Amazon streaming stuttering

Bryce_H

Bryce_H

Senior Audioholic
Evening everyone. I wanted to see if anyone else has had issues with streaming Amazon. We started the 4th season of Man in the High Castle and the video stutters or pauses several times through the episode. Everything has the latest firmware/updates and I have rebooted everything. Hardwired from home entrance to source (Nvidia Shield) The setup is:

AT&T Uverse 1Gb internet (fiber up to the house) - just ran speedtest and got 731 mbps down and 507 mbps up
Pace 5268 Gateway/Router (which I hate)
NetGear Orbi (but not used in this path - used only as a wireless access point)
TP-Link TL-SG1024 24-Port Gigabit Switch
Nvida Shield
Denon X4300H
Sony VPL-HW40ES projector

Netflix streams just fine, no issues.

Any ideas/thoughts are welcome.

Thank you.
 
panteragstk

panteragstk

Audioholic Warlord
To be honest Amazon's app sucks. I watched The Boys tonight and I've got the same setup as you for the most part. No issues.

My pace POS works (for now) I'm dmz plus mode so my real router can do the work. I had to run it in dhcp for a while and the double nat made weird stuff happen.

Also, at some point my fiber signal went to sh!t and att had to come out and fix it. Check the box that the fiber cable comes into and see if you've got a blinking red light. That caused me tons of problems.
 
S

snakeeyes

Audioholic Ninja
That Netflix app can work under really poor conditions but Prime and others need plenty of bandwidth. I’m not clear on the reasons why that is but Netflix is pretty bulletproof. :)
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
Evening everyone. I wanted to see if anyone else has had issues with streaming Amazon. We started the 4th season of Man in the High Castle and the video stutters or pauses several times through the episode. Everything has the latest firmware/updates and I have rebooted everything. Hardwired from home entrance to source (Nvidia Shield) The setup is:

AT&T Uverse 1Gb internet (fiber up to the house) - just ran speedtest and got 731 mbps down and 507 mbps up
Pace 5268 Gateway/Router (which I hate)
NetGear Orbi (but not used in this path - used only as a wireless access point)
TP-Link TL-SG1024 24-Port Gigabit Switch
Nvida Shield
Denon X4300H
Sony VPL-HW40ES projector

Netflix streams just fine, no issues.

Any ideas/thoughts are welcome.

Thank you.
My money is on this being a ground loop.

I say this because of my recent experience with digital audio stuttering. There seems to be a lot of company on this issue in multiple forms.

I had this issue with my 4K HTPC rebuild. The rebuild had this problem on an number of sources especially Amazon. Reboot would solve it for a while. I also had a shuffling sort of noise moving the mouse.

I was puzzled by it. This baffled my son also who is expert. After a lot of research I found that ground loops can cause this type of behavior in digital systems. I should point out there was no hum or buzz. The picture appeared fine but in retrospect it was not as good as it should have been.

So I lifted the ground from the HTPC power supply and grounded the case to the AV rack. This caused a big improvement. However I would get stuttering on occasions solved by reboot. I assumed, I think correctly, that the Microcenter power supply had an internal ground loop. So I have removed the Microcenter power supply and replaced it with the top end Corsair Gold power supply, which was more then twice the price of the Microcenter one. Microcenter did refund me my money by the way.

Anyhow this has totally solved the problem. I was able to remove the ground lift and the case to rack ground. There are no longer any issues and zero audio stuttering issues.

I don't know much about the Nividia Shield except that it has an internal power supply and no ground. Now I suspect you could have a ground loop between your Internet connections and your AV system, or even that your Shield is "piggy in the middle" in a ground resistance between your projector and receiver.

I know you have optical Internet service but code requires a grounding strip in the optical cable which is connected to your house ground and should be close to your panel.

As you probably know by now, I'm totally obsessional about how my systems are grounded. I'm glad I am, as it seems that with increasing complexity ground loops are now causing problems other than hums and buzzes.

So in my opinion this problem you are having is a ground loop problem until proved otherwise. This unfortunately may prove to be very elusive.

When I first ran into this audio stuttering I was certainly not thinking in terms of the cause being a ground loop, but that it proved to be. So I found as usual that I still have a lot to learn from the world of hard knocks.
 
Alex2507

Alex2507

Audioholic Slumlord
I recently bought a new Roku device that had the audio glitching. I ended up changing a long, cheap, store bought Cat 5E cable to a shorter one that I picked up from an office renovation. That took care of it.

Some low voltage guy explained to me that Cat 5A was the ticket for video and made up a probably 35' run for our Fire TV which has worked flawlessly despite the fact that he failed to get the outer jacket incorporated into the strain relief scheme.

Bottom line: try replacing the cable for whatever Cat # and letter spec is now en vogue.
 
Bryce_H

Bryce_H

Senior Audioholic
Thanks everyone. A couple of notes/comments regarding comments above:

One point of clarification - it is the video and audio that stutter...sometimes at the same time, sometimes separately.

- I ran DMZ+ for a bit but nuked that when I go the Orbi. Managing the quirks was too much of a PIA
- My light was green last I checked, but I will tonight

- I will work through some of the ground loop options. I do have all my HT equipment plugged into a CyberPower BRG1500AVRLCD UPS and the network stuff plugged into a APC UPS (BE425M)

- My house is hardwired with Cat6 cable, but will try a new cable to see if it helps

Thank you everyone.
 
panteragstk

panteragstk

Audioholic Warlord
Thanks everyone. A couple of notes/comments regarding comments above:

One point of clarification - it is the video and audio that stutter...sometimes at the same time, sometimes separately.

- I ran DMZ+ for a bit but nuked that when I go the Orbi. Managing the quirks was too much of a PIA
- My light was green last I checked, but I will tonight

- I will work through some of the ground loop options. I do have all my HT equipment plugged into a CyberPower BRG1500AVRLCD UPS and the network stuff plugged into a APC UPS (BE425M)

- My house is hardwired with Cat6 cable, but will try a new cable to see if it helps

Thank you everyone.
Yeah, that pace "gateway" sucks when you have your own stuff. ATT has broken DMZ+ multiple times for me, but the current firmware seems to be good.

Another thing that could help is that if you enable developer mode there is an option on Android TV to limit the number of background apps. On my older hardware this helped keep apps closed instead of just hanging out in the background. That will keep them fresh when you launch them and that might help.
 

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