RPi4, TVHeadend & playback

LybsterKodi · November 27, 2022 at 1:17 PM

I'm posting here rather than the PVR group because I think the problem is with Kodi playback not TVHeadend. Since I don't know just where the split occurs I'm not sure if it should be here or the Kodi forum. On with the sad story.

Point 1: My dual RPi3 setup with one RPi3 used for TVHeadend server and the other for the client and playing films works solidly and has for several years. The move to RPi4 was to consolidate onto one box and remove some of the rats nest behind the TV.

Setup: RPi4 4GB with latest updates, LibreELEC-RPi4.arm-11.0-nightly-20221121, TVHeadend 4.3 server, TVHeadend client

Problem: "juddering", maybe skipping frames occasionally (my interpretation of the teleporting)

I've just tried TVHeadend again on the RPi4 and whilst it seems a bit better the problem of juddering is still there. At its worst on one of the things I tried to record (homes under the hammer) a person walking towards a house "teleported" about 5 feet. Very difficult to describe properly but on Laura Kuenssberg one of the people on a panel looked as though their hands weren't really part of their body almost the effect you get by waving your fingers in front of your eyes.

The effect is more pronounced on the main TV (Panasonic TX40CX680B) than on the 24" second hand one (Technika something or other) I bought for testing.

I've tried using matroska rather than pass for recording and it made a fractional difference. I also tried setting the URL from 127.0.0.1 to the router URL for th3 Pi - again a fractional difference.

Way back I had someone suggest altering the deinterlacing but I can't find anywhere to do that, either on Kodi/TVHeadend or my TV.

Thinking it might be the recording rather than playback I copied the clips over to a memory stick.plugged it into the TV - plays smooth as silk, the man walked rather than teleporting. I plugged the same memory stick into the RPi4 and played the file directly from Videos| Files and had the man teleporting again.

Its now been over a year and a couple of hundred quid since I started trying to switch over to a single RPi4 rather than two RPI3s. I'm happy to try almost anything suggested (please give simple instructions) before I resort to introducing the RPi4 to a nice large hammer.

EDIT

Just had another thought - not a solution but it may help to identify one - I handbraked the Homes Under The Hammer clip and played that on the RPi4 - its fine as an mp4 but not as recorded as mkv.

Mrtj18 · November 27, 2022 at 6:18 PM

this may or may not help your situation, but when I ran tvheadend through my rpi4 and RPI 3a I had nothing but issue after issues. Constant disconnects, channel buffering, recordings failing, and slow user interface on the tvheadend server configuration menu. Although tvheadend on the rpi 4 was not pushing the harware to the limit, I still had lots of issues.

Once I switch my tvheadend server to more powerful hardware ( my unraid 5600x AMD setup), the channel scanning was twice as fast, it's more stable ( no more disconnects), and channel playback is 100% better.

Now, I only use my RPI 4 for as a client device for all media consumption. In my home

LybsterKodi · November 28, 2022 at 6:17 AM

Thanks for the post, if nothing else it helps to know that others have had problems.:)

Id have a "solution" by just leaving my current setup alone(and making very sure it doesn't update anything).

LybsterKodi · November 30, 2022 at 11:10 AM

For some unknown reason I decided to try altering the resolution & refresh rate to 1920x1080p @ 60Hz andtrying my test of Homes Under The Hammer with its teleporting man it seems to have worked. Ineed to dismantle the RPi3 setup again and replace with the RPi4 and do some more testing but its looking good.