Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[SpeedD408]

I have 2 HD HomeRun units (over the air, not prime).  I'm on 19.0.82.

I've noticed over the last few months I've had a lot of stutter and pixilation on some recorded shows (not all).  I just upgraded to a new PC (specs in signature, doing an overall trickle down, I did not upgrade for any HTPC reasons) and this is still continuing.  In that process, I noticed that when I was downloading the EPG this would happen, so I set the guide download to 3:00am.  Then last night it was recording Agents of SHIELD and I was going to watch a different program.  I noticed that same drops and pixilation on the live TV station, so I stopped the live TV stream (I have not tried to watch the recorded show yet).  The recording is set to record to a local 1.5 TB HD (I could move the cache file to my SSD, but would prefer to keep the cache located on the HD).

I loaded task manager and clicked on Networking to see what the network utilization was.  It was flat at 2% on a Gig link.  So that matches the ~20mbps of a HD stream.

I have a Cisco 2960S 24-port Gig switch, so I have business class network hardware.

HD HomeRun DUAL (HDHR3-US) are running current 20130328 code.  I have not tried to put the new 20131126beta1 code yet as it doesn't seem to list anything that would fix this.

This weekend I will setup to record 4 shows all at the same time and see what happens.  At this point I'm just looking for ideas to help troubleshoot the issue. Like I said, it's a new install, so all the drivers are the newest available.

thanks,

[JimH]

That could be just signal strength.  It's probably not the drive, unless something like a virus checker is getting in the way.

[SpeedD408]

Jim,

Thanks for the reply.  I'll check signal strength, but typically signal strength is very good (80%+) in my area.  I'll try disabling the antivirus program (MS Security essentials) and see what happens.

thanks,

[JimH]

Watching Live TV, you can get the signal strength from MC, by using the up and down arrow keys on a keyboard.

[muzicman0]

Are you recording in .ts format or .jtv?  I have this problem recording in .ts...once I moved to .jtv I haven't had the issue...

[SpeedD408]

MM0,

I'm set to .jtv.  So that's not it.

Thanks.

[SpeedD408]

Watching Live TV, you can get the signal strength from MC, by using the up and down arrow keys on a keyboard.

For ABC I'm seeing about 71%.  For CBS (I have this same issue with NCIS, CSI, etc.) I get 91%.  So I don't think single strength is the issue.  Though I might be able to adjust my VHF antenna to get better reception for ABC - 7.1 (Los Angels area ABC is VHF).

Thanks,

[SpeedD408]

That could be just signal strength.  It's probably not the drive, unless something like a virus checker is getting in the way.

Ok, it's not Microsoft Security Essentials.  I have 4 shows I don't care about currently recording and they exhibit the drops and pixelation.

Other ideas?

Thanks,

[JimH]

Is video set to Red October Standard?

[JimH]

71% isn't great.  91% is.

[SpeedD408]

Is video set to Red October Standard?

Red October HQ.  I just tried setting it to standard and playing back 2 of the 4 10 min segments with no change.  So it looks like they are recorded that way.  So not sure that Standard vs HQ would make a difference.

Thanks,

[JimH]

If it's in the recording, it's probably not an MC issue. 

[muzicman0]

Easy enough to check...just try WMC or any other PVR software and see if it has the same behavior...

[SpeedD408]

hmmm...

Ok, I ran the HD Quick TV program.  I opened it up 4 times and put each on a different station (to activate all 4 tuners).  One HomeRun seems to be fine (only a minor glitch in the video stream when selecting a channel on a different tuner, which I still think is odd, but I don't know how it is picking the turn but that is not a JRiver issue).  The other unit seems like it might be having issues.  Both windows would show artifacts, glitches and jumps.  So I will power reset that unit latter to see if that is the issue or maybe it has just gone bad.  However, with that said...  Why would all 4 recorded shows show the issues when at least 2 of the tuners (and therefore shows) should have been ok)? 


I know the HDHR4-US is going to be released on 12/12/13, so I will wait to replace the one unit with the new version (I may do both just for consistency).

Thanks for the help.

BTW: I have not tried to setup any channel stacking as I didn't think I needed two as all my TV sources are over the air.

Thanks,

[Yaobing]

Are you sure you identified one bad tuner and all three others are good?  It sound more like random events, and is more likely related to networking glitches than the tuners themselves.  When you run four tuners simultaneously, the network load becomes large.

[muzicman0]

On his 2960s switch, even four streams at 30Mb/s is less than 15% load.

[SpeedD408]

Ok, I am now thinking this is a NIC driver issue.  The onboard NIC is an Intel i217-V and it supports all the newest fancy stuff.  I was doing some reading about EEE (Energy Efficient Ethernet) and DMA Coalescing and how that allows the ethernet NIC to save energy.  Well I don't care about saving energy if it means it stops workings.  Therefore last night I turned off EEE on my Intel NIC driver, told 2 shows to record and tuned to a 3rd show.  The live show was probably 85% and the two recorded shows were probably 75% viewable.  This is much better than before as they weren't really viewable at all.  

There are a few other options I can play with on the NIC driver, so I'm going to be doing that, but wanted to give a status.  

I also switched from the Asus drivers to the Intel drivers after the test to see if that helps as they looked to be a bit newer (depending on which date you look at). I had 2 shows about to start recording that I wanted to keep and I haven't looked how they turned out yet.

So, other than just playing with the other config options, any guidance on optimal NIC driver settings for JRiver?

Also, updated to 19.0.90 with no difference, but none was expected.

Thanks,

[thane108]

Another possible explanation is intermittent multipath interference.  Some tuners are less capable of sorting out multipath signals - when signals bounce off trees or buildings and the same signal arrives a few milliseconds apart in time the tuner has to sort it out.  You can have a strong signal, but poor signal quality.  And it can vary by time of day and time of year - becoming more prevalent in Spring.

Sometimes a more "directional" antenna will help as it doesn't capture some of the signal bounces.