# An unknown error occured



## moyekj

Was on vacation far from home the last 2 weeks so got ample opportunities to try OOH streaming. Must say it got very annoying at times. I got this infamous error more times than I care to count:
Problem Streaming
An unknown error occured.

What makes it more annoying is right after getting the error I'd go back and start stream right away again and it would continue without issue for a while but then eventually give me the error again.
Also, most of the time the video quality was only 2 or 3 bars giving me a fuzzy picture. Switching to Slingbox using the same connection would give me much better picture quality after letting the stream buffer for 30 seconds or so. But using Slingbox trick play to skip commercials was very annoying as well due to the latency involved, but at least the Slingbox was reliable in terms of connection and video quality unlike the Stream.

So overall I was quite disappointed with OOH Stream and glad I had Slingbox available as an alternative. I wish my experience had been more favorable but there you have it. I could almost tolerate/forgive the fuzzy picture over shaky connections, but the "Unknown error" made it unbearable.

P.S. I did also try using downloads instead of streaming on a couple of occasions, however the download speeds @medium quality were < 1 Mbps and estimated download time for a 1 hour show was on the order of 1.5 hours, so that wasn't really practical.


----------



## Bulldawg9908

I share your frustrations.

I don't have an answer for the "unknown error occurred" issue as I have the same problem and haven't figured out what triggers it, but I know why streaming quality is so poor and why downloading when out of the home is so painful.

All OOH streaming and downloading goes through a TiVo proxy server which limits bandwidth to less than 2 Mb/s. This bandwidth isn't adequate for Stream to do on-the-fly encoding and give you a good quality picture. I've e-mailed TiVo about why they do it this way and they've blown me off saying it's not a bug and they're not going to do anything about it.

I've got 60 Mb/s down where I usually stream from and a steady 20 Mb/s up at home, so I should be able to stream and download anything I want at high quality and not notice that I'm not home, but because TiVo insists on all traffic going through their proxy servers, we're stuck with this mess.

Needless to say, I'm unhappy with this situation, but there is little I can do to change it. TiVo is ignoring me, and short of becoming TiVoMargaret's most annoying follower on Twitter, I can't get their attention on this issue.


----------



## moyekj

Yes, I know all about the proxy and the ~1.85 Mbps limit on OOH download speeds as documented in the More detailed HLS statistics thread. I actually would have been happy to get 1.8 Mbps, but was getting < 1 Mbps which made it even worse.


----------



## MacBrian

moyekj said:


> An unknown error occured.


SAME error here -- just as often at home within my own wifi as outside my network.

I've applied all sorts of voodoo -- rebooting the iOS device (iPad 2 or iPhone 5s), restarting the TiVo Stream both by unplugging and restarting at the Stream's web page, and restarting the wireless services on my AT&T 2-Wire router. I also have a Netgear Extender which occasionally gets the same voodoo-reboot treatment.

Nothing is consistent. Some days the experience between iOS and the TiVo Stream is unbearably frustrating, and on other days there's rarely a problem. I've played with using different wireless "channels" and that was inconclusive as well.

During all of this, my Slingbox Solo is able to provide a MUCH more reliable experience...as long as I can tolerate the poor audio "in-a-tin-can" sound.

I share your frustration. Wish we could come up with a stable alternative. My next stab at resolving the inconsistent performance is to shut down the AT&T 2-Wire router's WIFI and use a brand new Apple Airport Extreme 6th Gen that I have sitting in a box waiting for some free time to install it. Maybe THAT will make a better experience???


----------



## moyekj

For in home use I never seem to get this problem, but I'm usually situated very close to wireless router and thus have solid connection from iPad to wireless router. Looks to me like the Stream is not very robust and tolerant of network glitches which are especially common in public WiFi connections.


----------



## MacBrian

moyekj said:


> For in home use I never seem to get this problem


<sigh>

I'm usually within 20' of my wifi router at home...


