"Television signal has been lost"

[inAjet]

Hello, all.

I choose to use my own router, so my setup is Telus NAH—>own router—>Telus Optik PVR. I have port 1 of the NAS bridged, to which the router is connected. This setup has always been working fine for me until recently, when we switched to an eero router. Now, when I watch live TV, the channel will play for about 5-10 seconds, then freeze, followed by a screen saying "television signal has been lost". All of my streaming services and other internet-enabled entertainment devices are connected to the same router via the same switch and work fine. Even the on-demand section of the Telus Optik PVR works fine - it is just the live TV portion having the issue. I have confirmed that bypassing the router fixes the issue.

Given that all the other internet services and even Telus on-demand works fine, I know there is no issue with the internet. The live TV is obviously getting a signal as well, because it plays just fine for 5-10 seconds. So, my question is, what is it that the live TV specifically needs in order to work that the router may be blocking?

Cheers,

Chris

[TELUS_Support]

Hey @inAjet - Third party equipment is out of scope for us so I am hoping a CPU will be able to chime in to help. 

+ @Nighthawk  @FuzzyLogic Do you guys have any insight?

[inAjet]

That’s why I turned to the community, as I know Telus Tech Support can’t help with third party equipment.

That said, strictly speaking of the PVR, tech support simply said it needs internet. Well, it has internet, so there must be more to it than that. Can you speak to the specific needs of the Telus Optik PVR in terms of network requirements? This question is exclusively related to my Telus equipment and is not related to my third party router. 

[inAjet]

A user on an eero Reddit forum has suggested the PVR might need to get multicast from the NAH. Does this sound right? Is anyone familiar with what exactly this is, and why it may have been passed through one router but not another?

[Nighthawk]

The PVR cutting out after 5-10 seconds is a clear indicator that the router it's connected to, the Eero, doesn't support multicast packets. Live TV requires it. The Telus hardware has multicast enabled by default. Very few third party routers properly support multicast, if at all. If the Eero doesn't support multicast, then you'll need to connect the PVR directly to one of the other ports on the NAH if you intend to keep using the Eero for the rest of your devices.

[inAjet]

Thanks for confirming this. That means either I need to figure out if there’s a way to enable multicast support on the router, or switch to a very cumbersome setup.

Would bridging my third party router instead of the NAH make a difference?