[cminarik]

Has anyone had any luck getting Music Choice channels to play without buffering / stuttering from within Kodi?

I had this problem when I used the NPVR backend, and now the same problem with the HDHomeRun backend.

What's crazy is that the NPVR and HDHR native clients both play these stations fine.

Does anyone have a fix for playing Music Choice in Kodi?

TIA...Chuck

[emveepee]

I suspect from NextPVR low bit rate stations even with some graphics aren't handled well.  I'd start with Kodi 18.7 to see if that helps.   Using v5 NextPVR will be much better too if you aren't using real time streaming.

If those don't help there are various way to tell NextPVR that these stations are radio stations, modify database, import the HDHR URL's as IPTV radio, or you can configure the addon to play them as direct play URL's.

Martin

[cminarik]

I suspect from NextPVR low bit rate stations even with some graphics aren't handled well.  I'd start with Kodi 18.7 to see if that helps.   Using v5 NextPVR will be much better too if you aren't using real time streaming.

If those don't help there are various way to tell NextPVR that these stations are radio stations, modify database, import the HDHR URL's as IPTV radio, or you can configure the addon to play them as direct play URL's.

Martin

Martin,

Thanks for replying.

Sorry I wasn't clear...I'm using the HDHomeRun DVR back end now.

Can I do any of the things you mentioned with it?

[emveepee]

No idea sorry.

Martin

[djp952]

Hi! I can confirm this issue with both the official HDHomeRun addon and a different one that uses HDHomeRun as well, I happen to have MC channels (FiOS) and they do the same thing for me.  I'll see what I can find out for you.

[djp952]

The short answer is that Kodi is detecting a disconnect between the Video stream and Audio stream timestamps that exceeds what it will accept as "in sync" (100ms?), and buffers in order to correct that.  While it will take (perhaps a lot) more time to go through the MPEG-TS stream itself and see why the timestamps get so out of whack, my assumption is that since MC channels provide mostly static video the audio timestamps are moving forward much faster than the video ones, which is abnormal.  I believe that Kodi (or ffmpeg) assumes that the video stream, when present, has the higher timestamp rate to watch, which may not be the case for channels like this.

This one will take a while, but again I'll see what I can do.  It will take a moderate amount of time.

[djp952]

I was actually able to get Kodi (Leia) to play these channels properly, but only by an egregious hack to tell it to ignore all the timestamps it sees on the Video stream.  For most purposes this could/would cause Audio and Video sync issues, so it's not a "good" solution by any means.  It does however work in this specific case.

My suggestion at this point would be to record a 5-10 minute sample of the stream and open an Issue against the XBMC GitHub project describing the concern.  The problem is almost certainly in ffmpeg rather than Kodi, but it's real and may be something smarter people can do something about without messing anything else up.  As @emveepee noted, the bitrate of the Video stream is very low for these channels, they are primarily composed of Audio stream packets.  From my research, any time a new Video stream packet comes in there is a high probability that playback will glitch/buffer in a failed attempt to play catch-up on a realtime stream that cannot be seeked forward in time.

When the same file is played back as a recording, where the entire file/stream is available, the Kodi log will indicate the same problems but will not glitch/buffer since it can read ahead and find what it's looking for quickly enough.

A fix for this is well above my paygrade, but seems possible.

[ileenback]

Goto Video addon and install HDHomerun Simple. Open than select live TV, choose whatever HDHR, select your music channel of choice than add to Favorites. No more buffering!

[ileenback]

Goto Video addon and install HDHomerun Simple. Open than select live TV, choose whatever HDHR, select your music channel of choice than add to Favorites. No more buffering!

Checkout HiFi Berry. RCA or TOSLINK hat boards for RPi's. Run Kodi headless and control using an app called Sybu Kodi. I use this method for whole house music.

[djp952]

Reported as an Issue for Matrix: https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/issues/18389

Hope that there is enough information there for Team Kodi to resolve, and will do what I can to give them any additional information they need.