Pluto->tvheadend->kodi unreliable live tv playback

Jason Ferrara

I'm using tvheadend with an HDHomeRun tuner and also Pluto TV using the script at https://github.com/mclenburg/plutoTV-tvheadend.

Channels from the HDHomeRun tuner work fine, but playback of anything from Pluto TV is horribly unreliable. Random freezes, video dropouts, and jumpy video. Problems usually occur on commercial or program transitions. Sometimes when the channel starts playing Kodi thinks its audio only. Using HTTP instead of HTSP greatly improves things (though still not perfect), but then I loose the live tv time shifting ability. The same streams work fine when played in Kodi directly using the Pluto TV plugin.

I don't see anything unexpected in the tvheadend logs. In the Kodi logs there are lots of things like...
2021-02-19 15:55:21.439 T:4667 WARNING <general>: ActiveAE - large audio sync error: -5296.917690
2021-02-19 15:55:21.440 T:4667 WARNING <general>: ActiveAE - large audio sync error: -5246.916753
2021-02-19 15:55:21.440 T:4808 INFO <general>: CVideoPlayerVideo - Stillframe left, switching to normal playback
2

which I don't see when using HTTP for streaming.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks

- Jason

Mark de Leon

I would ask the following:

Where are you getting your Pluto TV channel list?

If you say Kodi Addon, which one as I am aware of two and possibly three.

One observation about Pluto TV addons is that some show commercials where others show a Pluto TV logo in place of commercials.

Some of the problems I have seen with Pluto TV are:

About 7 seconds before a commercial there is a frame of black. This also seems to trigger some systems to begin to stutter.

Commercials in general are unreliable but getting better in that regard.

even on Xfinity streaming (completely different commercials) from Comcast, on the Xfinity Cable box, Pluto TV often hangs changing between commercials and programs.

I wish I could find a completely reliable Pluto TV source but they all seem to have issues.