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[GreggP]

I've tried the television feature (now running JRMCv23.0.62), but haven't been able to get it to work without PQ issues like macroblocking and studdering.

I have tried it on multiple PCs, running Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows 10.

I have 2 TV tuner devices - #1 is one of the earlier HDHomeRuns with 2 tuners, both set to 'Digital Antenna', the other is an HDHomeRun Prime which has 3 tuners all configured for CableCard.

My PCs are not the fastest machines, but they are plenty fast for watching 1080p lossless Blu-ray rips without problem. All of the PCs are connected to our home network via gigabit ethernet wiring. The Windows 10 machine is an ASUS laptop that connects to our network via WiFi.

The machine used for the media center library has:
CPU - Intel Core Duo E9750 @2.66 MHz
RAM - 8 GB.

The HTPC computer that's connected to our 48" LG HDTV has an Intel i5 and 8 GB RAM.

The ASUS laptop has an i7 with 16 GB RAM.

The HTPC is used for watching TV with WMC (Windows Media Center). It works perfectly for this. There is no macroblocking, tearing, studdering, etc. On the same PC JRMCv23's TV viewing is unwatchable. Every minute or so, the image is distorted from the macroblocking, tearing and studdering. We use this same PC for listening to music (works great) and watching ripped Blu-ray movies (ripped losslessly with MakeMKV, and it also works great) using JRMCv23. On the library PC, the same PQ problems occur - macroblocking, tearing, etc. TV viewing on the ASUS laptop is also poor because of these PQ issues.

I've tried multiple video settings - Red October Standard and Red October HQ. I currently have it set to Standard while trying to solve this problem, but when it was set to HQ, it worked great for watching our ripped Blu-rays.

Also, as per a previous recommendation, I have unchecked the option for cropping edges.

I'd love to get this working. Any suggestions?

[tzr916]

Same issue if you RECORD a show using MC and play it back in MC?
Same issue if you RECORD a show using MC and play it back in other software? (use TS format)
Same issue if you RECORD a show using WMC and play it back in MC?

Maybe you could record a 3 minute sample that has the problem, upload it to a file sharing site, provide the link here.

[GreggP]

Same issue if you RECORD a show using MC and play it back in MC?
Same issue if you RECORD a show using MC and play it back in other software? (use TS format)
Same issue if you RECORD a show using WMC and play it back in MC?

Maybe you could record a 3 minute sample that has the problem, upload it to a file sharing site, provide the link here.

I'll give this a try and report back with my results. It may take awhile before I can run these tests, because very busy with other stuff at the moment.

BTW, how do you record a sample with MC? With WMC I simply pick the record button to start recording, pick it again to stop recording and voila, I have a sample segment. With MC there is no record button to toggle.

[GreggP]

Still haven't had a chance to try the record suggestions above, partly because we are satisfied with the pq while using WMC. However, I'm having minor annoying audio problems which will probably never be resolved unless I purchase new hardware and upgrade to W10. For now, we get by, but I'm losing patience with these annoyances. The main roadblock keeping me from going forward is the PQ performance for TV in MC.

Something interesting happened last night. Our audio stopped working in WMC. This can be fixed by rebooting, but we were in the middle of a movie on BBC America that we wanted to continue watching. So I shut down WMC and ran MC to watch that channel. It worked flawlessly. No macroblocking or studdering audio. Then toward the end of the movie, my wife paused the movie during a commercial using our WMC remote. After hitting play, she tried skipping forward with the usual WMC button. Instead of skipping forward, it changed channels. I proceeded to use my mouse to stop watching the other channels and picked the correct channel to watch. After this stop and restart, the PQ of television in MC reverted back to crap with lots of macroblocking and studdering audio.

Why would it do this after working so well for at least 45 minutes?

[RoderickGI]

Have you checked the setting in MC? "Options > Theatre View > Behaviour > Disable Windows Media Center"

Others may disagree, but based on many issues seen with MC, having WMC even installed and set up on the same PC as JRiver MC can cause problems. Even if WMC isn't being run at the same time, it will be trying to collect EPG data on a regular basis, which can interfere with MC functions. Particularly Live TV.

If possible you should uninstall WMC from the PC to test JRiver MC properly. You could take a full backup of the boot drive if that is where WMC is installed, and restore that backup if needed. Or if you could just make sure the no part of WMC is left running, or started during a reboot. That may be enough to allow MC to work correctly. Worth a try.

Also, use the very latest version of MC23 available. There have been a number of changes to TV and the way certain tuners are handled.

It would also be worth searching the forum for threads from other people moving from WMC to JRiver MC. There have been a lot of discussions and fixes. I think you did that TZR916?

