Live TV video and audio stutters after 20 minutes

[pduncan1963]

Running Windows 7 ultimate using WMC to watch Live TV and have a problem that seen to evade a fix. I have seen others have this problem in other forums (Green Button) without a real fix.

While watching live TV, after about 20 minutes the Video and Audio starts to stutter badly. The video almost looks like stop action framing about twice a second and the audio is real choppy to the point you can not make out what is being said at all. A quick fix for this is to pause for about 5-10 seconds. Sometimes this will only fix it for about 30 minutes then it starts all over again.

This only effects Live TV, and happens on any channel.

Anyone have any idea what might be the fix?

My set up is below:
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 945 78 °F Deneb 45nm Technology
RAM: 16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 533MHz (7-7-7-20)
Motherboard: FOXCONN ALOE (CPU 1) 81 °F
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 4650 (MSI) Standard Monitor (1920x1080@60Hz)
Storage: 931GB Western Digital WDC WD10EADS-65L5B1 SCSI Disk Device (RAID)
Audio: Realtek High Definition Audio

[IownFIVEechos]

So when you watch back the recording of the stuttered show it is clean? Try and point your recording drive to a different location? Maybe your buffer area on the drive has bad sectors or is failing you somehow?

Also it says you have a RAID controller. Are you actually using RAID? Only time I use RAID at home is to kill ants. Maybe your controller is on the fritz?

[pduncan1963]

So when you watch back the recording of the stuttered show it is clean? Try and point your recording drive to a different location? Maybe your buffer area on the drive has bad sectors or is failing you somehow?

Not sure you are following me exactly. I'm not watching a recording I can watch back, but am watching live TV. If I back up the live buffer then the stutter goes away. If for some reason I was watching the Live stream with one tuner while it was recording on a second tuner at the exact same time, the ONLY thing effected is what is being seen during the Live TV watching.... if that makes sense. If it is stuttering and I pause it for around 5 seconds, the problem goes away. More times then not, it comes back after another 30 minutes or so.

This problem never translate to recorded TV.

[IownFIVEechos]

So when you watch back the recording of the stuttered show it is clean? Try and point your recording drive to a different location? Maybe your buffer area on the drive has bad sectors or is failing you somehow?

Not sure you are following me exactly. I'm not watching a recording I can watch back, but am watching live TV. If I back up the live buffer then the stutter goes away. If for some reason I was watching the Live stream with one tuner while it was recording on a second tuner at the exact same time, the ONLY thing effected is what is being seen during the Live TV watching.... if that makes sense. If it is stuttering and I pause it for around 5 seconds, the problem goes away. More times then not, it comes back after another 30 minutes or so.

This problem never translate to recorded TV.

That makes me think it is your buffer. Can you increase the buffer?

[pduncan1963]

That makes me think it is your buffer. Can you increase the buffer?

Not something I know how to do. Can you point me in the right direction?

[Crash2009]

WMC>Settings>TV>Recorder>Recorder Storage

[pduncan1963]

WMC>Settings>TV>Recorder>Recorder Storage

I dont' actully see a way to adjust the live tv buffer. I can adjust how much of the hard drive WMC uses for TV, but it's already set at MAX. (909 gb) in this case.

[CyberSimian]

I dont' actully see a way to adjust the live tv buffer.

This is controlled by a registry setting. Vista and Win7 use different registry settings. I believe that the one for Win7 is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\...
...\Media Center\Service\Video\Tuners\DVR\BackingStoreEachFileDurationSeconds

Change that to the value that you want.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

[holidayboy]

Worth running chkdsk as well maybe just in case?

[Crash2009]

I dont' actully see a way to adjust the live tv buffer. I can adjust how much of the hard drive WMC uses for TV, but it's already set at MAX. (909 gb) in this case.

Sorry that wasn't what you were looking for. That is the only place I have ever had to adjust.

[BCloud]

Sorry for reviving an old post.

But I have been suffering from the same issue on my main HTPC, and our 2 extenders (Xbox 360) for the past 2 weeks. Live TV and recordings were plagued with stuttering, and severe pixelation making TV unwatchable.
I went through the headache of verifying everything from codecs, video drivers, and signal strength nothing seemed to resolve it.

However I seemed to have stumbled unto a solution. By increasing my Live TV buffer from the default 30 mintues to 45 so far that change has appeared to have resolved the problem.