Live TV playback quirks on iOS 15.2, 9th Gen iPad 10.2, 256GB

[MikeTech 0]

Brand new 9th Gen iPad 10.2, 256GB running iOS 15.2. Getting laggy/jerky playback with some combing effects on certain standard def (non-HD) Live TV channels streamed via HDHomerun tuner. All HD channels are fine with quality set on Auto - Direct.

Manually setting quality to 480p-4Mbps does not help significantly, BUT using Safari on this new iPad to access the same stream via web interface does work perfectly and auto-sets the quality to transcode 480p-4Mbps with no lag or combing.

Oddly, playback is perfectly fine on the same network and wifi access point using exact same settings on elderly iPad Air 2/128 GB running iOS 14.4.2. Video clip below of both iPads side by side accessing the same channel with the same settings, Gen 9 iPad on left, iPad Air 2 on right.

Also, no such issues on iPhone XR currently running iOS 15.1

Apparently there is something the app does not like about either iOS 15.2 or the iPad Gen 9 platform...? 

Just to cover all the bases, I did a remove/reinstall of the Emby app, but no change there either. Emby server being accessed is version 4.6.7.0, but I do not believe this is a server-side issue.

Also, there are no issues with the HDHomerun tuner, all available channels stream perfectly when accessed directly via the HDHomerun app.

Not a major deal, but I thought I should post this for what it's worth. For now, I will just continue to use Safari to access Emby for those SD channels.

Thanks!

 

 

 

Edited January 5, 2022 by MikeTech
Changed video file format

[Luke 37063]

Hi @MikeTech can we please look at the specifics of an example?

Thanks !

[MikeTech 0]

OK, of course -  but I am not sure what specifics you would want to see beyond the complete description of platform, OS and server versions, and video demo of the issue as posted above. Can you be more specific about what I did not include? Or was the issue not obvious in the video or description? I tried to be as comprehensive as possible. Server logs, maybe? Not sure what that would show, since it does not appear to be a server side issue to me…?

[Luke 37063]

@MikeTech Hi, all of the information requested in my link above:

• If you saw error messages, please tell us what they were. If the problem is difficult to explain, please include screenshots that demonstrate the issue.
• Please attach the server log from the time frame the activity occurred. See the section below titled Emby Server Logs. Please supply the full and complete log file, and avoid attempting to extract relevant sections. Everything is relevant to us. If a server transcoding log was also generated during playback (in the server logs folder), please attach that as well.

Thanks.

[MikeTech 0]

OK, I set up the test scenario once again, and have now attached the complete server log with debugging turned on for today’s date with the testing that began at around 14:56 (with a few stops and starts to get things into sync) ending at around 15:05. For purposes of identification the two devices appear in the server log as follows:

MCWAir2 - 192.168.1.224

MCWGen9 -192.168.1.236

I have attached a new video that corresponds to the attached log for that time, please let me know if you are unable to play the file or see the issues in question. Looks like maybe the previous MOV video was not playable in all browsers, so I uploaded this one as an mp4. Once again, the iPad Gen 9 with the jerky video is on the left, the iPad Air 2 that plays the same stream smoothly is on the right. Watching each in turn will show the subtle difference in playback between the two devices.

I was thinking it was better to see the motion artifacts in a video vs. a static screenshot that would not display anything much, but have now attached screenshots from the same test as requested if you think that will help.

There were no client side error messages seen, and no errors appearing in the server dashboard.

I believe that everything else in the provided link (which I actually did read before posting the original message!) was previously included with a complete description of the issue, please let me know if you still need more info.

embyserver.txt

Edited January 5, 2022 by MikeTech

[Luke 37063]

@MikeTech are you still running into this?

[MikeTech 0]

Yup. It’s only a minor irritation in this limited scenario, so my workaround is just to stream these channels in Safari. I also tested the same setup on a 9.7” iPad 6th gen running iOS 15.2.1 and the SD source in question streams perfectly in the Emby app. So, it’s looking more like it’s probably something about the newer processor that the app doesn’t  like. Very weird. What is different between the way Safari handles this stream vs the Emby app? Makes no sense to me, yet there it is. Thanks for asking!