[tzr916]

...If possible you should uninstall WMC from the PC to test JRiver MC properly. You could take a full backup of the boot drive if that is where WMC is installed, and restore that backup if needed...

BEST advice possible.

[GreggP]

I'll try uninstalling WMC. First, I'll backup my system disk (running now). Then, I'll uninstall WMC. And finally, I'll update JRMC23 to the latest version.

After this is done, I'll report back my results.

Thanks for the advice!

Note: we've also tried watching TV from my wife's relatively new ASUS laptop, which is running Windows 10 and obviously doesn't have WMC. The performance of JRMC23's TV is the same - lots of macroblocking and studdering. Maybe it was due to a combination of factors - network performance (WIFI connection to the network and the HDHomeRun Prime), an older version of JRMC23, etc.

update1: Completed backing up my system drive. Then, I thought if I went to the control panel and into the 'uninstall or change program' utilities, that I'd just be able to uninstall WMC. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that doesn't seem to be the case because WMC is not on the list of installed programs. Instead of uninstalling WMC you can only turn off the Windows feature. So I turned it off (along with a few other Windows features I don't use) and rebooted my machine.

update2: Just finished updating my HDHomeRun software to version 20171221, and JRMCv23 from the stable v23.0.91 to the potentially less stable but latest version 23.0.94. Then I tried watching TV with this latest version. At first, it seemed to solve my problem. I watched one of my channels for 5 or 6 minutes and didn't see any macroblocking and/or studdering. I stopped that channel and tried watching another. This other channel exhibited the problems I've been experiencing - again more macroblocking and studdering. I thought it might've been the channel, so I went back to the previous channel that worked well and to my disappointment, it too has poor performance. I was a little skeptical about the effectiveness with disabling WMC on this PC, because it's actually never been run on this machine. Oh well, I'll keep my eye out for any other suggestions.

[tzr916]

When you install and run the HDHR Software on the PC that MC is running on- the first tab is Configuration, do you have BDA Compatibility Mode set to J River Media Center?

You should only be running one PC as the MC Tv Server. Other Tv's that need to use Tv should be setup as MC Clients.

Your network should be Gigabit, with the Server PC and HDRP tuners plugged into the same Gigabit switch. Also suggest you try new Ethernet cables.

Try those RECORD and playback tests mentioned previously.

[GreggP]

In the HDHR software, BDA Compatibility Mode was still set to WMC, so I changed it to JRiver Media Center.

Yes, I am running only one PC (the one with these PQ/SQ problems) as the MC TV server. All other PCs are set up as clients to the library on this PC. I haven't tried tackling the performance issues on the other PCs because I want to handle them one by one. Our main HTPC, which still runs WMC, has exhibited the same problems with JRiver Media Center TV but there was a brief time (described earlier in this thread) when TV worked with J River Media Center.

Yes, I am running Gigabit. Throughput tests on the existing cables indicate that they're good cables. These are not DIY cables. As for the Gigabit switch, I will need to do a little more investigative work to see if the PC and my HDHR tuners are on the same switch. The cabling is not all exposed so it will take a little while to trace where each one goes (darn, I knew I should've labeled them).

Thanks again for your help.

[RoderickGI]

Okay, you have upgraded to the latest HDHomeRun software, but did it update your firmware?

You upgraded the HDHomeRun software. Did that update the tuner Firmware to the latest at the same time? From their Software Changelog it looks like the latest software (Release 20171221) doesn't do a Firmware update, but the previous Release 20170930 does. There doesn't appear to be anything significant in their Firmware Changelog, but they don't always list every change in there. You may need to install Software Release 20170930 of the software to get the latest Firmware, or use the firmware update through the device webpage. (Ref: Firmware Release 20170815 - "Add support for upgrading the firmware via the device webpage.") Be sure to reboot the HDHomeRun after a firmware update.

Our main HTPC, which still runs WMC, has exhibited the same problems with JRiver Media Center TV but there was a brief time (described earlier in this thread) when TV worked with J River Media Center.

So you still have a WMC PC running on your network. That means the WMC and MC are sharing your HDHomeRun tuners. While others will say that this should not be a problem, it seems to me that it has been in the past. I would advise that you shut down the PC running WMC while you test TV functionality in MC.

Also, the WMC PC was exhibiting the same problems? Running WMC or MC? If WMC that points to a problem outside MC.

But then you said:

The HTPC is used for watching TV with WMC (Windows Media Center). It works perfectly for this. There is no macroblocking, tearing, studdering, etc. On the same PC JRMCv23's TV viewing is unwatchable.

I'll try uninstalling WMC. ... I was a little skeptical about the effectiveness with disabling WMC on this PC, because it's actually never been run on this machine.

