Next Gen Channel Freeze

[danieljlevine]

My Fox 145.1 Baltimore ATSC 3.0 hangs up frequently on commercial breaks just watching live. I can hit the back button to get to the guide and watch the channel again, until the audio and video freeze again. I’m using Google Streamer. I haven’t checked to see if Apple screen so freeze yet. I have diagnostics turned on all the time.

It usually happens during football on Sundays. Not sue if it happens on other ATSC 3.0 channel or ATSC 1.0 channels.

Device ID: 10A296FB

[jasonl]

Comparing vs. another device would be a good place to start, even if it's just putting the same game on your phone or tablet while watching on TV. The GTV Streamer is unfortunately one of the worst streaming devices in currently on the market and suffers from a lot of playback reliability issues.

[danieljlevine]

Was already in process of doing this now. I simultaneously watched using the HD home run app on the same Fox 145.1 channel. The Google streamer froze on that channel but the iPhone kept right on streaming it. Just a few minutes ago.

[howardc1243]

Was already in process of doing this now. I simultaneously watched using the HD home run app on the same Fox 145.1 channel. The Google streamer froze on that channel but the iPhone kept right on streaming it. Just a few minutes ago.

you might want to get the roku ultra it has a better gpu and works very well with the hdhomerun app the Google streamers gpu is very buggy.

[danieljlevine]

On Google Streamer device
HD HomeRun App: 20260826 / UI: 20260908

[danieljlevine]

If it matters, I just got it to happen at about 9:26 PM tonight Eastern time. I made sure diagnostics were on before it happened.

[geriakt]

The Google Streamer uses a MediaTek MT8696 SoC which can be your issue. I am not sure it is optimized for ATSC 3.0 HEVC/AC4 like the Amlogic S905X5M5 found in the ONN 4k Pro2. You may need to consider a new streaming box from Apple or a box with Amlogic S905X5 or S905X5M5 SoCs.

[danieljlevine]

This only just recently started happening, as far as I can tell. I will also mention that I am using passthrough audio and that the Fox 145.1 station is broadcasting with the ATMOS bits set enough to cause my audio system to signal ATMOS.

[danieljlevine]

More anecdotal evidence to consider. When soundbar is connected with eARC, the freeze happens. Normally this is how the soundbar connects to TV. However sometime it connects with ARC and I notice the soundbar showing DDP and ATMOS for this channel (as opposed to MAT ATMOS with eARC). With an ARC connection I did a double take when the freeze didn’t happen through several Fox 145.1 commercial breaks today. Switched back to eARC and freezes are back.

[danieljlevine]

I forced it back ARC to retest. I got it to hang, with that too, so I guess that’s not it.

[danieljlevine]

So any idea what issue is and how to fix it?

[rikd]

So any idea what issue is and how to fix it?

Just my thoughts...

Basically suggests your TV is doing something different with the Audio and in the case with eARC that something is incompatible with your soundbar and that's causing a push back to the video player which stops because it can't feed the audio to the TV (And then on to the soundbar) anymore.

Like anything else ARC and eARC paths are negotiated between all devices.

In the case of ARC - the TV has fewer possibilities in terms of output to the downstream device (soundbar), and in most cases will decode the incoming audio itself and then either send as PCM or re-encode to another format. Your soundbar is happy with this by the sounds of it. The Atmos indicator is just that - an indicator set by the TV to say it received Atmos and the PCM (most likely) has it.

For eARC - the TV has way more possibilities for output since the Audio bandwidth for HDMI 2.0 increased significantly allowing pass through of digital audio is most use cases - i.e. the TV does nothing but send the packets received on it's merry way to your soundbar. In some cases (have only seen personally from a single high bitrate TrueHD audio from BluRay) the bitrate can be too high and the TV is forced to re-encode - but that is unlikely for streaming or broadcast

As I said earlier, looks like your soundbar can't handle the Google Streamer/TV pass through of AC4. If it was working and isn't now is likely an update changed in any of the device (streamer, TV, soundbar) on how that AC4 data is wrapped to get to your soundbar that it just doesn't like, or possibly they just broke compatibility (highly likely). Thus causing it to stop taking any new data causing the push back all the way to the video player for HDHomeRun which stops.

EDIT: Forgot to add. In the case where you managed to get it to break with ARC.. just remember that's between the TV and Soundbar. The connection from TV to the GTV may still have been negotiated the same because you forced ARC (if the TV got a sniff that eARC was possible it might negotiate a different output from the GTV vs what it would take for ARC) - pointing to a possible issue with the GTV to TV data path.

The fix options
- rollback firmware on whatever devices to when it worked
- log issues with TV/Google Streamer/Soundbar to get them to debug and fix
- wait to see if anyone fixes things (can be a very long wait - even if they acknowledge the problem and that they know how to fix it (remembering my painful experience with Sony ))
- since ARC works - don't use pass through all the way to soundbar and get something to do the AC4 decode first.

fwiw -
eARC was meant to fix all the ARC issues.
it just hasn't
We're still faced with incompatibilities between different manufacturers and even broken compatibility in a single brand
Even the fact you notice that sometimes the soundbar connects via ARC instead shows how unreliable it is. (I have the same issues with TCL TV to Bose Soundbar).
Unfortunately most mfgs don't seem to care about ARC/eARC interOp and doesn't help that they all have their own branding for the same thing!
The only sure fire way to make things work is not to use ARC/eARC and instead have a soundbar with HDMI in, and passthrough to the TV.
Unfortunately many soundbars don't have that option

[danieljlevine]

Thanks. Over here viewtopic.php?p=409037#p409037 on July 12, nickk seemed to think you guys may have addressed the issue. However, it doesn’t seem to have fixed it for me. It most definitely seems to hang during commercial change. I don’t believe it hangs during the game or program. Any chance you guys can take a look?