HDHomeRun Prime Live TV on Android TV

[thefloppydisk 2]

I am trying to watch Live TV using an HDHomeRun Prime, mostly on an Nvidia Shield. Via the native HDHomeRun app, everything works flawlessly. There is no stream corruption. However, when trying to stream in Emby, the transcoding starts successfully and the ffmpeg speed quickly drops below 1x and lots of errors start to show up. I have an Intel i5-6600, and the OS is Ubuntu 16.04 Server. I've tried hardware transcoding and software trancoding and just about every configuration in the transcoding setting I could think of (super fast, ultra fast, changing CRF, moving transcoding directory from HDD to SSD), and nothing has worked so far. I have the transcoding issues with streaming on Chrome on my laptop, too.

 

I've attached 4 log files, one pair of server and transcoding logs from when I was trying hardware transcode, and the other when trying software transcode. Any advice you guys can provide would be great.

 

(This is a crosspost from Linux forum, because I think this forum is probably more accurate.)

serverlog_hw.txt

serverlog_sw.txt

transcodelog_hw.txt

transcodelog_sw.txt

[Luke 42078]

On android tv it looks like you've enabled the audio downmixing setting and this might be causing the transcoding. if you uncheck that then this might direct play.

 

As for Chrome, it's not really a fair comparison vs the View app because the browser does not support mpeg2video, therefore transcoding will always be needed. Unless I'm mistaken it looks like your server may just not be able to do it fast enough.

[thefloppydisk 2]

Where would I have enabled audio downmixing? I honestly don't know where that would be. Also, why would I be having so much trouble with the mpeg2video conversion with this processor? It has an 8022 passmark score.

 

I really appreciate the help on this, @@Luke.

[thefloppydisk 2]

Where would I have enabled audio downmixing? I honestly don't know where that would be. Also, why would I be having so much trouble with the mpeg2video conversion with this processor? It has an 8022 passmark score.

 

I really appreciate the help on this, @@Luke.

For Audio output in the Emby app, I have "Direct," not "downmix to Stereo."

[ebr 16178]

What is the Shield attached to?

[thefloppydisk 2]

What is the Shield attached to?

@@ebr, not sure if this is the answer you're looking for, but it's connected to a Panasonic TV via HDMI and has a 1Gbps internet connection. Thanks for your help.

[ebr 16178]

@@ebr, not sure if this is the answer you're looking for, but it's connected to a Panasonic TV via HDMI and has a 1Gbps internet connection. Thanks for your help.

 

Okay, the TV only supports stereo audio and also does not support Dolby Digital.  That is why it is having to convert the audio.

[thefloppydisk 2]

Okay, the TV only supports stereo audio and also does not support Dolby Digital.  That is why it is having to convert the audio.

@@ebr, Does that mean if I buy another TV my issues will go away? I've been looking for an excuse.

Edited September 18, 2017 by thefloppydisk

[ebr 16178]

@@ebr, Does that mean if I buy another TV my issues will go away? I've been looking for an excuse.

 

Not necessarily unless we're talking about a very underpowered server here.  A simple audio transcode should not be causing very much strain.

[thefloppydisk 2]

Not necessarily unless we're talking about a very underpowered server here.  A simple audio transcode should not be causing very much strain.

Definitely not very underpowered, @@ebr. i5 Skylake with 8800 passmark score. Should be able to handle this easily.

[ebr 16178]

Definitely not very underpowered, @@ebr. i5 Skylake with 8800 passmark score. Should be able to handle this easily.

 

I agree, so the bottleneck is elsewhere.

 

In this specific case, you may avoid the problem by having a TV that can accept the audio you are giving it but that is what it will be doing - avoiding the problem.

[thefloppydisk 2]

I agree, so the bottleneck is elsewhere.

 

In this specific case, you may avoid the problem by having a TV that can accept the audio you are giving it but that is what it will be doing - avoiding the problem.

I wanted to post an update. After setting up and testing out tvheadend, which was working pretty well but with some errors, I decided to simply try to move the HDHomeRun closer to the MoCA bridge rather than relying on the poorly-wired apartment coax. Sure enough, looks like the quality is much, much better now with transcoding not erroring out nearly as frequently. I think we have something going here. Thanks for your help, @@Luke and @@ebr.