Something interesting happened last night. Our audio stopped working in WMC. This can be fixed by rebooting, but we were in the middle of a movie on BBC America that we wanted to continue watching. So I shut down WMC and ran MC to watch that channel. It worked flawlessly. No macroblocking or studdering audio.

So I'm confused about how many PCs you have, whether the PC you are testing MC on is a clean PC that has never had WMC set up on it. Whether it is a Windows 10 PC that could never have had WMC on it, or Windows 7 PC that had it included, but was never set up.

[GreggP]

According to SiliconDust's firmware changelog, my HDHR3-CC has the latest firmware available for that device - 20170930.

Yes, I still have a WMC PC running on our home network. WMC, which we run on the HTPC, is the only application that we can use to watch TV without audio studdering and video macroblocking. The SQ/PQ with WMC is good. I will try to test JRiver Media Center when nobody is using our HTPC. I also have WMC running flawlessly on my home office computer, which is also on the network, so I will need to shut it down as well.

The HTPC was not exhibiting the SQ/PQ problems with TV while running WMC, only when running JRiver Media Center.

We have 5 PCs wired to our network - 4 running Windows 7 and 1 unRAID (Linux) media server. We also have 4 laptops that connect to the network over WIFI - 2 running MacOS and 2 running Windows 10. All of the Windows 7 PCs had WMC included.

Of the 4 wired PCs running Windows 7, one is the PC I'm currently typing on and am trying to solve this problem with. It is set as my JRiver Media Center TV server. The library from this PC is serving the clients on all those other Windows 7 PCs and one of the Windows 10 laptops.  This JRiver Media Center server PC has never had WMC set up and running on it but I went ahead and turned off the WMC feature. Like I said, I don't see any way to uninstall WMC.

Sorry for the confusion... Having up to 9 computer running on our network gets me confused. I no longer need all of these systems so might try to consolidate at least 3 of them into 1 new all-purpose computer. When I build the new computer, I'll probably have Windows 10 on it and I wanted to solve this problem with JRiver Media Center before proceeding. I still plan to keep the HTPC with Windows 7 and WMC running as long as it keeps working. That means I'll only have WMC running on a single PC, so if I want to watch TV on another screen, it will have to be with JRiver Media Center or another program that works with Windows 10.

[RoderickGI]

Okay, that all sounds good.

Except in the long term, running WMC on one PC and MC on another, where they both share HDHomeRun tuners, will probably still result in some issues. It isn't supposed to, but there is enough history in the forum to indicate it will.

It will be interesting to see if the stuttering goes away when all PCs that are running WMC are shut down. I suspect that there is some other cause, but eliminating that potential problem is a good start.

[GreggP]

Yeah, I won't be able to perform that test for a few days but I'm very interested in the results.

I wonder what the difference is between JRiver Media Center and WMC 's TV playback capabilities. WMC works pretty well on all of my PCs, even a fairly old PC with a 2 GHz AMD Athlon Dual Core 3800+ and 4 GB RAM.

It doesn't matter whether they are on the same network switch, etc., watching TV with WMC works fine. I wonder why JRiver Media Center's TV feature can't...

[RoderickGI]

I wonder why JRiver Media Center's TV feature can't...

I don't think that it can't, in all circumstances. I suspect that it depends on the HDHomeRun model, driver versions, and other factors. But there is this;

In the HDHR software, BDA Compatibility Mode was still set to WMC, so I changed it to JRiver Media Center.

Which shows that the way WMC and JRiver connect to the tuners is different, even if only slightly different. The HDHomeRun also has specific BDA compatibility modes for other software, such as MediaPortal. When I did some research some time back I found that the JRiver compatibility mode was introduced in 2009 and hasn't been changed since! It is still in their Changelog:

Release 20091024:

Windows: Application support:

• Add support for J River Media Center.
• Support DVB-C in MediaPortal.

The idea is to eliminate possible causes to narrow down the scope of the problem. Hence, make sure WMC isn't interfering with MC's access to the tuners, and work from there.

Video and Audio are complex, and there are lots of components in the process, not just JRiver MC. For example this one, where a faulty HDMI port on expensive equipment has failed, causing loss of audio, and potentially causing the original audio stuttering problem. Or this one, where it seems either or both Windows Firewall and Windows Antivirus in Windows Defender have been causing 100% network and SSD loads, resulting in stuttering video, but only when pushing video from a MC Server to a MC Client, not when the Client pulls video to itself.

On the positive side, last I heard Greynolds was still running both WMC and MC on the same network, and sharing tuners. So it is possible, but for others it seems to have caused problems.