Xbox One Game Streaming issue with Netgear Switch

I thought I'd write a post about some problems i've had with game streaming from my Xbox One S in the hope it may help someone.

My network infrastructure is crudely documented in this diagram.

The equipment list is as follows:

• Xbox One S 500GB
• 2 x Sumvision 1000Mbps Powerline adapters
• 2 x Netgear GS108 Gigabit switches
• HP Laptop with gigabit NIC

The problem is an "artifacting" effect of the graphics almost blurring momentarily, then the game snapping back into life.  It can be bad enough to be unplayable.  My quick test for this now is to quickly scroll up and down as fast as I can on the Xbox home screen.

I swapped the switches, swapped cables, tried new cables, turned off the energy saving mode on my NIC to no avail.  Every other device on both sides of the powerline function absolutely fine, I can stream 1080p content without issue for hours on end.

One magical day I figured it out.

The way i fixed it was swapping out the Netgear GS108 switch which the Xbox One S is connected to, I swapped it for any old switch I had lying around (It happened to be a Netgear WNR2000v2 which had DD-WRT installed on it).  I still get SOME artifacts,(update, 2nd session of gaming had no artifacts) but 95% less than I had before, and an amount i've always experienced when game streaming, so this is acceptable to me.  Eventually will replace my other Netgear switch in a bid to eliminate all artifacts, but I thought I'd post in the unlikely event someone is suffering the same problem as myself!

Top reasons for blocking adverts with Pi Hole

I have Pi Hole installed on my combined front and backend media server in order to reduce the amount of adverts I see to great effect.

I've listed here the reasons I love using Pi Hole.

1) YouTube clients

My TV has a Youtube client installed which gets a lot of use in my house.  The way they play adverts is most times a new video is chosen, and also DURING a long video.  Pi Hole makes the Youtube app act as though adverts don't exist.  The videos never pause, I don't get the slightest of delays when launching a video.  Long may that continue!

2) Web browsing

This is probably the most common use of Pi-Hole and simply put, it's astonishing how much of your traffic is adverts.  Furthermore, some pages are unusable to me caked in adverts.  Step in Pi Hole.  It's a sad state of affairs but using this technology is the only way I can make such sites accessible.

3) Mobile apps (especially kids games)

One of the best outcomes of having no adverts has been with my young (toddler) child playing games on my Android phone.  I don't know if you've ever played a low quality free game from the Play Store, but a LOT of games lately seem to have a two pronged approach to getting money.  One is In App Purchases which are often big shiny attractive buttons which a toddler is likely to gravitate towards.  (The ethics behind earning revenue from tactics like these is akin to a con man in my opinion.)

The second way these games are monitised is the use of constant, intrusive and often colourful bright banner adverts.   It's sometimes difficult even as a phone literate guy with good eyesight to figure out how to close full screen adverts to get back to the game, they're that intrusive.  Pi-Hole blocks these adverts, making cheap, poor quality games slightly more bearable.

I'm a huge fan of this software.  You can chat about it with a friendly bunch at Reddit

Review of Stealth Streams IPTV Service

StealthStreams came recommended to me from somewhere (Wish I could remember where), and they have a free trial (24 hours).  Messages were responded to very quickly and politely via Facebook, which makes it easy to get up and running quickly.

The Kodi addon is easy to download; Stealth Streams operate their own repository, which means the addon should stay updated.

Flicking through channels quickly gives a great impression, not only are the channel changes extremely fast, but the picture is of a high standard, in some cases 1080p resolution.

A really nice (and uncommon) feature offered by Stealth Streams is the iVue TV Guide integration.  Full EPG TV guides offer a far more pleasant way to browse through channels.  This was very simply achieved with two stages:

1. Download and install the iVue addon (a login is required for this from their Facebook page)
2. Run the iVue wizard from within the StealthStreams addon

Overall StealthSteams offers a very good package for the money with a solid support offered via Facebook chat.  The iVue functionality is the icing on the cake and is a premium IPTV service well worth checking out.

My Ultimate IPTV solution

I've been having a think about what my favourite setup would look like for a premium IPTV provider.

It'd consist of:

Kodi as the front end. 

