iPlayTV App (AppleTV) Error: Some Problem Happened While Playing Channel

by no_signoflife

I’m hoping this is the correct place to ask for help. I’m currently using the iPlayTV app on my Apple TV. Overall it seems like the best app for my needs. However, at various times when I am streaming a channel, the stream will freeze and I receive the (very unhelpful) message "Some Problem Happened While Playing" <channel name>. When I receive this message on one channel, the other channels continue to work.

After receiving this message, I cannot watch the channel unless I change to another channel and wait for this channel to return (~5 minutes). When this error happens, I've noticed that iPlayTV doesn't try to connect to the stream and buffer. Instead, the app gives up and fails within 0.5 seconds and I receive this error message.

I am a subscriber to Helix and I have a 300 Mbps connection. For testing, I ran a parallel stream of the same channel in VLC on my laptop and the stream did not buffer or drop out when this issue occurred in iPlayTV. I've also noticed that iPlayTV never "buffers" on a stream.

I've played around with the settings in iPlayTV in an attempt to resolve the problem to no avail. I've changed the default media player, buffer size, and enabled hardware acceleration. I'm hoping someone could help beyond telling me to reinstall the app, switch to Android, or give up on IPTV. Thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide.

tiagomartinho

I recently launched a tvOS version of my iOS app https://apps.apple.com/us/app/movie-stream-ip-tv-films/id1450912244

If you want to try it so you can double check wether the problem is in the playlist or not.

Thank you!

phillysdon04

Try GSE IPTV. It's not as pretty, but it's stable.

blondedre3000

Lol I get this all the time. Either the m3u has some weird formatting, it's a format that iPlay doesn't understand, or the url is down.

orbit123

I get this same problem all the time too. It’s very frustrating.

I suspect it’s todo with the AV player engine iplaytv uses.

TVIPglobal

Maybe try another provider ?

no_signoflife

So I did some packet captures in Wireshark and it seems like iPlay immediately gives up on the stream if a RTMP packet is dropped. I’ve verified by temporarily terminating the network connection midstream. VLC will send several retry requests and try to reconnect before timing out. iPlayTV will give up within 1/2 second and display the error message and will not retry until I reload the channel after 5 minutes. iPlayTV also ignores the buffer size configured in settings (possibly a bug). My options are to hardwire into the router (still may not be stable) or switch to a different app.

DjurreP

IPTVX just came out. A very nice GUI too.

no_signoflife

To update this thread, Helix suggested that I change the default output stream from HLS to TS.

This is done by simply appending &output=ts to the end of the stream URL. This seems to make the stream much more stable.

Just thought I’d add this in case it helps anyone else.