Troubleshooting Live TV Issues

[Doctor Feelgood]

I have been fighting this for about 2 weeks, and I feel I have tried every tip and trick on the Internet... Hoping for some more advice. These systems have been running just fine for close to two years with various states of upgrades and there has never been a problem like this on any one of them, let alone all three. Therefore, network issues are my focus but I can't find anything.

First of all, here is a video I grabbed of one TV doing it...

http://youtu.be/5BEVuU2pHGg

Basically, all three HTPCs are having problems only with live TV, wear the image pauses, stutters, and gets pixelated for several seconds, and then returns to normal (usually) only to repeat itself again... Sometimes within a few seconds, a few minutes, or maybe longer. It happens on HD or SD, in shows or commercials, and all tuning is done by two HDHomerun Primes with Cablecards that appear healthy.

Seeing it right now, with one tuner being used on each Prime I see an HD channel with Signal Strength 97% (-2.0 dBmV), Signal Quality 100% (35.2 dB), Symbol Quality 100% and an SD channel with Signal Strength 100% (1.3 dBmV), Signal Quality 100% (36.6 dB), Symbol Quality 100%.

All wiring is CAT6 - all network adapters are Gigabit, the switch is a 16-port Gigabit unit (brand new while troubleshooting - replacing some 5-port Gigabit switches daisy chained together that showed the same problem), the router is a home built pfSense unit with a Gigabit port (honestly this unit is new during the time the problems started - but turning it off kills the Internet but not the TV signal so I hope not). The computers are all hardwired to the switch along with the Primes.

I was on the latest released Prime firmware, but just jumped on to the latest Beta. I have tried the tips presented on the Silicondust site for NIC configuration, too. Found there were updated NIC drivers (all motherboards have Realtek NICs) and updated those - nothing. I turned off one Prime at a time to see if it was only one or the other, but it happens while using either.

One systems use HD2500 Intel graphics with a HDMI connection to 1080p, one has HD4000 Intel graphics with a HDMI connection to 1080p, and one has Intel HD4000 Intel graphics with a VGA connection to 720p. I have tried a variety of Intel drivers from the ones included with the motherboards, to the latest releases from intel. I have swapped in a Radeon R7 240 and a GeForce GT630 to no avail. These systems all had processors with HD (no suffix) graphics until a few months ago - so while the CPU change is recent, things did work for a while past those upgrades.

I uninstalled the only recently added MCE app (Heatwave) and that did not help either.

I assume there is more I have forgotten I have done. Other than trying my old router, I can't think of anything else. Any pfsense users with tips? Don't want to go back to the old router, but may go for it (TV still streams without the router on, and it works great - until it starts glitching).

If you read this far - Thanks!

[Scallica]

What is the make/model of your switch?

How many coax splitters do you have in your residence and what brand are the splitters?

Do you have any set top boxes that exhibit the issue?

Although the HDHR shows a strong signal, it wouldn't hurt to ask your cable company to send a technician to check the signal coming into your residence, and make sure you have a clean signal.

[Doctor Feelgood]

Hi - thanks for the response... My answers are in italics below your questions:

What is the make/model of your switch?

D-Link DGS-1016A 16-port Gigabit. Prior to that I tried a couple Rosewill Gigabit switches, and prior to that I had things tied back to the ports on a Netgear WiFi router with 4-port Gigabit switch.

How many coax splitters do you have in your residence and what brand are the splitters?

The line comes in to my house as a single line (disconnected from all other branches in the house) and goes to a single Ideal brand 4-way splitter... One line to the cable modem, 2 to the Primes, and one with a terminator cap on it.

Do you have any set top boxes that exhibit the issue?

We sent back the last set to box about 1.5 years ago.

Although the HDHR shows a strong signal, it wouldn't hurt to ask your cable company to send a technician to check the signal coming into your residence, and make sure you have a clean signal.

Will call them. Last time they were here they went on and on about the ridiculous setup to my house with 4 homeruns (not talking about Primes) so that my TV and Internet should always be really good)

[Scallica]

Dlink, Rosewill, and Netgear are all garbage in my opinion. Get a better switch. I have zero issues with the TRENDnet TEG-S80G switch. A few people here like Dell's managed switches.

I never heard of Ideal brand splitters. I recommend Antronix splitters.

[Doctor Feelgood]

The Rosewill and Netgear stuff worked fine for a long time and were only really retired to get more ports out of one device (and a slim hope that the problem would go away). Sure, they may not be the best, but the problem persisted with all three devices and I can't justify trying another switch.

