# Flickering while watching on Plex or Kodi



## Levin83

Hey guys, first post here and after reading a bunch of posts, i'm wondering if its just me but i only seen like one other person mention the flickering problem i'm having. Resolution on my Tivo Stream 4K is set to 4K60hz and when i'm watching something on Plex or Kodi, the screen flickers. And its not like its once in awhile, its pretty often to the point i don't even want to watch anything with this thing. Also, a bunch of other problems i noticed, random black screen...forced HDR, coming from a Xiaomi Mibox 3 and Nvidia Shield this is pretty annoying. My eyes went blind from seeing Elmo in super bright red when i was watching sesame street with my daughter. And the USB-C port, i tried 2 USB-C hubs with ethernet, couldn't get either of them to work. However i did get a flash drive with a adapter to work. Really was hoping to love this but so far, i'm pretty disappointed.


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## ptcfast2

Not just you - happens to me as well. It's super annoying and no idea why it happens.


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## osu1991

Yep, I think I posted a comment about it. Changing the resolution to 4k30 has been the only way to stop it so far.


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## jkuter

Same thing, I reduced it to almost 0 by moving it from my receiver to the tv which also solved some of the cec sync issues but it also means I don't have dd anymore, only pcm. First day woes I guess.


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## aaronwt

No Flickering here when using Plex. UNless you want to count trying to play titles encoded in VC-1, where a lot of frames are dropped.

Plex in Kodi works better than the native Plex app with the Stream 4K. Titles that would not play in the native plex app because of the audio track will play in the Plex app inside Kodi.

The main issue I've seen with Plex is the forced HDR. Which screws up playing an HDR title in Plex.


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## osu1991

Still getting the occasional blinking using Emby tonight. I didn’t notice it using Plex earlier today.


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## TonyTheTiger

I have to switch to my AppleTV to watch anything on Plex. It’s annoying.


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## ptcfast2

It seems that I was able to solve it with setting preferred HDR to HDR10 instead of Dolby Vision + enabled full HDMI Self Adaptation via the hidden menu + enabled HDMI Refresh Rate Switching in Plex as well.

So that's fun...


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## blacknoi

ptcfast2 said:


> It seems that I was able to solve it with setting preferred HDR to HDR10 instead of Dolby Vision + enabled full HDMI Self Adaptation via the hidden menu + enabled HDMI Refresh Rate Switching in Plex as well.
> 
> So that's fun...


Turnkey, sure....

I love to tinker but whoah. Applevtv's plex app is just rock solid for me.


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## Levin83

ptcfast2 said:


> It seems that I was able to solve it with setting preferred HDR to HDR10 instead of Dolby Vision + enabled full HDMI Self Adaptation via the hidden menu + enabled HDMI Refresh Rate Switching in Plex as well.
> 
> So that's fun...


Can you point me towards this hidden full HDMI self adaption option? I'm willing to give it a shot


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## ptcfast2

Levin83 said:


> Can you point me towards this hidden full HDMI self adaption option? I'm willing to give it a shot


Access Tivo Stream 4K Hidden A/V Menus


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## Levin83

Thanks for the link but doesn't work for me. Tried part and total HDMI self adaption and even disabled dolby vision. Flickering still occured on Kodi, Plex, Live Channels and PBS Kids...


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## ptcfast2

Levin83 said:


> Thanks for the link but doesn't work for me. Tried part and total HDMI self adaption and even disabled dolby vision. Flickering still occured on Kodi, Plex, Live Channels and PBS Kids...


Sorry to hear that. 

There's definitely a few bugs going on here for sure! When I switched off of Dolby Vision to HDR10 I stopped getting random black frames and then was just left with the odd one here and there which the refresh rate stuff fixed as far as I can tell. My solution, even if it worked for me, shouldn't be required either way.


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## fattymcbuckles

ptcfast2 said:


> It seems that I was able to solve it with setting preferred HDR to HDR10 instead of Dolby Vision + enabled full HDMI Self Adaptation via the hidden menu + enabled HDMI Refresh Rate Switching in Plex as well.
> 
> So that's fun...


I'll have to try this,thanks !


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## fattymcbuckles

osu1991 said:


> Yep, I think I posted a comment about it. Changing the resolution to 4k30 has been the only way to stop it so far.


Thanks for the tip.Switched it to 4k30 and played an episode of Sopranos on Plex tonight and no screen flicker Keeping my fingers crossed.Now if they can just get a fix for the Tivo randomly turning on my tv ,I'll be pretty happy with this box.


