Live TV problems

[gene0915 37]

My brother is having some weird problems viewing live TV via Emby. He's using a Roku Ultra.

If he leaves the video setting as 'auto', none of the TV stations work properly, as in, it's constantly buffering and 15fps playback. For the local CBS and NBC feeds, he has to set the video quality manually to 1080/30 megs for perfectly smooth TV viewing. For Fox and ABC, he has to set it for 720p/10 megs.

If this helps, here are some stats for when he's viewing these channels:

CBS
(Has to switch to 1080/30 megs for stutter free viewing)
Stream HLS (15mbps 30fps)
Video 1080i mpeg2video
direct play (15 mbps)

NBC
(Has to manually switch to 1080/30 megs)
Stream HLS (15 mbps 35 fps)
Video 1080i mpeg2video
Direct play (15 mbps)

ABC
(Has to manually switch to 720p/10meg.... this is the max option when viewing this channel)
Stream HLS (8mbps 66fps)
Video 720p mpeg2video

Fox
(Has to manually switch to 720/10 megs... this is the max option when viewing this channel)
Stream - HLS (8 mbps 38fps)
Video 720p mpeg2video

I have AT&T fiber and using a HDHR tuner. He doesn't have problems streaming any movies or TV shows from me..... only the live TV stuff is causing problems.

embyserver.txt ffmpeg-remux-00f412d7-025c-4ac5-a2f3-1c82cc9f13df_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-6e8e0239-3609-44ba-9c38-d83f2a9a97ed_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-0143c750-15f6-4d93-9e86-c6606c32bbea_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-ecc5215b-f880-4fe6-945e-51cfc3f0cf4b_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-6ec3049c-ad66-4c0c-aa3c-15c6612d3940_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-70b8e8f0-6255-4dd1-a70c-633e277407f6_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-794e29a1-463c-4ea6-99e8-cfda7a3ddd54_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-1900ae7b-6aa4-456b-a031-727a3957dbbc_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-d3e5ff45-4c7b-461e-9796-b85bdfc913a4_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-dae70d14-ded2-47cb-95d5-983f7d7d1f8c_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-dd1b200b-4a65-46bc-8c24-c4ca099ccd4d_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-fee112ac-c33c-4889-a6cf-872fc9824a87_1.txt

[Gilgamesh_48 943]

One of Emby's most valuable features is "Live TV" but also Live TV is one of Emby's greatest flaws. Even the DVR feature does not really redeem the lack of good reliability and performance. However I use CH-DVR and I have really no problems except when I try to use M3U files to be able to use Emby. While that works, mostly, it is quite hard to use and unreliable for my use. 

I strongly suggest that, if you are having a problem with Live TV functionally in Emby explore alternatives like CH-DVR or others. However I also recommend that you avoid Plex as it is MUCH worse than Emby for handling TV broadcasts. 

It appears the Emby works very well for most people wanting TV functions but not for me. I think it is because Emby handles TV via a "tuner" very well but cannot reliably handle the complexities of other sources.

My experience is probably not indicative of Emby's TV performance overall and if I lived in a location where OTA TV was available Emby would, possibly, be my go to app for TV but I receive only one channel intermittently and I have to use other sources to receive even minimal TV.

So look closely at alternatives if you have trouble with TV in Emby.

BTW: For me Emby is by far the best of the media streamers available BUT things like live TV are simply grafted add on sand not at all the best in that category. 

[gene0915 37]

@Gilgamesh_48Thanks for the reply!

Locally, Emby usually does a decent enough job for TV tuner stuff but I hardly use my HDHR with Emby.... I usually just fire up the HDHomeRun Android TV app.

If by CH-DVR you're referring to Channels.... I agree, it's probably the best TV Tuner/DVR application I've ever used, hands down! BUT, I think the $80/year is a bit on the high side. If OTA is your life, I could totally see paying that price. I think I bought it during the winter Olympics a few years ago and used it for just that and forgot I even had an active subscription. I eventually cancelled it because I just don't record any OTA stuff.

As for my brother's problem, the only reason I have Emby setup to pull in my HDHR is because my brother loves football and he often watches my local feeds since he's 'out of market'. Whatever solution I pick, he needs to be able to easily access my OTA stuff. Emby is the best (only?) choice for this until we figure something else out.

[ebr 14913]

Hi.  Is it possible for him to test with the web app to compare?

[gene0915 37]

On 10/29/2023 at 10:50 AM, ebr said:

Hi.  Is it possible for him to test with the web app to compare?

Good morning and thanks for the reply!

When he tested via the web page, leaving the video setting on auto, all 4 channels defaulted to 2mbps. He could manually adjust CBS and NBC to 1080/30 megs (his max) for a better picture and ABC and Fox could be upped to 720/10 megs for a better picture.

