Not sure we will get much more at the minute than -
broadly it's around how broadcast stream data is processed by the set top box and a particular set of circumstances where that doesn't happen as it should and recording doesnt start.
BT are saying no roll out of fix till month end. Is this fixed or isn't it?
Hi dreamtime,
It's currently in the testing phase so as long as no other issues surface during this time, we expect for the fix to roll out at that time. We believe that this should hit the nail on the head however we always have to test the software before it gets deployed to make sure no other issues crop up. If there are any updates or changes to this estimate I'll reply to this thread.
Just gone back through the last few pages, but apologies if this has already been mentioned - in my case, almost all failed recordings occur when the box has been off for some time, for example if I've been away on holiday. Last week 6 of 11 recordings failed, whereas when I'm here, a failed recording is very rare. I wonder whether it goes into a deeper sleep the longer I'm away, and keeping it 'always ready' would be advisable during holidays?
@Sarah I can only say that this appalling situation and the way that YouView test is just slow slow slow slow slow. It was suggested on here several years ago that you need a better group of testers. It is evident that the move to the cloud has not resulted in the acceleration of any thing, fixes to bugs or improvements to facilities or return of software removed (Hide Channels etc). Wow Sky fixes any bugs so much more efficiently. They would never allow their product to fail the fundamental job of a PVR to be able to record reliably. WOW.....
Not sure we will get much more at the minute than -
broadly it's around how broadcast stream data is processed by the set top box and a particular set of circumstances where that doesn't happen as it should and recording doesnt start.
Really?
So what suddenly changed to cause this bearing in mind that it's not just OTA recordings but IPTV too?
And why if leaving the unit in "Always Ready" mode appears to resolve this?
My units are blocked from internet access from their Smart standby time until after my first scheduled recording is due to start and I've so far not had a single failure whereas before several a week was common.
Not sure we will get much more at the minute than -
broadly it's around how broadcast stream data is processed by the set top box and a particular set of circumstances where that doesn't happen as it should and recording doesnt start.
Really?
So what suddenly changed to cause this bearing in mind that it's not just OTA recordings but IPTV too?
And why if leaving the unit in "Always Ready" mode appears to resolve this?
My units are blocked from internet access from their Smart standby time until after my first scheduled recording is due to start and I've so far not had a single failure whereas before several a week was common.
Can you point to all the failed IPTV recordings as apart from a few rouge ones I didn’t think anyone was complaining of failed iptv recordings.
Not sure we will get much more at the minute than -
broadly it's around how broadcast stream data is processed by the set top box and a particular set of circumstances where that doesn't happen as it should and recording doesnt start.
Really?
So what suddenly changed to cause this bearing in mind that it's not just OTA recordings but IPTV too?
And why if leaving the unit in "Always Ready" mode appears to resolve this?
My units are blocked from internet access from their Smart standby time until after my first scheduled recording is due to start and I've so far not had a single failure whereas before several a week was common.
Can you point to all the failed IPTV recordings as apart from a few rouge ones I didn’t think anyone was complaining of failed iptv recordings.
It must be something in their makeup 💄
But equally, @TimC, what do you think the difference might be between a box left ‘Always Ready’ and one in the ‘ready’ time period of Smart Standby?
If you think there is a difference here, then the bug must be in the handling of these modes, wouldn’t you say? Which certainly could affect IPTV as well as OTA.
And then what difference do you think the internet blocking is making?
For your workaround to be valid, and necessary in its totality, we need to be looking for a mechanism that requires both aspects of it; otherwise, we are just like pigeons pecking for food at random in a lab experiment, and thinking there is a pattern to be found.
Off travelling for a while... internet patchy to non-existent....
When the box comes out of standby it needs to do an EPG update - quite reasonably.
Without internet access it will only get the OTA Freeview EPG but with access allowed it will add additional info from Youview.
My theory , based solely on my experience, is that on wakeup maybe it can have an issue getting the additional info from Youview's servers and gets it's knickers in a twist.
If a box is "Always Ready" that scenario wouldn't occur either which could explain why some find that "Always Ready" works for them.
For me the internet blocking so far is working well & I'll keep doing that for now.
I suspect we'll never actually know what happened as information from BT/Youview is very limited so far.
This problem is no respecter of which standby mode you are using. I recently had a failed recording (Generation 66 - BBC 4) set to record while I was watching another channel.
After a while, I had a feeling that I had not seen the "Now recording....." banner and briefly switched channels to BBC 4. At this point the banner came up and the box proceeded to record the remaining 20 minutes of the hour long programme. Thankfully iPlayer came to the rescue on this occasion.
John.
"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." - George S. Patton
When the box comes out of standby it needs to do an EPG update - quite reasonably.
Without internet access it will only get the OTA Freeview EPG but with access allowed it will add additional info from Youview.
My theory , based solely on my experience, is that on wakeup maybe it can have an issue getting the additional info from Youview's servers and gets it's knickers in a twist.