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## ptcfast2

So one thing I noticed is that with Plex, it was audio related. I had HDMI pass through enabled in the Plex app's settings, I changed it to Optical pass through and only Dolby Digital. Optical still works if you only have HDMI connected, still goes over HDMI.

Anyways, once I did that everything related to black flickering just stopped. I also turned off all codecs except Dolby Digital on the Stream as well, but otherwise no more flickering and I'm able to keep full 4K. Worth a shot for those having issues.


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## aaronwt

ptcfast2 said:


> So one thing I noticed is that with Plex, it was audio related. I had HDMI pass through enabled in the Plex app's settings, I changed it to Optical pass through and only Dolby Digital. Optical still works if you only have HDMI connected, still goes over HDMI.
> 
> Anyways, once I did that everything related to black flickering just stopped. I also turned off all codecs except Dolby Digital on the Stream as well, but otherwise no more flickering and I'm able to keep full 4K. Worth a shot for those having issues.


But Pass Through isn't a real pass through. You can only pass through DD, DD+, and DTS. At least that is all I could do with my testing. Only lossy passthrough. Although I never did test the DTS equivalent of DD+. DTS-HD HR. I'll need to do that before I send mine back. As of yesterday I still have not seen another software update.


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## ptcfast2

aaronwt said:


> But Pass Through isn't a real pass through. You can only pass through DD, DD+, and DTS. At least that is all I could do with my testing. Only lossy passthrough. Although I never did test the DTS equivalent of DD+. DTS-HD HR. I'll need to do that before I send mine back. As of yesterday I still have not seen another software update.


You can do HDMI pass through, but it still caused flickering. If you don't enable pass through you don't get anything bitstreamed to the receiver and then it's converted before it even leaves the device. DTS on the device is funky as a whole - only thing that fixed everything was making sure Dolby Digital was the only thing in the entire Stream --> TV --> HDMI ARC --> Soundbar chain. It's definitely audio related and I toss it up to poor testing and software development on the Stream as a whole. I don't blame the Plex app here.


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## aaronwt

ptcfast2 said:


> You can do HDMI pass through, but it still caused flickering. If you don't enable pass through you don't get anything bitstreamed to the receiver and then it's converted before it even leaves the device. DTS on the device is funky as a whole - only thing that fixed everything was making sure Dolby Digital was the only thing in the entire Stream --> TV --> HDMI ARC --> Soundbar chain. It's definitely audio related and I toss it up to poor testing and software development on the Stream as a whole. I don't blame the Plex app here.


The native Plex app does have some issues on the Stream 4K. Because of that I used the Plex app inside Kodi when I was playing test files. Many Files that would not play in the Native Plex app played fine with the Plex app in Kodi. And it had no issues with DTS either. But I was also going to a receiver before the TV. I was not testing the Stream 4K connected directly to the TV and using the ARC.


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## fattymcbuckles

My flicker is very random,even after doing some of the recommendations in this thread.One thing I have noticed is that if I leave the box on or in sleep mode,I’ll get a random flicker once in while.If I completely power down/ unplug and restart,no flicker at all after doing this.


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## Rickjb

This may or may not be related: I get the flickering in the google "Live Channels" app. The app captures my network tuner (Hdhomerun) and other live streaming apps, like Puto, that you select and places them into a guide. Within the Live Channels app there is a beta app that accomplishes setting up the guide based on your OTA or cable provider. It also accommodates DVR but with the flickering, I cant look at it


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## Alex_7

Try changing the HDR setting priority to HDR10 instead of Dolby and change the resolution refresh rate.


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## BillyClyde

Rickjb said:


> This may or may not be related: I get the flickering in the google "Live Channels" app. The app captures my network tuner (Hdhomerun) and other live streaming apps, like Puto, that you select and places them into a guide. Within the Live Channels app there is a beta app that accomplishes setting up the guide based on your OTA or cable provider. It also accommodates DVR but with the flickering, I cant look at it


I have the same flickering when using the Channels DVR app. Quite annoying.

I also get skipping ahead while playing. I have to stop the playback and start it again. It's almost as if the buffer gets too full and starts dumping content. After I stop and restart it plays the skipped portion just fine, so it isn't the video file itself.


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## XRaiderV17

I too am seeing this...I reboot the device and it cooperates, but the minute I turn off my tv, I'll end up rebooting the TS4K as it'll flicker non stop otherwise.


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