Got a FTV and PVR problem hopefully you can help?

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apazrjon

Member
Aug 27, 2013
21
1
I have a FTV rooted with many sideloaded apps including xbmc launcher, XPosed and many more. I am running 13.1 xbmc. It runs everything great! It runs everything very smoothly! I really love my modded FTV! I just have one issue I need your help with. I have one channel from within LIVE TV that will not open and play correctly! I have WMC and ServerWMC as my back end on my desktop. WMC on my desktop opens and plays every channel perfectly. Even the XBMC on the same desktop as WMC will open up every channel properly and playback flawlessly. But, on my wired ethernet connected FTV client with 13.1 I have one Live TV channel that will not open properly. It starts with a blank screen with audio playing. Then after about thirty seconds in, the audio will stop too. Then if I open up full screen I get a scrambled mess of a picture. It isn't even a scrambled mess of the live tv picture. It looks like some other XBMC screen! It will only happen on the same one channel. Every other channel opens up quickly and plays flawless 1080p. I have mediacodec disabled as mentioned in other threads, but it still happens on this channel about 90% of the time.

The PVR developer had me disable the automatic deletion of the temp ServerWMC files so I could try to play the muxed files through my SMB share. I recreated the problem and then tried to play the files from the temp ServerWMC file thru my shares. Even when I try to play these .TS and .WTV files thru the share I get the same scrambled mess. I did this same thing with a channel that works perfect and the files played just as if watching from the Live TV menu. If I play the problem .TS and .WTV files on my XBMC on my desktop with WMC they play perfect. He can't figure it out so of course I can't either. There has to be something just not decoding these files from this one channel on the FTV correctly. It is wierd that it will work some 10% of the time!!! I have also tried 13.2, ouya SPMC with the same results. If any of you smart people out there have any ideas I am ready to listen. Luckily it is not a major network channel like ABC or CBS so this is definitely not a deal breaker, but would be great for all the channels to work! Cheers.
 

AFTVnews.com

Senior Member
Jul 22, 2014
490
374
www.AFTVnews.com
I have a FTV rooted with many sideloaded apps including xbmc launcher, XPosed and many more. I am running 13.1 xbmc. It runs everything great! It runs everything very smoothly! I really love my modded FTV! I just have one issue I need your help with. I have one channel from within LIVE TV that will not open and play correctly! I have WMC and ServerWMC as my back end on my desktop. WMC on my desktop opens and plays every channel perfectly. Even the XBMC on the same desktop as WMC will open up every channel properly and playback flawlessly. But, on my wired ethernet connected FTV client with 13.1 I have one Live TV channel that will not open properly. It starts with a blank screen with audio playing. Then after about thirty seconds in, the audio will stop too. Then if I open up full screen I get a scrambled mess of a picture. It isn't even a scrambled mess of the live tv picture. It looks like some other XBMC screen! It will only happen on the same one channel. Every other channel opens up quickly and plays flawless 1080p. I have mediacodec disabled as mentioned in other threads, but it still happens on this channel about 90% of the time.

The PVR developer had me disable the automatic deletion of the temp ServerWMC files so I could try to play the muxed files through my SMB share. I recreated the problem and then tried to play the files from the temp ServerWMC file thru my shares. Even when I try to play these .TS and .WTV files thru the share I get the same scrambled mess. I did this same thing with a channel that works perfect and the files played just as if watching from the Live TV menu. If I play the problem .TS and .WTV files on my XBMC on my desktop with WMC they play perfect. He can't figure it out so of course I can't either. There has to be something just not decoding these files from this one channel on the FTV correctly. It is wierd that it will work some 10% of the time!!! I have also tried 13.2, ouya SPMC with the same results. If any of you smart people out there have any ideas I am ready to listen. Luckily it is not a major network channel like ABC or CBS so this is definitely not a deal breaker, but would be great for all the channels to work! Cheers.

I know little to nothing about these PVR formats, but I'll throw this out there. Since you say it works 10% of the time, perhaps it's related to the current state of the Fire TV. Meaning, which apps are still in memory. I know the Netflix app has major issues if XBMC is, for example, paused on a video and still in memory.
See if force quitting all other apps and rebooting makes it play more reliably.
 

apazrjon

Member
Aug 27, 2013
21
1
I know little to nothing about these PVR formats, but I'll throw this out there. Since you say it works 10% of the time, perhaps it's related to the current state of the Fire TV. Meaning, which apps are still in memory. I know the Netflix app has major issues if XBMC is, for example, paused on a video and still in memory.
See if force quitting all other apps and rebooting makes it play more reliably.


I went ahead a tried your suggestion of force closing all my other android apps on my FTV and rebooting. You know what it seems to have helped! I have been able to open up that one troublesome Live Tv channel over ten times in a row since then. It is so weird that it only effects one Live TV channel out of the bunch. I really appreciate your suggestion. Seems to be a good temp fix for now!!!!!!


If anyone has any ideas on a permanent fix I am still all ears! Cheers and thanks for your time!
 

AFTVnews.com

Senior Member
Jul 22, 2014
490
374
www.AFTVnews.com
I went ahead a tried your suggestion of force closing all my other android apps on my FTV and rebooting. You know what it seems to have helped! I have been able to open up that one troublesome Live Tv channel over ten times in a row since then. It is so weird that it only effects one Live TV channel out of the bunch. I really appreciate your suggestion. Seems to be a good temp fix for now!!!!!!


If anyone has any ideas on a permanent fix I am still all ears! Cheers and thanks for your time!

Great to hear. Glad I could help!

The Fire TV seems to handle resources a bit inefficiently. I've found that usually when an app is "on and off" working, it's because something is running in the background.

Again, I don't know much about those file formats, but perhaps that one channel is just more difficult to decode then the rest (e.g., higher bitrate or more action). Since force quitting apps worked, it seems like the Fire TV isn't powerful enough for that stream. I think your only permanent fix will be to either reduce that channels quality some how, or find (sideload) an app that can decode it more efficiently.