RPi3 – Occasional image scrambling when watching Live TV (DVB-C)

Since the first Kodi 17 build I installed on my RPi3 (#0826) up to LE Kodi 17 v7.95.3 BETA I’ve always experienced occasional scrambles in my video streams when watching on DVB-C through a PCTV 292e USB stick. I always thought it would be a bad coax cable which was long and extended with a cheap connector. After a home renovation I’m now using a solid shielded short coax and I still experience the same image scrambling.

Omxplayer acceleration is disabled and mmal is enabled (however it appears with omxplayer acceleration enabled it scrambles the image much less…). I have set adjust frame rate to ‘on start/stop’ because else the video just isn’t smooth enough to watch. I only experience this when watching H.264 channels (I have the MPEG-2 license installed).

In debug mode I constantly see ‘ActiveAE::SyncStream’ messages with a ‘CPullupCorrection’ line at the moment the image scrambles for a quick second. If needed I can provide a full log but I thought this would be OK as it’s really the only thing the RPi is repeating when watching TV;