Multiseat: A lot of stuttering, artifacts, pixelation, freezes with RTSP/UNC (6 Viewers)

[HTPCSourcer]

A 1:4000 frame drop rate is a bit high - mine is more like 10x better (40000:1), but I run a single-seat system using free-to-air DVB-T/DVB-T2.

When watching a SD channel via SAT I am getting even better results than you. So the 1:4000 applies to encrypted HD channels (1080i) using a CAM that I believe is not the fastest one in town.

[Solved] Signature Errors:

• It looks as if I have been able to eliminate them
• As discussed in depth in this thread we are dealing with SMB-related signing processes of the communication between Client and Server. Since I run a domain controller, but @Snoopy87 does not, the DC is not the culprit. Instead we are facing a situation where server and client settings do not 100% match, which leads to situations where signing is rejected.
• Solution: Complete deactivation of the digital signing process on both server and client via Group policy. It is clear that this sacrifices some security, but that 's accepatable in a home network.
• Don't do this in a corporate/professional environment please. Instead one may try to force active action of all options below.
• The underlying issue is that Microsoft is not configuring a correct default setup in both 2012 and 2012 R2 when installing the OS and then connecting the clients.

Audio glitches
The Problem remains that I have been experiencing some audio disruptions today despite no dropped frames in the Shift-1 view while watching a SD channel. Unfortunately I was not running in debug Level when I witnessed this, hence I need to reproduce this before I can post MePo logs. What reason can there be that leads to disrupting Audio but is not (visibly) affecting the TV picture?

Regards,
HTPC_Sourcer

 

[Snoopy87]

At the beginning I had a lot of issues while using a WIFI connection and less issues while using a cable. But then I figured out it was a temporay issue. After reseting my wifi router everything was OK. I never tried to use a cable for many days to see if those frame drops also appear or gone. The problem is, that there is no space left to use a cable in my rooms for many days

I also already tried BufferingDelayInMilliSeconds. The result was, that I got more issues. I have the best result with a value of 0.

I will try to disable those SMB signing settings. But do protected network share folders (user+password) still work after that?

 

[HTPCSourcer]

But do protected network share folders (user+password) still work after that?

Yes. The above settings simply deactivate SMB, which is the signing process of the commuciation protocol between Server and Clients. The authentication process to access the server (i.e. logon, privileges, ...) is not affected.

 

[HTPCSourcer]

Solution: Complete deactivation of the digital signing process on both server and client via Group policy. It is clear that this sacrifices some security,

Actually it is enough to deactivate the mandatory signing and keep the Options on Server and client "if Server allows it" active. This way security is not jeopardized.

 

[Owlsroost]

Audio glitches
The Problem remains that I have been experiencing some audio disruptions today despite no dropped frames in the Shift-1 view while watching a SD channel. Unfortunately I was not running in debug Level when I witnessed this, hence I need to reproduce this before I can post MePo logs. What reason can there be that leads to disrupting Audio but is not (visibly) affecting the TV picture?

Regards,
HTPC_Sourcer

If you have audio dropouts it may be because the audio renderer is running low on data, but's really difficult to tell if this is the problem from the logs.

Does this happen with recordings also ?
Which audio renderer are you using ?

 

[HTPCSourcer]

Hi @Owlsroost ,

I really appreciate your engagement

Recordings are playing perfect. Codec used is MS-DTV/Direct Sound Device. Therefore the issue appears related to the reading of the timeshift file. Whenever there is an audio interruption and I go back a few seconds, the glitch is not repeating itself.

Sometimes major hickups occur, but then I can see continuity errors, which may be due to the CAM/CI not delivering data - at least that's what I hope. This way I have a reason to by a Deltacam or something similar with better performance. Based on the CAM hypothesis I want to verify the behavior for FTA SD and HD channels, but I believe that I also got a few audio interruptions for German FTA-HD.

What kind of test could help to track this further down?

 

[HTPCSourcer]

Coming back on this:

If you ended up back at the TV 'connection screen' it suggests there might be a networking problem.....

Indeed - I found out that the system was losing connection in fixed intervals every two hours. The attempt to open the log coincided with that very moment. This was absolutely reproducible and I spent the whole day yesterday to figure out what was going on and attempted repair (new BIOS, new drivers, endless reboots, registry, ...) - 10 hours of what was supposed to be a nice day of vacation.

This morning I created a new profile on the HTPC (remember, PC connected to a WS 2012E domain), launched MePo and let TV run. Two hours passed and it continued to run. Somehow all the issues were gone with the new profile.

Why am I telling this? Well, I've been watching encrypted Sky channels for hours this evening and had one (1) almost unremarkable audio glitch. I should also mention that I upgraded to 1.10 pre after the initial run test this morning. So tonight I've been watching TV with the standard tsreader roll-out.

I am really happy with the performance and do keep fingers crossed that this will now be stable. That leaves us with finding a solution for @Snoopy87

 

[daimian]

I have this issue as well. Give me a few days to catch up with all that has been tested in this thread and I will post the results soon.

 

[Snoopy87]

The tips of HTPC_Sourcer didnt work for me, still having invalid signature issues and still not knowing whether they really causing the playback issues.

 

[daimian]

OK so a long weekend of playing with Media Portal resulted with 98% TV stream quality.

Majority of my issues were solved via suggestions in this thread including configuring to use UNC multi-seat files and using Microsoft DTV codec. I believe my remaining issues are from WiFi and/or TV signal. I will continue to monitor for issues.

Thanks guys for all the help and hard work!