H.264 woes

Ken H

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#81

Post by Ken H » Thu Jul 27, 2017 5:04 pm

webminster wrote:....Comcast ruined the WMC experience for me, except for using WMC as a music and Bluray/DVD library. I'd like to see signal changes that make WMC enjoyable again for me, but I don't expect any. The next real step I expect from them will be the IPTV rollout, and forcing people toward their X1 platform....

....Am just very sure that they have an agenda, and it's really not focused on customer satisfaction or picture quality. It's how much money that can make on their ISP side, and how much they can minimize losses on the TV side.
Excerpted from Multichannel News
7/27/17

Comcast Slates Q3 Rollout of ‘Instant TV’
In-home, managed IPTV service primarily will target millennials, eschew traditional set-tops


Comcast expects to have “Instant TV,” an IP-delivered, in-home, in-footprint video service that eschews traditional set-top boxes, in the third quarter of 2017, Dave Watson, Comcast Cable’s president and CEO, confirmed Thursday during the company’s earnings call.

He stressed that Comcast will continue to focus on X1, its full-freight pay TV offering. About 55% of Comcast’s video base is now on X1, compared to 40% a year ago. Comcast lost 45,000 video subs in Q2, ending the period with 21.47 million.

Notably, Instant TV will be sold in Comcast’s traditional cable footprint. Comcast has repeatedly stressed that the economics of an out-of-footprint OTT offering don’t add up, even though it has been locking in rights to distribute some programming on an OTT basis.

Comcast continued to see strong results from broadband, as it added 140,000 residential high-speed internet subs in Q2, extending that total to 23.36 million. And Comcast is confident that it can continue to grow that part of the business.

“There is significant runway ahead in broadband,” Watson said, noting that penetration stands at just 45%. Comcast also expects to make 1-Gig speeds available using DOCSIS 3.1 across the majority of its footprint by year-end.

In addition to providing faster speeds (55% of Comcast’s residential broadband subs take tiers of 100 Mbps ore greater), Comcast will be looking to differentiate with “xFi,” its new in-home WiFi platform that is powered by its lineup of integrated gateways, Watson said.

http://www.multichannel.com/news/conten ... -tv/414248

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Crash2009

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#82

Post by Crash2009 » Thu Aug 03, 2017 4:18 am

mpcookson wrote: Anyone know of any other debug screens like that?
Ceton diagnostics does some extensive logging (specific to WMC and TV)

You can also have a look at "Event Viewer" Every error in your whole PC is logged there.

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#83

Post by tomuo » Fri Aug 04, 2017 3:30 am

FiOS user here - we have H.264 on one channel we record extensively (Japan TV). This was messing up any mpeg recording that followed it on the same tuner instance (Ceton Inf4). The solution for us was to segregate the tuners, setting the Japan TV channel to only use tuner instance 4. Since we don't have any conflicts that use more than 3 tuners during normal operation, I didn't need to go through all the channels and disable tuner instance 4 for them.
So keeping them separate has so far solved the black screen recording problem.

Ken H

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#84

Post by Ken H » Sat Aug 19, 2017 5:38 pm

Ken H wrote:Latest Update: Comcast has a Silicondust HDHomeRun Prime on order to see if they can replicate the problem. More to come.
Comcast confirmed they are testing with an HDHomeRun as we speak and will let me know the results as soon as they know something.

sgbroimp

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#85

Post by sgbroimp » Mon Oct 02, 2017 6:11 pm

Nothing new on this, Ken?

Ken H

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#86

Post by Ken H » Tue Oct 03, 2017 4:54 am

I thought I posted a reply earlier today but it seems to be missing.

They told me they expected to know something a month ago, but nothing since. I requested an update today and as soon as I hear I'll post here.

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#87

Post by sgbroimp » Tue Oct 03, 2017 1:46 pm

Based on my personal experience with this particular organization, I guess we should not hold our breath. In the olden days, when a broadcast station veered off its frequency, a call to the FCC usually resulted in a fast fix of the transmitter. How times have changed as there is really no effective regulatory body for these guys anywhere that I can see. They recently sent me a copy of their so called "Agreement for Residential Services". You should see this thing if you have not done so. 18 pages long written by their attorneys and largely outlining their rights and lack of liability for anything. Apparently we all "agreed" to this so called "Agreement", but doubt anyone relay did in the contractual sense of the word. These companies are utilities and need to be regulated as such unless and until all households really have (multiple) choice of carriers.

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Crash2009

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#88

Post by Crash2009 » Thu Oct 19, 2017 1:07 am

Ken H wrote:I thought I posted a reply earlier today but it seems to be missing.

They told me they expected to know something a month ago, but nothing since. I requested an update today and as soon as I hear I'll post here.
It appears they have been working on it. Mine has improved.

