[jfoley]

It must be something with the family of channels related to TruTV (TBS, TNT, TruTV). All of these channel act in the same manner. I just tried all of them plus ESPN which has sports center on right now. ESPN played flawlessly while the other sputtered using the same settings (resolution, bit rate using VLC). TruTV and the others are just playing regular programming right now (not sports). I did this test using VLC. I also tried the SD channel and it works fine.

Can somebody else test with TruTV and see if the experience the same issue?

[shpitz461]

Are you streaming over WAN or LAN? Right now I'm at work, I set TruTV to 480@1500, I have 2mbps upload.

Using a network monitor I see that the bitrate goes up beyond the 1500, and beyond my max upload speed, so it gets choppy on occasion.

And TruTV is showing a show with a lot of movement, so that's almost like sports...

It appears VLC doesn't respect the bitrate setting, or the rate is average (as in not maximum allowed).

[jfoley]

Are you streaming over WAN or LAN? Right now I'm at work, I set TruTV to 480@1500, I have 2mbps upload.

Using a network monitor I see that the bitrate goes up beyond the 1500, and beyond my max upload speed, so it gets choppy on occasion.

And TruTV is showing a show with a lot of movement, so that's almost like sports...

It appears VLC doesn't respect the bitrate setting, or the rate is average (as in not maximum allowed).

I too am at work (so over the WAN). At home I have 10mb/s upload. Looking at network monitor is is showing a speed between 6-8mb/s, under my max upload. I am watching espn right now at 576 Res, 2000 bit rate. It is fine. When I switch over to TruTV with the same exact settings it is choppy. Looking at Networking monitor when I switch over to TruTV, it is using less bandwidth, between 4-5mb/s. This is just really confusing.

**EDIT** Disregard, I restarted and that fixed the problem of not being able to use the HD Homerun: Also, a different issue, but it appears now that my HD Homerun prime will not work. I removed the Ceton to see if that was the problem leaving only my HD Homerun. When I try to start the stream in VLC it does nothing and on the server side it says "HDHomeRunTuner: Could not receive rtsp response".

**UPDATE**. So I took my Ceton out of rotation, leaving just the HD Homerun Prime. The same problem persist with the HD Homerun.

[shpitz461]

Are you wireless or wired @ work right now? Also, the pipe @ work could be highly congested if everyone is using the net... it should be highly fluctuating when everyone is in the office, that could be a factor.

but it's strange...

[jfoley]

Are you wireless or wired @ work right now? Also, the pipe @ work could be highly congested if everyone is using the net... it should be highly fluctuating when everyone is in the office, that could be a factor.

but it's strange...

Download speed at work isn't a factor (we have 2x 100mb/s fiber service and I monitor the bandwidth). I am on a wired connection.

[shpitz461]

Then you got me stomped on this one... Did you check the CPU usage on your server where tvserver runs? Did you try with other versions of VLC? Which one do you use on the server and client?

[jfoley]

Then you got me stomped on this one... Did you check the CPU usage on your server where tvserver runs? Did you try with other versions of VLC? Which one do you use on the server and client?

CPU usage is about 30-40% with one stream going. I have not tried other VLC version but I have 2.0.3 on the server and 2.0.5 on the remote client. I wouldn't think it is a VLC issue though because it is only with certain channels. Might it be a resolution mismatch, meaning the native resolution of TruTV might be 1080i whereas the native resolution of ESPN is 720p?

[substyle]

Are you streaming over WAN or LAN? Right now I'm at work, I set TruTV to 480@1500, I have 2mbps upload.

Using a network monitor I see that the bitrate goes up beyond the 1500, and beyond my max upload speed, so it gets choppy on occasion.

And TruTV is showing a show with a lot of movement, so that's almost like sports...

It appears VLC doesn't respect the bitrate setting, or the rate is average (as in not maximum allowed).

I too am at work (so over the WAN). At home I have 10mb/s upload. Looking at network monitor is is showing a speed between 6-8mb/s, under my max upload. I am watching espn right now at 576 Res, 2000 bit rate. It is fine. When I switch over to TruTV with the same exact settings it is choppy. Looking at Networking monitor when I switch over to TruTV, it is using less bandwidth, between 4-5mb/s. This is just really confusing.

