Hopper w/Sling VOD video/audio glitches

[lparsons21]

I've yet to watch a single VOD on my new Hopper w/Sling that doesn't have at least a few video/audio glitches. What's up with that?

I've noticed a few glitches in live/delayed viewing, but it is much rarer and hardly noticeable.

 

[lucky86]

Are you ordering content from the On Demand menus? Are you ordering and viewing right away, or are you waiting for the full movie to download first? If you are watching IPVOD content then to me it sounds like maybe a network or speed issue. I have no problem viewing while its downloading/streaming but I have 30+MB download speed. Are you connected wireless? What is your download and upload speed? On the order confirmation Watch Now/Watch Later screen it will display the streaming speed. What speed is listed there?

 

[lparsons21]

I wait until after it is fully downloaded. The house network is all wireless and I have 6Mb/1Mb Frontier DSL.

Now on that very same internal network and internet provider, I get Vudu HDX and any other HD streams with no issues whatsoever. So if it is a network issue it must be a Hopper networking issue.

Hmmm..... That got me to thinking. I can change the network connection to what I've used in the past with D*. IOW, ethernet connection from the HDDVR to the Airport Extreme that is extending the wireless network instead of using the Hopper's internal wireless networking.

I'll have to wait a while for that as I have a couple of True Blood episodes downloading now.

 

[gdarwin]

Took mine two days to calm down...

 

[lparsons21]

I'll give it a few days, but frankly don't think that will make a difference. I was installed a bit over a week ago.

So a followup.

I switched over to wired to the Airport Extreme as I said. Tested an episode of True Blood on HBO VOD. No difference. Still glitches and skips spots.

But I also remembered that last night I got Dredd 3D (yeah I know, not great), and it glitched and skipped all over the place. Since it came up immediately I'm assuming that it was already on the hard drive, so the network shouldn't be a part of it.

I know I've seem some minor glitches on almost all recordings, so it makes me think it isn't really a network issue.

BTW, streaming speed for VOD downloads is about 3Mb which is certainly good enough for an HD stream, but is slower than it streams from VUDU which streams with no glitches.

 

[lucky86]

How fast is your VUDU box streaming at? Can you try downloading a free SD IPVOD from the On Demand menu and see if it will stream without glitches? I think 2 MBPS is the recommended speed to view IPVOD but I'm sure the faster your connection the better to a point. Let us know if SD does the same.

 

[lparsons21]

VUDU streams at 4.5-5.0Mb here. As does Hulu Plus.

I've got an SD stream started with Dish and it is showing about 300Kbps, which is a hell of a lot slower than it was doing HD streams. Tells me that Dish is throttling the hell out of their stream I think.

But even if the stream is slower than it ought to be, the picture shouldn't pixelate and skip, or at least not skip.

I don't know what the SD will end up like as it will be quite awhile before it is available to watch. I'll report back.

 

[lucky86]

Interesting, from personal experience I really don't run into these issue with movies I download or stream and I do stream a lot. I think I have about 92 rentals in my folder.

 

[fuzzy]

I also use vudu and watch at 3bars HDX but with Dish it is ok until action then it is blurred!!!

 

[lparsons21]

Well, crap!

Won't be any testing of VOD and all today. When I tried to get the SD it reported some awful slow download speed and I didn't think anything of it since I thought Dish was throttling. Not the case at all, my DSL decided to drop down to 1Mb! Called Frontier and after an hour on the phone they are sending a tech tomorrow. 8AM-5PM service window! Grr...

 

[TheKrell]

Cycle the power on your DSL modem and get it to retrain. Maybe that will fix it.

 

[lucky86]

Maybe it has been doing this periodically and you haven't noticed it and that is causing problems.

 

[lparsons21]

I wish!

I tried resetting the DSL modem, even took the entire house network down too

 

[lparsons21]

Maybe it has been doing this periodically and you haven't noticed it and that is causing problems.

That's possible. But streaming earlier today and the last 2 days has been fine with AppleTV, Vudu and Hulu Plus, you'd think it would have shown up there.

 

[lucky86]

True ... true but you never know

 

[lparsons21]

A little followup...

yesterday the tech from Frontier came by and checked my lines and all is good at this end. He told me that the problem in our town is that the DSL is very congested and that they are already in process of changing out some equipment to ease that. He also informed me that another town close by that was having the same issue a bit back has had their equipment upgraded and they are seeing much better and consistent performance.

Bottom line is it will be about a week of some inconsistencies with DSL performance and then we should see better service. I can live with that.

All of that said, I'm not convinced the issue is with the DSL since watching Dredd 3D PPV which is already on the hard drive. It had terrible macroblocking, skips and just in general not a very good viewing. Since the internet was not involved at all in that, it makes me think I may have some issues on my Hopper. I'll keep observing for a bit and decide later if I need a swap or service call.