When I tested via the web page, leaving the setting on auto, CBS and NBC defaulted to 1080/60 megs and ABC and Fox defaulted to 720/10 megs.

Why isn't his Roku or PC defaulting to the max while 'auto' is enabled?

 

Minor question.... why does he get a max setting of 1080/30 megs for CBS and NBC where as I can go up to 1080/60 megs?

 

Attaching some log files from this morning when he was using his PC:

 

embyserver.txt ffmpeg-transcode-1d56446e-7815-451a-b631-cf1b3f2012b7_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-1e803626-06fb-4d05-970e-67822280413e_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-3af755e8-ed12-4aa4-8dda-06a6b3c18929_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-49a51834-9088-43d1-9c09-998730b17dd0_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-64cf894a-8877-4ad6-99c3-926f30539b88_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-762cc6af-cda3-4ca0-a7f9-c39b2db403a4_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-15382e64-d51e-419d-a8d9-f7b1d3270385_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-21592db0-03b2-4469-bb32-f5536d8cf520_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-b985e88f-6505-4f98-baf5-a3d6b797cd0f_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-bd88073b-5b27-4a67-87b6-5da0e3016a84_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-ce847001-b3a6-421c-a3c1-9771265f5720_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-e3ff398d-8787-4d14-9051-525f28a6353d_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-fa82b873-62d6-4acf-9fd8-2b2dede635fc_1.txt

[ebr 14913]

It sounds  a lot like his connection cannot really handle those high of bitrates.  In looking at several of those logs, there are widely variable bitrate settings from 140mb all the way to 1.3Mb and also reports of direct playback errors.

BTW - all the logs I looked at were using the web app.

[gene0915 37]

1 hour ago, ebr said:

It sounds  a lot like his connection cannot really handle those high of bitrates.  In looking at several of those logs, there are widely variable bitrate settings from 140mb all the way to 1.3Mb and also reports of direct playback errors.

BTW - all the logs I looked at were using the web app.

But if he manually sets his connection to 1080/30 megs for CBS and NBC (or 720/10 megs for ABC and FOX) there are zero problems and playback is perfect so I wouldn't think there are any problems with his PC's connection to the internet. He has 1 gig down.

Could the auto-negotiation algorithm be messed up? When he leaves it on 'auto', it always jumps straight to 720/2 megs for all 4 channels and the picture quality is bad.

I turned on live TV access for another person in a different part of the state (using a Roku TV) and I was able to see the same results. Server problem?

Also, I saw this during playback: 'Reducing bitrate due to quality setting' but I don't have a bitrate limit set:

[Luke 37071]

Quote

 

But if he manually sets his connection to 1080/30 megs for CBS and NBC (or 720/10 megs for ABC and FOX) there are zero problems and playback is perfect so I wouldn't think there are any problems with his PC's connection to the internet. He has 1 gig down.

HI, it doesn't mean there is a problem with this connection, or yours. It is just a reflection of the speed at which he's able to download the content from your server. Does that make sense?

[Luke 37071]

Quote

Also, I saw this during playback: 'Reducing bitrate due to quality setting' but I don't have a bitrate limit set:

But the user might on their end.

[ebr 14913]

3 hours ago, gene0915 said:

When he leaves it on 'auto', it always jumps straight to 720/2 megs

Hi.  That would be an indication of a poor quality connection as the app runs a test just before playback.  It could be a widely variable situation where the quality is good mostly but then dips badly for a bit.  

Since it is Live TV, it could also potentially be related to that source.

[gene0915 37]

2 hours ago, Luke said:

But the user might on their end.

Duh, you're right..... sorry I didn't catch that sooner ..... but.........

1 hour ago, ebr said:

Hi.  That would be an indication of a poor quality connection as the app runs a test just before playback.  It could be a widely variable situation where the quality is good mostly but then dips badly for a bit.  

Since it is Live TV, it could also potentially be related to that source.

I did some testing with a 3rd friend and live TV viewing yielded the same pattern. He's on AT&T fiber and lives right down the street from me.

Also, I saw the same issue when we tested a 1080p Remux movie so it's not just a live TV issue. With his video quality was set to 'auto', his Smart TV (Samsung) defaulted to 5mbps. I had him go into the settings and change it to '1080/60 megs', and the video was much better and played perfectly smooth.

Did some iPerf tests to/from his IP and it was maxing out our 1 gig connection to each other. Getting speeds of 900+Mbps both ways.

I hear what you're saying about a poor connection between us making the 'auto' setting default to 2-5Mbps but I'm seeing the same pattern with 3 different people, 3 different ISPs and 3 different geographic locations. My brother was using a Roku Ultra, person # 2 had a TCL Roku TV and person # 3 was using a Samsung TV. Since the clients are different, this still has me thinking it's a server problem.