**EDIT** Disregard, I restarted and that fixed the problem of not being able to use the HD Homerun: Also, a different issue, but it appears now that my HD Homerun prime will not work. I removed the Ceton to see if that was the problem leaving only my HD Homerun. When I try to start the stream in VLC it does nothing and on the server side it says "HDHomeRunTuner: Could not receive rtsp response".

have you done any testing to determine whether or not the TruTV issue is with tv-server? Like tried to use the card with MCE on the computer that the tuner is connected to? I ask because last week I lost 3 channels randomly, ESPN1, ESPN2, and comedy central. They were choppy and unwatchable but they were that way through MCE also. Ultimately Fios people had to come out and fix something outside of my house to get the signal back. It was interesting how it only affected 3 channels.

[jfoley]

Are you streaming over WAN or LAN? Right now I'm at work, I set TruTV to 480@1500, I have 2mbps upload.

Using a network monitor I see that the bitrate goes up beyond the 1500, and beyond my max upload speed, so it gets choppy on occasion.

And TruTV is showing a show with a lot of movement, so that's almost like sports...

It appears VLC doesn't respect the bitrate setting, or the rate is average (as in not maximum allowed).

I too am at work (so over the WAN). At home I have 10mb/s upload. Looking at network monitor is is showing a speed between 6-8mb/s, under my max upload. I am watching espn right now at 576 Res, 2000 bit rate. It is fine. When I switch over to TruTV with the same exact settings it is choppy. Looking at Networking monitor when I switch over to TruTV, it is using less bandwidth, between 4-5mb/s. This is just really confusing.

**EDIT** Disregard, I restarted and that fixed the problem of not being able to use the HD Homerun: Also, a different issue, but it appears now that my HD Homerun prime will not work. I removed the Ceton to see if that was the problem leaving only my HD Homerun. When I try to start the stream in VLC it does nothing and on the server side it says "HDHomeRunTuner: Could not receive rtsp response".

have you done any testing to determine whether or not the TruTV issue is with tv-server? Like tried to use the card with MCE on the computer that the tuner is connected to? I ask because last week I lost 3 channels randomly, ESPN1, ESPN2, and comedy central. They were choppy and unwatchable but they were that way through MCE also. Ultimately Fios people had to come out and fix something outside of my house to get the signal back. It was interesting how it only affected 3 channels.

I can test it later tonight when I get home. I don't have an environment with MCE but the HD Homerun Prime has a program that can directly play channels but you have to be on the LAN.

[shpitz461]

mcheng, I think there's an issue here.

Seems like the bitrate value is not respected by VLC. I set it to 1800 and it goes to 2500+, sometimes hitting 3000+, even if i set the res to 320 the bitrate is more than 2000, most of the time goes to 2200-2800.

I'm using VLC 2.0.5 on both client and server. Directly, not through the web.

I lowered it to 1000, it still hovers around 1100-1460 most of the time.

UPDATE: I downgraded VLC on the server to v2.0.0 and it seems to be much better now. JFoley, give it a shot. The stream also starts quicker than with v2.0.5.

UPDATE2: over time, using this setting 'Resolution=340&Bitrate=1600', went up to over 2000kbps in network monitor and video is choppy and jittery.

[dbqbbq]

Anyone else get the "VLC:Failed to receive response from vlc" message and know how to fix it? I'm running VLC 2.0.5 (tried downgrading to 2.0.0, didn't help) and tvserver 0.5.5 and it was working for a brief period until I started getting this error message. Tried restarting, reinstalling VLC, reinstalling the plugin, all to no avail. I have the proper location set for my VLC install in the settings.conf file as well.

TV-server log: http://pastebin.com/x2r7Kb3y
TV-remote log doesn't seem to be updating or have any useful info in it so I haven't uploaded it. Let me know if I should.

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Solved: It looks like the issue was overlapping ports between VLC and remote desktop (I moved mine to 8889 from the default 3389). mcheng89 says VLC uses 8889-8892 internally to setup the stream so it's probably best to keep these ports clear if possible.

[LehighBri]

I'm using the latest .5.5 version and for some reason I'm getting unable to connect to tv server when I try to watch in the xbmc UI. I have the correct settings and when I do load the addon in the UI I see log messages in the TV server dos window saying that the stream is starting. Any reason why I'm getting this message?

EDIT: Ignore... looks like version 0.5.6 works fine for me. Thanks!

