH Client or Server, but HDHR does have status figures.

Forget about the black background as video does not show via VNC.

I am using a Sat>IP set up and not IPTV, so that is why I see the SNR indicators.
There is no reasonable way to integrate the DVB-T and the Sat>IP DVB-S settings into one coherent channel list and EPG. So my DVB-T must be Sat>IP also.

That is what it used to be … 100%

I read the below on the Silicon Dust forum and find it rather confusing.
It apparently is not referring to Sat>IP set up, as TVH handles allocating tuners rather than anything being mapped to one. Else I am really misinterpreting what is posted.

And if you really want to get technical, using the normal tvh hdhomerun “driver” is the worst way to set up Tvheadend with an HDHomeRun. If you set it up as an IPTV source, it will use newer protocols that are far less likely to have dropouts or issues, and will automatically go to the first available tuner instead of being manually mapped to tuners.

Maybe it should be mentioned that the preferred way to use the HDHR with TVH is as a Sat>IP device and not IPTV.

… and still we wait for the big revelation that this promised

We plan on updating the firmware to restore old behavior for software that uses the older protocols, like Tvheadend.

This is a short video of what I am getting today …
SNR.mkv (58.6 KB)

In addition, I now checked the HDHR tuner status for one tuner which is in use and if I repeatedly refresh the screen I can see the signal levels change drastically. This is an example of what I caught

Just so I understand you correctly. Are you saying I should ditch IPTV, which SD recommend, and use Sat>IP instead with an entry for each channel. I don’t see any entry in Networks for Sat>IP:

BTW - You input is appreciated.

The device should just appear as a tuner when you select to create dvb-t network.

Sorry, but it is not appearing:

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks,

Greg

Look here
HDHR-Signal#3

Yes HDHR is under the TV Adapters Tab:

But when I go into the Networks Tab and add a DVB-T Network HDHR is not there (see previous post).