[realdiehl724]

Hello all,

I am having an issue with my Live TV playback. If I attempt to watch a program live, I see a black screen and I hear perfect audio for about 5-10 seconds. After that time, the audio starts to stutter. I never see any image. However, if I record that same program, I can watch the recording with no issues at all -- gorgeous smooth video and no audio stutter.

My hardware: I am using a HDTC-2US tuner. ServerWMC is on a Windows 7 PC (AMD Athlon II 2.7 GHz Processor, 4 GB RAM), and the client is a hacked Boxee Box (listed as IntelCE(2) in the log). I have another Boxee Box that is listed as IntelCE in the log.

Items I have tried: I tried using the DLNA server setting in ServerWMC and it always gave me a stream error. I've tried using the new HDHomerun App, and that is choppy at best. However, when I lower the transcoding of the HDR to "Internet240", it does play (but frustrates me because of the reduced quality). Anything higher than that, it doesn't play well. I can change it back to native streaming, record a show, and watch it in all of it's HD glory.

Here is my log file showing my first attempting a live tv stream (the result on the TV was a black screen with initially good audio, and then after 5-10 seconds, it stutters). I then watched a recording of the same broadcast, and it runs perfectly. The transcoding on the tuner was set to native at that point. http://pastebin.com/p0TszXgN

Is it possible that ServerWMC provides the client a different transcoding of LiveTV compared to a recorded broadcast? If so, can I get them to match?

Thank you all for any help you can provide!

Regards,
Kurt

[fabd]

did you try to use kodi and servervmc on the same windows machine ?

[realdiehl724]

did you try to use kodi and servervmc on the same windows machine ?

Thank you for the reply! I have not tried that. The Windows machine where ServerWMC is running is not a device I would want anywhere near a TV (as it is not the most visually appealing device lol). The Boxee Boxes (which are connected to the TVs) are linux-based and can't run ServerWMC.

What are your thoughts?

[realdiehl724]

I should also note that everything plays smoothly in WMC. It only seems to be Live TV that is the issue.

My initial thought was that ServerWMC streams recordings the same way that it streams Live TV (but with just a growing file size), but it appears I am wrong on that. My guess is there is some other transcoding happening that doesn't happen on with a recording that my Boxee Box doesn't have the processing power to handle. I can't confirm that though. The Boxee Box plays any other HD file without any issue.

[krustyreturns]

There is no transcoding happening with live-tv, but the growing wtv is remuxed (i.e. repackaged) into a ts container and its this file that is streamed to your boxee. Since no changes are made to the underlying video and audio streams, there should be no difference in the processing required by your boxee. Having said that though, I don't know why your boxee can't play the ts file.

Swmc creates this ts file in your recorded tv folder in a directory called 'tempswmc'. As an experiment, if you go to the debug tab of swmc and turn off 'delete temporary files' swmc won't delete the ts file when you stop the live stream. So you might want to try having the boxee play this ts file directly and see if it can play it (you can also make sure the ts file is okay by playing it on your windows machine using any player you have there).

Don't forget to restore the (delete temporary file) setting again when you are done.

[realdiehl724]

There is no transcoding happening with live-tv, but the growing wtv is remuxed (i.e. repackaged) into a ts container and its this file that is streamed to your boxee. Since no changes are made to the underlying video and audio streams, there should be no difference in the processing required by your boxee. Having said that though, I don't know why your boxee can't play the ts file.

Swmc creates this ts file in your recorded tv folder in a directory called 'tempswmc'. As an experiment, if you go to the debug tab of swmc and turn off 'delete temporary files' swmc won't delete the ts file when you stop the live stream. So you might want to try having the boxee play this ts file directly and see if it can play it (you can also make sure the ts file is okay by playing it on your windows machine using any player you have there).

Don't forget to restore the (delete temporary file) setting again when you are done.

Thank you for that info! I will try your experiment today and report back. Thank you for your help!

[realdiehl724]

There is no transcoding happening with live-tv, but the growing wtv is remuxed (i.e. repackaged) into a ts container and its this file that is streamed to your boxee. Since no changes are made to the underlying video and audio streams, there should be no difference in the processing required by your boxee. Having said that though, I don't know why your boxee can't play the ts file.

Swmc creates this ts file in your recorded tv folder in a directory called 'tempswmc'. As an experiment, if you go to the debug tab of swmc and turn off 'delete temporary files' swmc won't delete the ts file when you stop the live stream. So you might want to try having the boxee play this ts file directly and see if it can play it (you can also make sure the ts file is okay by playing it on your windows machine using any player you have there).