Any improvement for you Ken?

stuartm

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#89

Post by stuartm » Thu Oct 19, 2017 3:51 am

It appears to me that something is fixed/better. I noticed a few days ago that switching from a HD h.264 station to one of my Encore channels (which always previously gave me the sound but black screen problem) had worked. Thought it was a fluke but after seeing your post went and tried it again and switching worked fine between the two. Will investigate a bit more but I don't remember it ever working before. This is in CO (northwest of Denver). Just did some further checking. I seem to be able to switch between h.264 and MPEG-2 (both HD and lower-res MPEG-2) with no problems now on my Comcast system. That's a major annoyance fixed. Nice work Comcast, thanks, and to Ken if his prompting got them to do this fix.

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Crash2009

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#90

Post by Crash2009 » Thu Oct 19, 2017 4:54 am

A few days ago my Ceton Echo played drm h.264 (sound only) I forget what it did with a drm recording but I do remember it was unwatchable.

Today Echo plays better than the HTPC ......at times......a couple HBO channels play perfect, others have bad pixelation.

Comcast needs to do a lot more work, but it is nice to see progress

Recently (last night) the web live tv xfinity stopped working in the middle of the night. Co-incedentally Ceton Echo stopped sometime during the night also. Error 102100.5 To me this suggests a source problem (Web and Coax both dead in the morning after running fine for 3 days)
Attachments
Comcast001.jpg
Comcast002.jpg
Comcast003.jpg

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Crash2009

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#91

Post by Crash2009 » Thu Oct 19, 2017 5:03 am

I grabbed a View Source of the above page. Any answers in there?
Attachments
Comcast005.zip
(57.4 KiB) Downloaded 56 times

Ken H

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#92

Post by Ken H » Thu Oct 19, 2017 6:38 am

Crash2009 wrote:
Ken H wrote:I thought I posted a reply earlier today but it seems to be missing.

They told me they expected to know something a month ago, but nothing since. I requested an update today and as soon as I hear I'll post here.
It appears they have been working on it. Mine has improved.

Any improvement for you Ken?
Unfortunately no, not at this time. I just checked two of my PC's and both are having the same issues as before. I'll report back if anything changes or if I hear anything from Comcast.

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#93

Post by sgbroimp » Thu Oct 19, 2017 2:06 pm

I will have a look over the weekend (Comcast 06413 zip) after doing the TV signal reset and a reboot. Would certainly like to see a change.

stuartm

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#94

Post by stuartm » Thu Oct 19, 2017 10:36 pm

The change that allows tuning between h.264 and mpeg-2 without WMC getting confused and displaying black screen/possibly only sound is purely a change by Comcast to their parameters in the streams they are providing and should not require any action on your part. Neither rebooting or TV signal resetting should be required.

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#95

Post by Space » Thu Oct 19, 2017 10:48 pm

stuartm wrote:The change that allows tuning between h.264 and mpeg-2 without WMC getting confused and displaying black screen/possibly only sound is purely a change by Comcast to their parameters in the streams they are providing and should not require any action on your part. Neither rebooting or TV signal resetting should be required.
I'm kind of surprised that this problem can be fixed by the cable provider changing something. I have the same problem (as I think others do as well) and I use Verizon FiOS. So if it is the way things are encoded, it must be a common issue if more than one carrier has the same problem. It would be good to know what they changed to alleviate this issue.

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#96

Post by stuartm » Thu Oct 19, 2017 11:13 pm

Well since I could always get the black screen channels to tune on a fresh start it meant that the stream was a legitimate MPEG or h.264 stream. The problem always came when switching the tuner between h.264 and MPEG2. I suspect that WMC only tries for a limited time to detect a stream format change when switching to a new channel. If the provider does not have key frames (I am unsure of the terminology here, but frames that enable recognition of the stream type) often enough in their stream then WMC gets confused and doesn't render properly. At least this is my theory and fits the behavior I have observed on my Comcast system. I am guessing that Comcast upped the frequency of the stream recognizing frames in their stream. All guesswork on my part and maybe I am totally wrong but I am happy it's working now on my system. :D

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#97

Post by Space » Thu Oct 19, 2017 11:27 pm

I suppose so, but you would think that WMC would wait until it got that info before just "guessing" what it is.

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#98

Post by stuartm » Fri Oct 20, 2017 12:27 am

You would hope so, but 411-info was showing me that WMC would think a MPEG2 stream that was showing black after a switch from h.264 was identified as h.264. (Others would see WMC identifying the stream as "unknown"). Hence my hypothesis that WMC was not recognizing the new stream format. Coupled with the fact that reports from people with other providers (e.g. Cox) said they were not having problems switching stream types implied that it was something about the Comcast stream confusing WMC. Precisely what causes the confusion is unknown, this is just my best guess.

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#99

Post by sgbroimp » Fri Oct 20, 2017 1:48 am

and for me it only seems to be the h.264 copy once channels, i.e. the premiums like HBO, Starz, etc.

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#100

Post by stuartm » Fri Oct 20, 2017 3:00 am

There is a separate bug where protected h.264 doesn't play on Intel GPU's there is nothing that Comcast can do to change that (other than not protecting channels. since they are contractually obligated to do the protect that isn't going to change). The only fix for the protected h.264/Intel GPU problem is to use a different GPU. So if that is what you are hitting It's not going to get any better without a GPU change.

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