Tv Series episodes keep freezing

[jellytotz]

Hello all,

We have a "premium" service subscription, which offers VOD movies and TV Series. Lately TV Series episodes have become unwatchable. The video/sound will freeze, then resume. But the time it's frozen can be a few seconds to several minutes, and a few seconds later it will freeze again.

I'm thinking it may be the service that's having issues. But is it possible it's the app? Is there anything I can try (e.g. settings/option), to reduce this issue?

Thanks in advance!

[Emporium]

Have you asked your "premium" provider if they have any app available for Android boxes ?  I can't post any links to other apps here, but your provider should be able to give you something.

You can install it in parallel on your buzztv box.  There are many other apps you can install on the box and that way when you have an issue on buzztv 5, you can also check using the other app also which is installed on the same box, so you can validate if the problem is on the server, or the app.

Have you tried using a VPN service ?  Many Internet providers are throttling (and sometimes blocking) many services.  If you don't have one, you can surely create a free Proton account and download and use ProtonVPN which does have a free tier which works perfectly fine.  Easy way to test if your internet provider is blocking/throttling.

On BuzzTV 5, have you tried to go into settings->configuration and change the "player" that it uses for VOD/TV Series ?  I often use the backup player or external player (and I have MX player installed).

 

 

[jellytotz]

1 hour ago, Emporium said:

Have you asked your "premium" provider if they have any app available for Android boxes ?

I will look into that.

1 hour ago, Emporium said:

On BuzzTV 5, have you tried to go into settings->configuration and change the "player" that it uses for VOD/TV Series ?

I tried the backup player. It didn't work; the episode froze in under 3 minutes.

1 hour ago, Emporium said:

I often use the backup player or external player (and I have MX player installed).

Can you please advise me on how to "link" an external player to VOD/TV-Series? In TV Series when I tried playing an episode, it asked which external player I wanted and I chose VLC, but all that did was load the VLC app main menu (the episode didn't play).

[Emporium]

Download and install MX Player.  Once installed and it will also have MX player in the list, so you can choose that.

VLC is great (and I believe the backup player is libVLC essentially).  But sometimes using VLC as external player, it may not work.  Ever since old version 3.63 I believe, VLC broke external calls and sometimes, depending on how it registered itself during install, it may fail to load and play an external link passed to it.  MX Player is just as good as an external player.

If backup player is freezing also, then I strongly suspect the issue is on the server end, not your box.

If you are connected using WiFi, and you are not too far from your router, maybe you can try connecting the box with an Ethernet cable.  That way you can rule out WiFi interference.  

I am assuming you have already tried rebooting your modem and router, just in case ?

 

[dishuser]

1 hour ago, jellytotz said:

I will look into that.

I tried the backup player. It didn't work; the episode froze in under 3 minutes.

Can you please advise me on how to "link" an external player to VOD/TV-Series? In TV Series when I tried playing an episode, it asked which external player I wanted and I chose VLC, but all that did was load the VLC app main menu (the episode didn't play).

you either need a vpn or the issue is with your service

[jellytotz]

18 hours ago, Emporium said:

Download and install MX Player.  Once installed and it will also have MX player in the list, so you can choose that.

Hello, I wanted to thank you! I installed MX Player and watched 5 episodes. Did not encounter the issue again. However, at the end of an episode it does not seem to mark it as "watched" in the TV Series. I currently need to manually mark each episode as watched, but is there a way to do it automatically?

[nbs.]

7 hours ago, jellytotz said:

Hello, I wanted to thank you! I installed MX Player and watched 5 episodes. Did not encounter the issue again. However, at the end of an episode it does not seem to mark it as "watched" in the TV Series. I currently need to manually mark each episode as watched, but is there a way to do it automatically?

No there isn't This shows it should be an issue which buzz should be able to fix

Please report the issue to buzz providing all your detailed info.