Live TV Freezes Randomly

[robmorren2]

I have NPVR installed on my Windows 10 PC. I have cable connected through some Hauppauge tuner cards (WinTV 418). I mainly use RasPi4's to watch at various TVs throughout my house (using Librelec 11). Sometimes I will let a channel play for several hours, and the screen will randomly freeze. Sound continues to play usually, but the picture freezes. It doesn't happen often, but I'd like to fix it before football season if I can (can't have freezes during games). 

I've tried changing my live tv and recording folder to my network NAS, but that didn't seem to help. I tried changing the livetv time from 360min to 720min and back -- no noticeable difference. I'm not sure if these options matter, but preferred streaming profile is default w/ "avoid transcoding where possible" check marked. Video Encoder CPU and Recording Auto Transcode set to "leave recordings in native format".

Any suggestions on what to try? I have no idea if the settings on the client side do anything, such "chunk size". I have timeshift enabled and would like to keep it enabled rewind live TV.

Would it help to have a solid state drive or something that isn't my main drive, and use that solely for live tv and recording? Any suggestions on any of this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[mvallevand]

Investigating this issue will require both the NextPVR and Kodi debug logs when the problem occurs.

Martin

[robmorren2]

Investigating this issue will require both the NextPVR and Kodi debug logs when the problem occurs.

Martin

The frozen screen just happened again finally. The audio is currently playing, but the screen is frozen. I apologize, this is my first time posting logs, and I'm not the most computer literate person... 

The zip from my NPVR settings log button is attached. I made a txt file of the kodi log in case this paste link doesn't work https://paste.kodi.tv/tihacenifo 

Again, sorry if I'm doing this wrong. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[mvallevand]

Update to LE Nexus 11.0.3 and try again, I think this was addressed in this fix https://github.com/LibreELEC/LibreELEC.tv/pull/7844

Martin

[robmorren2]

Update to LE Nexus 11.0.3 and try again, I think this was addressed in this  fix https://github.com/LibreELEC/LibreELEC.tv/pull/7844

Martin

Ok, I got all my RasPis updated. 

Just curious (I know there are a lot of factors) -- would it benefit me to have a secondary SSD in my PC specifically to use for recordings and live tv buffer? Right now I have it pointed to an old 3TB drive in my PC, but it's an older non-SSD. My current setup seems to struggle with live tv rewind/FF DVR type functions. I'm just looking for ideas that might help that performance. Thanks again!

[robmorren2]

After updating to 11.0.3 it is freezing more often, but it eventually unlocks itself (sometimes after several mins). With the old version, it would lock up and stop completely. Audio still plays in the background. It also seems to be buffering a lot (which hadn't happened in the past -- I've had this same setup for years). I'm not sure what is going on. Logs for the most recent freezing/stuttering are attached. Thanks! https://paste.kodi.tv/ifazuzayok

[mvallevand]

There are several things to look at but I would start looking at the source, this signal is very low

2023-07-29 23:19:36.599 [DEBUG][4] locked=0, present=1, strength=41000, quality=30 (took 282ms to check)

and it does look like Kodi is trying unsuccessfully to read the file.

Martin

[robmorren2]

There are several things to look at but I would start looking at the source, this signal is very low

2023-07-29 23:19:36.599 [DEBUG][4] locked=0, present=1, strength=41000, quality=30  (took 282ms to check)

and it does look like Kodi is trying unsuccessfully to read the file.

Martin

Thanks for the suggestion. Is there a way to check the signal strength in real time?

[mvallevand]

Hauppauge have this tool. https://www.hauppauge.com/pages/support/...l#overview There are some pointers there too.

Martin