Live TV & Recordings Rapid Black Flickering
#1
Question 
Hello all. Just was given a hand-me-down PC, an HP 6200 Pro mini tower. Loaded Kodi on it, resized data partition, and installed Windows 7 for dual boot. Anyway, I've got my backend all set up in a Windows 7 machine with a Ceton tuner card. Just fired up the clean Kodi install on this HP and when I play live TV or watch recordings from the server, I get pretty frequent (maybe 4 or 5?) flashes of black screen every second. It's not lag, everything plays smooth, just there's lots of black screen flickering. I tried playing with the video output settings, nothing really helped. I was originally using VGA out with the issue but then switched to using the DisplayPort output of the onboard graphics and then was using a DP-to-HDMI adapter. Seemed like it fixed it for a few minutes but then the flickering came back.

Any ideas?
Thanks,
Mike
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#2
Is the flickering issue limited to live TV, does it happen with recorded shows? How about if you load up VLC and play a recording through it w/o kodi? Does it flicker when you play other types of video?

Also specs of your system would probably be useful.
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#3
One thing to try is go into kodi and turn off (or experiment with) hardware acceleration for video playback. I think it is settings>video>acceleration

you might need to enable advanced settings to see all your options (lower left setting in window).
Windows Media Center PVR addon (pvr.wmc) and server backend (ServerWMC)
http://bit.ly/serverwmc
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#4
No it's not limited to live TV. It happens when I stream live TV and stream recorded shows from the server.
I'm trying to upload a short 1 minute video to YouTube. It's intermittent, it'll definitely be flickering black on some scene and then there's a hard cut to a new scene and the flickering is instantly gone. Then it'll come back.
Here's the video link, check it out maybe? I realize that there's a commercial for a thriller TV show in there and that was terrible timing. The flickering isn't part of the commercial I don't think haha. However, when the movie comes back on, there's definite flickering that seems kind of random.

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#5
Regarding system specs:
3.3GHz Intel i3
4GB ram
4.6 Windows score (graphics score)
Integrated Intel HD graphics

It seems like it's some kind of settings maybe cause there's times when it'll play fine?
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#6
I tried messing with hardware/software acceleration but didn't see any change. Do I need to restart after changing that setting? There's also stuff under video settings about syncing... could it be any of that stuff?
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#7
You should not need to restart after changing the setting. Since you see the flickering on recorded tv, do you see it if you play the wtv file directly from kodi (i.e. not using our addon)?
Windows Media Center PVR addon (pvr.wmc) and server backend (ServerWMC)
http://bit.ly/serverwmc
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#8
I think I may have fixed it. I changed it from hardware decoding to software and then rebooted. So far this is the longest I've been able to watch and haven't seen any flickering anymore but I did get a few artifacts once, probably just the stream. I've tried my cable channels as well as local digital antenna channels, all seem to be working. I'll try some recorded TV next as well.
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#9
One thing you may try is make sure you video drivers are up to date. I know my I3 my hardware acceleration is enabled, However, I have to change it to DXVA and disable DXVA2.
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#10
Well, I think that did it. I've been watching live, recorded, and avi files for the past day or so and haven't had any problems. So it appears changing the hardware acceleration to software fixed it. I assume this just means that something with my graphics (integrate) doesn't play well or isn't suited for the hardware acceleration?
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#11
I am glad to hear you got it running.
Usually when that is the case it is caused by a bad interaction between Kodi and the Video driver. I know many on here including myself are running the I3 with Intel HD with acceleration enabled. If you get an itch to mess with it any further, Have you tried loading the driver directly from Intel? Many times the drivers off of manufactures sites such as HP and Dell are pretty out of date.

I attached the Link below for the drivers I beleive would be your system.
32 bit drivers Intel core HD
64 bit drivers Intel core HD
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