Don't forget to restore the (delete temporary file) setting again when you are done.

Ok I tried the experiment. I played the video from the Boxee Box from the same server that the Swmc and WMC installations are on. And to my surprised, it all worked fine! Now I'm even more baffled! What would cause the temp file to play fine in Kodi, but not when streaming it live?

[krustyreturns]

Interesting (which means: I don't know what's going on either). One thing to try is go into kodi on the boxee and turn off hardware acceleration on video playback. Assuming that doesn't work, post the serverwmc log after trying to view a live stream (see debug tab). Put the log on pastebin.com and post a link to it here, maybe there is a clue there.

[realdiehl724]

Interesting (which means: I don't know what's going on either). One thing to try is go into kodi on the boxee and turn off hardware acceleration on video playback. Assuming that doesn't work, post the serverwmc log after trying to view a live stream (see debug tab). Put the log on pastebin.com and post a link to it here, maybe there is a clue there.

Well, at least I'm not the only one stumped! I did as you requested and switched I to software acceleration. Interestingly enough, Live TV would attempt to load and then just stop. There wasn't any audio or video. Thinking it was a fluke, I tried it again with no success. I then rebooted the Boxee Box and Swmc. I tried it again with same result. I posted the log for the last attempt. Let me know if you can pull anything out of this. Thank you so much for your willingness to help!!

http://pastebin.com/3mC86WMm

[krustyreturns]

Somehow in your config file you have the field 'IsStreamingWTV' set to true, it really needs to be false. It doesn't quite explain everything you have described, but for sure, it really, really doesn't help. Search for it in the settings file and change it to:

<IsStreamingWTV>false</IsStreamingWTV>

then save the file and restart swmc. See what you get then. Post the new log if you still have problems.

[realdiehl724]

Somehow in your config file you have the field 'IsStreamingWTV' set to true, it really needs to be false. It doesn't quite explain everything you have described, but for sure, it really, really doesn't help. Search for it in the settings file and change it to:

<IsStreamingWTV>false</IsStreamingWTV>

then save the file and restart swmc. See what you get then. Post the new log if you still have problems.

Sorry for the delay. I had some memorial day festivities. I kept the hardware acceleration off. I got the same result as if it was hardware accelerated... black screen, good audio initially and then choppy. I'm so baffled as this makes no sense. http://pastebin.com/0cCsiWBt

I'm grabbing at strings here, but is it possible that I need a gigabit NIC on the Swmc machine?

[krustyreturns]

You also connect with a windows client called mancave, according to the log. Does it have this problem too?

[realdiehl724]

You also connect with a windows client called mancave, according to the log. Does it have this problem too?

I just tried it and it works perfectly. I have had the the Boxees work fine with Swmc in the past, so I'm not sure what the issue is now. I'm half ready to re-do them from scratch.

The other thing I will note is that if something is recording, I can play the file from the "recordings" menu. In a sense, it gives me live TV. It's not a complete fix though because it will only play up to the point where I started to play the recording (I.e. If I started to play it halfway through the show, it will stop playing once I get to the halfway point. I have to restart the recording to play the next recorded section.)

[krustyreturns]

The reason you have that problem is because you are playing the 'active' recorded wtv file directly, that's because you have the setting RemuxActiveRecordings set to false in your settings file. By default this should be set to true, but then you will have the same problem that you have with live-tv, basically that your boxee won't play the streaming ts file. Sorry I can't be more help, but I really don't know what the issue is with the boxee. Perhaps posing the kodi log from the boxee after a failure would have a clue, but I confess ahead of time, I am not great at understanding the kodi log - but maybe some else will.

[realdiehl724]

The reason you have that problem is because you are playing the 'active' recorded wtv file directly, that's because you have the setting RemuxActiveRecordings set to false in your settings file. By default this should be set to true, but then you will have the same problem that you have with live-tv, basically that your boxee won't play the streaming ts file. Sorry I can't be more help, but I really don't know what the issue is with the boxee. Perhaps posing the kodi log from the boxee after a failure would have a clue, but I confess ahead of time, I am not great at understanding the kodi log - but maybe some else will.

There is no reason to apologize. I sincerely appreciate your willingness to help. I tried wiping the both boxees clean and doing a fresh install of 14.2 (I was running 14.0 during all of this testing) and still no success. I'm going to keep pushing forward and will comment on here if I ever find a fix. Thank you again for all of your effort!