----------



## JWhites

moyekj said:


> For in home use I never seem to get this problem, but I'm usually situated very close to wireless router and thus have solid connection from iPad to wireless router. Looks to me like the Stream is not very robust and tolerant of network glitches which are especially common in public WiFi connections.


I _have_ noticed that if I sit near my router and set it to 5GHz that I get rock solid performance without a hiccup and if I go onto 2.4GHz mode and get farther away with a weaker signal a more inconsistent experience occurs. Personally I can't wait for TiVo to ditch the proxy and do port forwarding which I hope will give my out of home streaming experience the same picture and audio quality I get with in home streaming.


----------



## MacBrian

MacBrian said:


> My next stab at resolving the inconsistent performance is to shut down the AT&T 2-Wire router's WIFI and use a brand new Apple Airport Extreme 6th Gen that I have sitting in a box waiting for some free time to install it. Maybe THAT will make a better experience???


Just an update. I finally got the 5th Gen Airport Extreme installed. I've "dumbed-down" the AT&T 2-Wire router (as much as possible, that is) and am using the Airport Extreme in it's place for all my wired and wireless needs.

Performance and reliability is now ROCK SOLID on my two iPhone 5s phones AND on my two 2nd Generation iPads. I've watched several hours of Tivo recordings from either one of my Premiere boxes, both at home and away from home, with no issues.

Lesson learned for me: If you stick with Apple..."it just works."



--Brian


----------



## JWhites

I've noticed that if I make a partial recording like if I record the last 20 minutes of a show then stream that recording after the show ends, most of the time at the end of the program I get a "Problem Streaming: An unknown error occurred" message instead of the "delete/keep" message.


----------



## turnipkimchee

MacBrian said:


> Just an update. I finally got the 5th Gen Airport Extreme installed. I've "dumbed-down" the AT&T 2-Wire router (as much as possible, that is) and am using the Airport Extreme in it's place for all my wired and wireless needs.
> 
> Performance and reliability is now ROCK SOLID on my two iPhone 5s phones AND on my two 2nd Generation iPads. I've watched several hours of Tivo recordings from either one of my Premiere boxes, both at home and away from home, with no issues.
> 
> Lesson learned for me: If you stick with Apple..."it just works."
> 
> 
> 
> --Brian


MacBrian,
I'm having the same problem, but "Problem Streaming: An unknown error occurred" occurs on my home network at a minimum once every 5 minutes and I'm unable to stream outside my home.

I have a surfboard extreme sbg6782-ac attached to a 5th generation airport extreme. (Does the word "extreme" make these products more gen x or y? )

You noted that you dumbed down your at&t router. How do you mean? I have the router at the most basic default settings with my firewall being run off the Airport.

Travis


----------



## Gromit

My stream was working flawlessly until last weekend when I made a change to my network.

I have 2 Airport Extremes, one 2nd gen and one 3rd gen, in my home network. The second one serves as a wireless bridge so devices in the living room can have a wired internet connection. Well, wired in the sense that they connect to the router using ethernet cables. 

I guess I'm stretching the 'no wifi' rule with the Stream as it was in the living room connected to the second router. But it was working great. In home, out of home, whatever.

When I started seeing some internet connection issues I decided to swap the routers so the newer 3rd gen was in the office connected directly to the cable modem. The older router went to the living room to be the wireless bridge. That fixed my internet issues, but then I started getting the unknown error messages when I try to stream on my network. 

I moved the stream to the office router but it's doing the same thing. Unless I download to my iPad, it's giving the error message a lot. Sometimes I can make it for a few minutes, sometimes it's one after the other.


----------



## Gromit

This morning I realized that my iPad was on my 2.4ghz network instead of the 5ghz. I switched to the 5 and got 20+ minutes of flawless streaming.


----------



## moyekj

I think one thing we can deduce is that streaming to iOS app is not very tolerant of network glitches.


