TVheadend Jerky Video with Kodi

lord slash

Hello, I have a Raspberry Pi 2 that I use as backend with HTS Tvheadend 4.0.8 ~ OpenELEC Tvh-addon v6.0.4 and I have a Raspberry Pi B+ that I would like to use as frontend with openelec. If I use the TVHeadend PVR addon when I start the video the screen remains black and I can hear only the audio, but when I use the IPTV Simple PVR addon I can see the video and I can hear the audio, but the video is extremely jerky (very low framerate).
Some more infos:
-Both the PIs are on the same LAN
-When I use VLC as frontend (on my PC or on my smartphone) everything works perfectly

-I have purchased the MPEG2 and VC-1 codecs for the backend PI

So I would say something is not configured properly on my front end PI, but I don't get what.
Thank you for your help!

Robert Cameron

Sounds like you haven't properly enabled the MPEG2 license. What does the output of `vcgencmd codec_enabled MPG2` say?

lord slash

both codecs are enabled (on the backend PI):


LivingRoom:~ # vcgencmd codec_enabled MPG2
MPG2=enabled
LivingRoom:~ # vcgencmd codec_enabled WVC1
WVC1=enabled

Robert Cameron

Well, if it's not the codec, it could be a bandwidth issue. Are they wired, or are you using WiFi? And what about the source of the recordings? You said they're being served by a RPi, but what is the storage medium? Could there be a bandwidth/throughput issue from the source, perhaps by reading and writing simultaneously if you're using timeshifting?

(Another thought: Have you enabled hardware video decoding on the frontend?)

lord slash

They are both wired to the same router. No recordings, I am watching TV in live stream (or I would like to). As I said the stream works perfectly when my front end is my laptop or my phone.
The hardware video decode is by default enabled on openelec, but I tried to disable it and then when I use the TVHeadend PVR addon I can actually see some frames before the PI freezes (when the acceleration is enabled I see only a black screen and I hear the audio)...

lord slash

anyone? is there some other tests that I can make in order to isolate the problem?

Chris Nicholaidis

On Android versions of Kodi you'll want to disable amcodec so only mediacodecs are enabled but I'm not sure if this applies to openelec