I love Kodi and use it daily to view TV Shows, Movies, Radio, Live TV and Pictures.

Kodi's native Live TV Interface.  

Although I'm new to iVue and I really like it so far, i'm used to the native Live TV EPG and it's controls.  It's got it's flaws but it's one of the things that's being worked on by the Kodi developers.

Utopia would be being able to customise which type of tuner (IP or DVB) has priority, e.g. I could set BBC HD through my DVB tuner as priority over the IP equivalent, as it's likely I'd get a higher bitrate through the DVB-T2 tuner than the IPTV service.

Timeshift and PVR functionality.  

I currently use TVheadend for my terrestrial channels and one of the things I've never quite sussed out is the Timeshift functionality, but as a PVR it is rock solid.

If anyone's got any thoughts or suggestions to achieve the dream scenario, please do comment or get me on Twitter @pww_tech !

IPTV providers

Here is a list of IPTV providers, I am mainly focusing on providers who provide Kodi integration.  You will find links to them and some headline facts which you may find useful when trying to integrate IPTV with PVR functionality in Kodi for example:

Provider Name	1 Month Cost	1 Year Cost	Number of Channels	Kodi app	Free trial available?	Trial limitations	Notes
Iptvsubs.is	$13	$132	500+	Iptvsubs own		1 day
Iptv66	$12	$105	833	PVR Stalker NFPS		N/A
IPTV Choice	€15	€100	1200	PVR IPTV Simple		3 hours
Rapid IPTV		€90	2000+	PVR IPTV Simple		VLC only, 24 hours
NTV.mx	€24.95			NTV plugin		N/A	Not available in UK
Stream TV Box	£10.99	£84	266	StreamTVBox from Xunity		N/A	£4 for 2 days
Satellite BG		$299	230+			N/A	Needs MAG box
MBOX	£17	£160	1200+	MBOX HDTV plugin		N/A
Tecfront	$20CAD	$204CAD	458+			N/A	Canadian provider
Alpha CS	€15	€120	240+	PVR IPTV Simple		36 hours
Premium-IPTV	€1 9	€95	600+			N/A	Offer of lifetime access €99
Sports Donkey	£20	£50	175+	Sports Donkey own		N/A	1 day pass £5, 1 week £10
Ruya	£17	£175 (13m)	780	Ruya own		N/A	1 day pass £2 (Mon-Thu)
Dexter	£9	£104	~400	Dexter own		N/A
Stealth Streams	£10	120	228	Stealth  Streams own		24 hours	Sports only £7/month

Feel free to share your experiences of any of the providers and their services on this blog!

Welcome!

Welcome to my Technology tips and news blog!




I'm going to be posting about technology trends e.g. Kodi, Computers, Media Centres, IPTV, Nintendo, Xbox, CCTV, Security software, Raspberry Pi developments, gadgets and anything that interests me, in the hope that it interests someone else too!


I am based in the UK so please bear that in mind when reading the blog posts.  Some of the items will be tailored, for example if certain services are region blocked against the UK I may not even mention them.  All views are my own

Advantages of IPTV over traditional TV

I wanted to list some benefits of streaming IPTV as opposed to using traditional methods such as satellite (DVB-S and DVB-S2) and terrestrial Freeview aerial (DVB-T and DVB-T2).

• No satellite dish
• Saves installation cost
• Often against mortgage rules and covenants, especially on new estates
• No unnecessary holes drilled in your house
• Gets around the fact that some areas are not covered by Satellite reception, e.g. cannot see the satellite due to trees and the location of your property
• Cleaner having no wires visible on the outside of your house
• Portable technology, meaning you can view the channels anywhere you have an internet connection
• More options for devices
• Not stuck to a proprietary set top box
• Many media centre / hardware possibilities for viewing.  
• Android, Amazon Fire TV boxes and sticks etc
• Can put the STB (Set top box) device anywhere in your house through wireless (of course ethernet cabling is best if you have it)
• Variable prices for different viewing devices, i.e. you could buy an expensive, fully featured box to use on your main TV, and a cheap viewer in a room you only watch TV in occasionally.