In all 3 cases, when they adjusted their playback to the max setting, everything is perfect. Only when they leave the playback setting on 'auto' do things go off the rails.

[Luke 37071]

Hi, are you still having an issue with this?

[gene0915 37]

4 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, are you still having an issue with this?

Yes. Leaving quality on 'auto' always results in playback issues. Manually adjusting it to the maximum and everything is perfect. Want me to try upgrading to the latest beta?

[Luke 37071]

15 hours ago, gene0915 said:

Yes. Leaving quality on 'auto' always results in playback issues. Manually adjusting it to the maximum and everything is perfect. Want me to try upgrading to the latest beta?

That would be great, thanks.

[gene0915 37]

5 hours ago, Luke said:

That would be great, thanks.

Switched to beta 4.8.0.60 and same problem ..... Emby defaults to 2Mbps when the setting is 'auto' which results in sub-par video playback. If my brother manually changes it to the maximum (720p/10 meg), playback is flawless.

Attaching server log and some transcoding logs.

 

 

embyserver.txt ffmpeg-remux-0dc2d477-1e01-47ef-8279-e56034684322_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-90e33d3f-c215-437e-8b64-09e23cfd7d1d_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-e6ba3d50-ac02-44cf-9067-fe70ed8488ca_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-3d755f98-6d86-4ce1-81fd-7ac18170c93b_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-71e62ae1-816e-4410-bca7-68ef32bf7f8d_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-0201937c-7c01-4961-8d6f-172282f48553_1.txt

[Luke 37071]

What do you mean by sub-par?

[gene0915 37]

20 minutes ago, Luke said:

What do you mean by sub-par?

Sub-par as in lots of buffering and everything is washed out and lots of macro-blocking. Turning off 'auto' and manually setting the quality to max, perfect picture.

Since 3 different people are reporting this from 3 different geographic regions, 3 different ISPs, 3 different playback devices, I'm thinking it has to be a problem on the server. I don't think it's a speed problem between us because for each of them, if they pick a 1080p movie and set the quality to the max, Emby serves them the direct stream, the video quality is perfect and they can maintain the higher bit rate with zero issues. Only when switching to 'auto' does the Emby server downgrade to 2Mbps and gives them a crappy video stream.

If you'd like to see if you can reproduce it, I'm totally fine with giving you (or ebr) an account on my server.

[gene0915 37]

Updated to .61 beta and the problem continues. Had a friend try playing a 1080p Remux episode of Game of Thrones and when he set his playback as 'auto', it defaulted to 1080p 5 megs and in his words, "looked blocky during certain scenes and kinda crappy".

When he manually changed remote quality to 1080p/30 megs, he said it "looks PERFECT".

Same with live TV. Leaving it on 'auto', it defaults to 2Mbps, chokes on fast moving scenes and lots of macro blocking. Switching it manually to 1080/30 megs or 720/10 megs, plays perfectly smooth and looks nice and sharp.

Uploading logs.

 

embyserver.txt ffmpeg-remux-14c684e0-0fce-4f81-9d00-6c7e43bba611_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-14e4b57d-6317-4c71-a2f4-59617752e9b9_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-6282ae72-5a5b-4205-83a5-459ddc2abebb_1.txt ffmpeg-remux-dca4063f-402f-40cc-9959-4e84cba8f822_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-2c0b0e3e-f031-472f-977a-9b37b4cac2e9_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-6b4c8319-af58-4484-bb69-66ed0c71f637_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-16a1c85c-b55d-4cd6-b241-756e9215c6ff_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-a11e4466-6772-4a64-b4c3-ec81e58ce383_1.txt ffmpeg-transcode-f96168dc-d9b2-4aeb-aae3-19d9f26b775a_1.txt

[ebr 14913]

Hi.  So the solution here is just for them to select a higher bitrate in the app, correct?

There could be some traffic shaping going on somewhere that is affecting the auto detection.

[gene0915 37]

23 minutes ago, ebr said:

Hi.  So the solution here is just for them to select a higher bitrate in the app, correct?

There could be some traffic shaping going on somewhere that is affecting the auto detection.

Correct but I'd like to try and find out why using 'auto' is making Emby default to the absolute lowest quality. But for example, when my brother watches a TV station and manually adjusts it to 1080/30 megs, he's fine..... if he goes to something else and comes back to that same channel, the remote quality defaults back to 'auto' and 2Mbps. He needs to go back in -again- and manually set it to 1080/30.

Since this is happening with 3 different people, 3 different ISPs with multiple playback devices, I still think it's something on the server side. I'd be more than happy to give you an account on my server if you want to try and reproduce it to see for yourself.

I'm going to have my brother set up an Emby server at his place so I can do a quick test to see if I experience the same problem from the client side.