The splitter is this one - http://www.homedepot.com/p/Ideal-2-4-GH ... /202276266 - and uses a metal terminator on the one unused port. This device has also been in place for 2 years and was never a problem. I may have another splitter I could try, though...

[Scallica]

Yep, it's difficult to justify buying new components when existing components were working fine.

Definitely give your cable company a call and test the signal coming in. There could be some weather/squirrel damage to an outside component.

I would also suggest borrowing a neighbor's set-top-box, if possible, and see if the issue occurs.

[kmp14]

Is it only "live" TV? In other words, do recorded show exhibit the same problem? Sorry if you made that clear in the first post and this is a dumb question.....

If only true live TV and not recordings, if you pause the live tv for a while, let a queue a bit, and then start watching again does it still happen? Just spit balling here, but I am wondering if it is not network, but hard drive related?

[mike_ekim]

Is it only "live" TV? In other words, do recorded show exhibit the same problem? Sorry if you made that clear in the first post and this is a dumb question.....

If only true live TV and not recordings, if you pause the live tv for a while, let a queue a bit, and then start watching again does it still happen? Just spit balling here, but I am wondering if it is not network, but hard drive related?

I wondered the same thing. It's weird that live TV would be affected but not recorded TV. MAybe it's just a coincidence that you haven't noticed it with recordings yet. Do you have any system-intensive applications running, like transcoding, system update, backups, etc?

I have a HTPC with a single HDD that records and then transcodes to reduce the file sizes and allow streaming without transcoding on the fly. When a job either starts or finishes, there is a lot of HDD activity and the queue length gets to about 8. At that point, the HDD bogs down the system and everything slows down, including watching or recording live TV. In fact, I've had a few recordings that failed completely mid-show and the time that the recording stopped coincided with the logs from MCEBuddy showing when a job finished. Edit: I'm not looking for solutions to my problem (I will be getting a system SSD and a destination drive for transcoding), I'm just pointing out possible causes for this kind of behavior.

[sbaeder]

I also vote for looking at disk activity when this happens...looks very similar to what I see when watching recorded material, and WMC fires off three new recordings (or ends them)...glancing at the clock when this happens to me, it is always a time when shows start/stop.

[Doctor Feelgood]

I thought I checked the pause then watch method - but I can't remember - so I better check that again. Losing my mind it seems, but that is a good idea. I have not watched any recorded shows recently, so I will have to check them, too.

If it was just one system, I might suspect the hard drive. But with three different systems doing the same thing, it seems less likely. The timings are random and can come in clumps of frequent problems or spread out. Each system records to a separate drive than the OS is on (one has a SSD, one has a USB 3.0 hard drive, and one has a RAID-5 array of 4x SATA-III drives to write to). All backups and other activities are done between 2-5AM so they don't interrupt normal use.

Was on the verge of calling the cable company, and all of a sudden they wanted some work out of me... ppffft.

Thanks again.

[kmp14]

I didn't catch that you had said it was happening on 3 different PCs, so definitely not HDD. Provided recorded TV does the same thing, it must be signal related, or a cablecard issue?

[kmp14]

....Although if both Primes do it too, probably not a cablecard. Looks like a truck roll is required

[Doctor Feelgood]

Pausing TV and watching with a 60 second delay exhibits the same problem... I was excited because it went about 5 minutes before doing it, but there it was. Have not looked at any true recordings yet, but I assume they won't be pretty (meh, mostly kid stuff recorded lately anyway).

I called Cablevision and their story was they couldn't trouble shoot what is not their equipment. I explained I didn't want that, just to check my line, etc - everything outside the house. Did not get anywhere just yet. May just rent a box from them for at least a few days and see if it still happens.

[Doctor Feelgood]

Not sure if I should slink away from here or what...

Went and got a cable box from Cablevision - hooked it up and watched an hour plus of perfect television - which made me sad. Was surprised that the on-screen interface was still so terrible and slow - which made me feel slightly better. Went back to thinking about what could be wrong...

Not sure why, but I logged into my wireless AP, which is an 'old' Netgear Wireless-N router that just has the router part switched off, or so I thought... It still made reference to serving IPs via DHCP even though it was in AP mode. Messed around with it for a while and found it to be unresponsive - can't reset, change modes, change password, etc - but wireless works fine. Since unplugging it Saturday afternoon we have had perfect TV reception once again. While that router might have been better on paper since it is dual band, I will gladly go back to using an ASUS 2.4GHz Wireless-N router as an AP now, since it actually behaves properly.

The new pfsense router was definitely in charge, but the old router / AP was clearly doing something to occasionally muddy the waters and drive me nuts.

Glad it is fixed - can't believe it was something so stupid... Thanks again for the ideas.