Review of AlphaCS IPTV service

The full IPTV service from AlphaCS was tested using the trial subscription using Kodi.  The hardware used to test was the Amazon Fire TV box (not the Fire stick)

AlphaCS uses the Kodi inbuilt PVR IPTV Simple Client, which is available by choosing System -> Settings -> Addons -> My Addons -> PVR IPTV Simple Client and then entering the URL which AlphaCS provide you from their website.

There is no EPG data out of the box, and this wasn't attempted to be fixed.

The quality of most of the channels was good, at least SD, and some were in HD, however some which are labelled HD didn't seem to actually be in High Definition 1080p.

There is an enormous amount of channels and VOD (Video on Demand) links available from the Kodi IPTV client using Alpha and it represents a good value way of subscribing to IPTV services, however it would benefit from a full EPG and a more obvious labelling of true HD channels

How to fix "Daily Limit Exceeded" error on Youtube Kodi plugin

This is taken from the Kodi forums:

Go to
https://console.developers.google.com/apis/

Click on Credentials, then New Credentials, then API key, and select Browser Key, give it a name and click Create (this creates the KEY)

Then back to Credentials
Click on Credentials, then New Credentials, then OAuth Client ID, select Other, give it a name and click Create (this creates the ID and SECRET)

At this point you've got 2 sets of credentials

Verify that the Youtube API is enabled

Go to
https://console.developers.google.com/apis/enabled
Verify that you see YouTube Data API v3 in the list

If it is NOT in the list go to
https://console.developers.google.com/apis/library

Click on the link for YouTube Data Api
Click on Enable API at the top

Go back to
https://console.developers.google.com/apis/enabled

Verify that YouTube Data API v3 is now in the list

Locate the file - login_client.py
(On Windows it's located here - C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\addons\plugin.video.youtube\resources\lib​​\youtube\client

Within the file login_client.py find the section that corresponds to the version of KODI that you're using in my case I'm running version 15.2

youtube-for-kodi-15': {
'system': 'Isengard',
'key': 'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa',
'id': 'bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb.apps.googleusercontent.com',
'secret': 'ccccccccccccccccccccccccccc'

Set the Key to the Browser API key you created first
Set the ID to the OAuth Client ID you created second
Set the Secret to the Client Secret shown in OAuth Client ID

(Make sure that you're copying and pasting these between the quote marks)

Save the updated login_client.py file

Then launch KODI
Select the YOUTUBE Addon
Select SIGN IN

Then do the 2 x activation thing where you go to
youtube.com/activate

Enter the code from KODI, click NEXT then click ALLOW
Then enter the second code from KODI, click NEXT, then ALLOW

And that should be it

How I fixed my HTC One M8 : red exclamation mark boot loop

My HTC One M8 was around 14 months old when all of a sudden it rebooted, then was stuck in a boot loop, with a picture on the screen of a red exclamation mark inside a red triangle inside a HTC One M8 phone, this blog post will detail how I fixed this for myself in the hope that it will help someone else.

I have never rooted the phone and didn't in this process, my HTC One M8 is Vodafone UK and unlocked to all networks.  I used a Windows 10 computer for the fastboot stuff.  The whole process took around 2 hours including researching things, and I was left with a phone (IMO) better than I had before, as it was a clean installation of Android Marshmallow with no HTC, Vodafone or Sense branding or pre-installed apps.

This is a fairly high level guide, and each step will take some research on the likes of XDA Developers forum, and Android Forums.  I take no responsibility for you doing any damage to your phone or others during this process, you follow this at your own risk! I decided to do the below as I had nothing to lose, my phone was as good as a doorstop.

1) Access the recovery menu

• Hold power button and press volume up, this should show you a white recovery screen

2) Enable fastboot

• (For Windows) Install HTC Sync on your PC, then uninstall it
• Install "Minimal ADB and Fastboot tool" on your Windows PC 
• Check fastboot works by connecting your phone to your PC via USB and opening the Minimal ADB and Fastboot tool and typing "fastboot devices" (if you see a serial number you know you're connected to your phone)

3) Unlock the bootloader

• I used the long guide (Method 2) on this site

4) Install TWRP via Fastboot

5) Check TWRP is installed on your phone

6) Install Google Play Experience Rom (no root required) via TWRP