[speechles 1919]

When using Auto over the remote connection it may not work as designed because of outside factors. It might be the initial delay to begin sending the payload that the client has requested to download to test the speed of the connection. It is timed in milliseconds on the client how long is takes to download the entire payload from the server. Not sure what the exact payload size is, but it isn't that large and isn't like an actual speed test you find on speed test sites. It is a small payload. That might be the reason. If the initial handshake takes longer to begin say half as long as downloading the payload. 50% of the time is handshake and 50% downloading. This will halve their download speed lower than it actually is in that case. It really depends on the trace route from you to them. If you know their IP you can look through the hops. That might give you some clues. You can also paste how long those hops take here and perhaps someone on the same ISP as you is suffering the same fate. Their download speed and your upload speed also factor into this. Theoretical maximums aren't possible outside your own ISP. So the speed you have may not be possible for them.

Edited November 28, 2023 by speechles

[gene0915 37]

2 hours ago, speechles said:

When using Auto over the remote connection it may not work as designed because of outside factors. It might be the initial delay to begin sending the payload that the client has requested to download to test the speed of the connection. It is timed in milliseconds on the client how long is takes to download the entire payload from the server. Not sure what the exact payload size is, but it isn't that large and isn't like an actual speed test you find on speed test sites. It is a small payload. That might be the reason. If the initial handshake takes longer to begin say half as long as downloading the payload. 50% of the time is handshake and 50% downloading. This will halve their download speed lower than it actually is in that case. It really depends on the trace route from you to them. If you know their IP you can look through the hops. That might give you some clues. You can also paste how long those hops take here and perhaps someone on the same ISP as you is suffering the same fate. Their download speed and your upload speed also factor into this. Theoretical maximums aren't possible outside your own ISP. So the speed you have may not be possible for them.

Totally understand what you're saying and if that's what's going on, maybe there needs to be a longer handshake process because when my brother and friends default to 2Mbps, if they go in and manually change it to 1080p/30 or 60 megs, their playback is perfect so being on 1 gig fiber upload, I definitely have the bandwidth.

But check this out........... did some testing...... (this is mainly for Luke and ebr)..... my brother downloaded the current, production version of Emby. He's also using Debian and added a quick library.

When I pull from him, and have my remote quality set for 'auto', it defaulted to 1080p/60 megs and worked as intended! I also installed Emby on another box at my house (another Debian 12 system) and still have the same problem.

Currently, I have AT&T fiber which comes into my house and goes into their BGW320-505 gateway (which is in IP-Passthrough mode). All traffic is passed over to my router. To eliminate my router, I'm going to set up Emby on a NUC and plug it straight into the AT&T box and see if I can forward incoming 8096 traffic to it. Not sure if this will work while the AT&T gateway is in passthrough mode because in passthrough mode, it might ignore port forwarding rules I create on the gateway.

(Just grasping at straws because I don't know what else can be done to fix this.)

EDIT: Something else that further muddies the water..... my friends didn't have this problem until recently. I'd say that it all started a few months ago.

Edited November 28, 2023 by gene0915

[ebr 14913]

5 hours ago, gene0915 said:

the remote quality defaults back to 'auto' and 2Mbps. He needs to go back in -again- and manually set it to 1080/30.

He needs to go into the settings in the app (cog at top of home screen) and set the quality there.  Changing quality during playback is just for that playback session.  The setting in the settings screen will "stick".

The Auto test requests a batch of data from your server and measures how long it takes and then sets the max based on that.  There could be something "shaping" the download and not the streaming.

[mwongjay 64]

This was a longstanding issue with external family members at 3 separate homes. Even after their Apple TVs were hardwired to their routers and no advanced configurations like traffic shaping when video quality was set to Auto Emby transcodes down to ~2-3mbps due to "low bitrate". All family members have 1gbps symmetrical fiber and when remotely downloading content from my cloud they were exceeding 60MB/s download speeds. I tried debugging this several times and found that setting their video quality to 4k - 160 mbps was the only thing that was a 100% fix.

[gene0915 37]

On 11/28/2023 at 5:55 PM, ebr said:

He needs to go into the settings in the app (cog at top of home screen) and set the quality there.  Changing quality during playback is just for that playback session.  The setting in the settings screen will "stick".

 

On 11/28/2023 at 7:57 PM, mwongjay said:

I tried debugging this several times and found that setting their video quality to 4k - 160 mbps was the only thing that was a 100% fix.

Thank you both, that was the trick! Going into the MAIN settings section and after adjusting playback quality to 4K/160, live TV is automatically going to the max the station is pumping out and my 4K and 1080p Remux files are all streaming perfectly fine now!!

@mwongjaySince we're both having the same problem.... what is your network setup at home if you don't mind me asking? I have AT&T fiber and am using their BGW320-505 gateway and it's in passthrough mode to my ASUS AX86U router. Emby is running on an Intel box and using Debian 12.