----------



## Sling_Blade

I just wish in home streaming would work for me. I even upgraded to a top of the line netgear ac router and it makes no difference. I get the unknown streaming message, or it buffers a lot etc. The only thing I've found that seems to be reproducible is that if I switch from the 5ghz to the 2.4ghz network download times for shows are greatly reduced. The amount downloaded per tick of the app updating is around 1MB on 5ghz while it is 2MB on the 2.4ghz. For the 2.4ghz network the download time is typically a bit less than half the show length. I am being careful to terminate the tivo app after switching so that it realizes I'm on my home network.

Any measure of network speed shows the 5ghz being screaming fast (around 400Mb/sec). Twitch, netflix, etc all perform flawlessly on the 5ghz network. It's just tivo that is terrible. Even so, streaming itself seems random and I've seen issues on both networks. I think I started having issues after moving to ios8.


----------



## Dan203

Have you got the new software on your Stream/Roamio yet? Since the update I have not had a single "problem streaming" and I was getting them constantly before.


----------



## RoamPremier

> Have you got the new software on your Stream/Roamio yet? Since the update I have not had a single "problem streaming" and I was getting them constantly before.


How do you know? Do you have to do something to get it installed?


----------



## Sling_Blade

Dan203 said:


> Have you got the new software on your Stream/Roamio yet? Since the update I have not had a single "problem streaming" and I was getting them constantly before.


Not yet. But I'm not hopeful as the patch notes say nothing about it.


----------



## Dan203

For me the new software has been perfect. I use my Stream every night in bed. Before the update I had constant issues, since the update I have not had one. It may not be listed in the release notes, but they did something to address this issue in the software.


----------



## Sling_Blade

Well that would be awesome if they fixed it! It's been quite frustrating.


----------



## Dan203

Do yo have a Roamio or a standalone Stream? If you have a Roamio you can put it on the priority list and get the software quickly.

https://www.tivo.com/priority_20.4.5


----------



## MacBrian

turnipkimchee said:


> You noted that you dumbed down your at&t router. How do you mean? I have the router at the most basic default settings with my firewall being run off the Airport.
> 
> Travis


Travis:
Sorry for the delay in answering. I used these instructions:

http://forums.att.com/t5/Third-Part...dem-Router-Apple-Airport-Extreme/td-p/3607835

--Brian


----------



## Sling_Blade

Well I got the update! I'll report back if I find I still have problems but I noticed an immediate difference. Using the slider to seek through a show at random points results in very quick playback, whereas before it would take a while and freaquently time out with an error. Also the stream had its software updated at the same time, so it makes since now that this update provides a fix.


----------



## Dan203

I got the update almost a month ago and I have not had an issue yet. I have not had a single "problem streaming" or "unknown error" and I haven't once had it simply stop playing at the end of the recording and keep my iPad awake all night. It's been (knocks on wood) rock solid for me.


----------



## moyekj

On vacation again and OOH streaming has been a total failure continuously giving this "unknown error" BS during streaming. I was actually able to download a program instead overnight at basic quality but even during playback with airplane mode on my iPad I keep getting this stupid "unkwown error". So then I turned to my usually trusty Slingbox only to find the Mini that feeds the slingbox is frozen (not responding to remote control even in RPC mode), so no alternative available.
OOH streaming has been worthless to me on almost every occasion I've tried it.


----------



## Dan203

I don't really use OOH. I mainly stream in home. Since getting the new update I never get "problem streaming" errors any more. So it's been perfect, in home. I have a business trip in April which will likely be the first chance I'll get to try OOH again. I guess we'll see how that goes. 

There seems to be some groundwork in the software, and the docs on TiVo's site, pointing to the ability to simply open a port on your router and bypass the proxy. I wonder if/when they enable that if it will alleviate these issues? Or if it's the Stream itself causing them?


----------



## moyekj

Yes in home I don't have issues, but for me in home is of little value since I'd rather watch on a big screen. I was able to get a neigbor to pull the plug on the Mini at home to reset it and the Roamio Pro. Initially Stream worked for a while after that but then problem came back again. So back to Slingbox again. Not anywhere as good for trick play but at least the darn thing works reliably.


----------



## Dan203

You can reboot the Stream from the System Info screen in the app. I think it even works remotely.


----------