[Massfeller]

I haven't been able to get the XBMC PVR plugin or the Python script to work using Frodo 12.1 I was going to go back to Eden and see if it works there. I've tried running the server with and without authentication different port numbers nothing changes It's really the last bit that doesnt work. The plugin looks like it connects according to this:



But shows no channels Is it a mapping issue? Also if you try to browse to the EPG in XBMC it crashes here's the debug log:

http://pastebin.com/TZ6wXD7X

This is an interesting line:
12:58:48 T:820 DEBUG: CGUIEPGGridContainer - EPG::CGUIEPGGridContainer::SetStartEnd - start=03/23/2013 6:30:00 PM end=01/01/1601 12:00:00 AM

looks like it's trying to pull EPG data from 1601?

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance, -Ryan

[jdpman]

Hi I'm real excited to get this program up and running. Having a bit of a problem getting it to actually stream video though.

Running Windows 7 64bit with tvserver v0.5.5, VLC v2.0.5 Twoflower, and a HDHomeRun Prime.with 20130117 firmware.

{ "server_port": 8888, "server_secured": true, "server_username": "admin", "server_password": "admin", "vlc_process_path": "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\VideoLAN\\VLC\\vlc.exe", "epg_enabled": true, "epg_hour_of_day": 4, "devices": [ { "device_type": "HDHomeRunPrime", "ip_address": "192.168.1.115", "config": { }, "tuners_enabled": [ true, true, true ] } ] }

When I start it up everything goes fine until I attempt to connect through the XBMC add-on. XBMC spits out "Could not play channel: 4 Failed to play channel. Please try again." This is what the log shows upon attempting a connection:

[3.25.2013.0:41:42]: Tuner[192.168.1.115][1]: Starting video stream
[3.25.2013.0:41:43]: HDHomeRunTuner: RTSP Session - 39860
[3.25.2013.0:41:53]: HDHomeRunTuner: Could not receive rtsp response
[3.25.2013.0:41:53]: Tuner[192.168.1.115][1]: Setting VLC transcode parameters - transcode{vcodec=h264,vb=2000,height=720,deinterlace,acodec=mp3,ab=128,channels=2,samplerate=44100,venc=x264{aud,profile=baseline,level=31,keyint=30,ref=1}}:
[3.25.2013.0:41:53]: Tuner[192.168.1.115][1]: Setting VLC stream format - ts
[3.25.2013.0:41:53]: HDHomeRunTuner: Could not send rtsp command
[3.25.2013.0:41:53]: Tuner[192.168.1.115][1]: Failed to start video stream

As you can see from the timestamps, it hangs for 10 seconds while trying to get a rtsp response and then fails. Is this something I'm doing wrong or is something broken? I've tried on 2 different computers, one is a brand new OS install. Why would RTSP be failing to respond? Is this a port forwarding issue between my computer and the HDHomeRun perhaps? Thanks...

[mcheng89]

mcheng, I think there's an issue here.

Seems like the bitrate value is not respected by VLC. I set it to 1800 and it goes to 2500+, sometimes hitting 3000+, even if i set the res to 320 the bitrate is more than 2000, most of the time goes to 2200-2800.

I'm using VLC 2.0.5 on both client and server. Directly, not through the web.

I lowered it to 1000, it still hovers around 1100-1460 most of the time.

UPDATE: I downgraded VLC on the server to v2.0.0 and it seems to be much better now. JFoley, give it a shot. The stream also starts quicker than with v2.0.5.

UPDATE2: over time, using this setting 'Resolution=340&Bitrate=1600', went up to over 2000kbps in network monitor and video is choppy and jittery.

I think VLC does the average bitrate, but I'm not sure. Maybe there are other settings to set the max bitrate. I'll take a look.

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XBMC & WMC issues: I havent got around to trying them out recently. Hopefully this week!

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@jdpman: You might need the beta firmware. It fixed the issue for someone else. I havent tried any firmwares below that since you cant downgrade them.

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Will post another build later tonight with some fixes

v0.5.6:
Fixed http range requests - (fix for uspino)
Fixed iphone interface for iPhone 5 screen size - (this isnt the rewrite I was planning. just an update for the old client for iphone 5)
http://www.mediafire.com/?j2btdn6y18rll14

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It looks like vlc is peaking at a really high bitrate even though the bitrate I set is low. Hopefully theres an option to fix this...