If a box is "Always Ready" that scenario wouldn't occur either which could explain why some find that "Always Ready" works for them.
For me the internet blocking so far is working well & I'll keep doing that for now.
I suspect we'll never actually know what happened as information from BT/Youview is very limited so far.
Interesting theory, @TimC, which is obviously well thought out, and indeed has the merit of requiring both legs of your precautions.
But it assumes that an Always Ready box is dynamically updating its EPG all the time, even in Standby, whereas a Smart Standby box stops doing this in its deep sleep period. Is this true? I don’t know, but maybe @Sarah can tell us.
And it’s also a mechanism without, seemingly, room for Anaglypta’s latest observation, above.
Perhaps we shouldn’t read too much into YouView saying fix, not fixes, but I did very much get the impression there was a single point of failure here, not multiple ones....
Off travelling for a while... internet patchy to non-existent....
We have had these problems intermittently and again this weekend. Nothing recorded Saturday or Sunday. We have two bt current model boxes in different rooms one being a conservatory and not used over winter. Both are on smart standby.
Previously we had an older Humax in the conservatory but when we moved in in spring all the recordings I had set failed so I bought the new bt box. It looks to me as if this was actually the same fault so didn't need a new one which is somewhat annoying particularly as the new box had the same problems back in April.
What it does point to is that this is a wider issue than just the bt badged boxes and fixes are needed as a matter of urgency as for a recurrence to occur when it was supposed to be fixed compounds the issue and has led to my dis-trusting both the Humax brand and the Youview platform.
I've done a maintenance mode reset after yet more failure to record this afternoons Classic Coronation Street episodes on ITV3. I've not had any problems recording from BT iptv channels, just certain terrestrial ones. My YouView box is the T4000 by the way.
I've done a maintenance mode reset after yet more failure to record this afternoons Classic Coronation Street episodes on ITV3. I've not had any problems recording from BT iptv channels, just certain terrestrial ones. My YouView box is the T4000 by the way.
It’s a bug in the software. Maintenance Mode won’t fix it. Only a new release of the software will fix it.
Off travelling for a while... internet patchy to non-existent....
I've done a maintenance mode reset after yet more failure to record this afternoons Classic Coronation Street episodes on ITV3. I've not had any problems recording from BT iptv channels, just certain terrestrial ones. My YouView box is the T4000 by the way.
It’s a bug in the software. Maintenance Mode won’t fix it. Only a new release of the software will fix it.
Oh I realise that, but the last one I did seemed to work for about five or six weeks, so hoping this one will. Saying that, I won't hold my breath, especially with the sheer amount of other YV users waiting for a proper fix to this bug!
We've put together some information below to explain some detail behind the issue of the failed recordings. Thanks again to everyone who has contributed some information or data to help us when we were investigating, it's been very much appreciated.
Programmes and the accompanying
data that describes them (what the next programme is, programme description
etc) are batched up and broadcast in different ‘streams’, so some of the BBC
channels are in one stream, ITV channels in another etc. To make sure each
stream knows about the others, some of the accompanying data, particularly
information about what programme is now being broadcast and what comes next is
sent on all streams. This information is re-sent at regular intervals.
In this case the information
about what is happening on other streams started taking longer to arrive and
was timing out when being processed. This led to the Humax layer thinking the
information on other streams was invalid and stopped processing it. Therefore,
if this time out happened, if you were tuned to a channel on one stream and a
recording was due to start on another stream, the current stream wouldn’t know
about the programme due to start and wouldn’t give the instruction to make the
recording happen.
A change has been in the
Humax layer to make sure that it handles the time out processing better – and
continues to process the ‘other stream’ information. This is going through testing
and we aiming to roll out as soon as possible.
Is there an explanation as to why some of these streams were suddenly taking longer to arrive?
Would it not be better to resolve that problem rather than a fix in the base software, which btw must have been a bit suspect anyway as only Humax Youview units appear to have been affected & not the millions of other PVRs receiving the same data?
Is there an explanation as to why some of these streams were suddenly taking longer to arrive?
Would it not be better to resolve that problem rather than a fix in the base software, which btw must have been a bit suspect anyway as only Humax Youview units appear to have been affected & not the millions of other PVRs receiving the same data?
There are a number of factors which impact the streams which are still being investigated but whilst this part of the investigation is still ongoing, we wanted to put a change in place to ensure viewers are able to record successfully on their YouView devices.
This issue was impacting both Humax Retail and BT Humax YouView boxes rather than just the Humax Retail devices.
I think it's also very encouraging to see Sarah and the YV team giving an explanation about the problem, whereas in the past, perhaps there would have been minimal or none.
As we have it reported that scheduled recordings whose start had been missed suddenly kick in when the user turns their box on, do we take it that this encourages the Humax software to have another hunt round?
Or would this only have worked for programmes on the actual Mux the box was tuned to?
Off travelling for a while... internet patchy to non-existent....
~ only Humax Youview units appear to have been affected & not the millions of other PVRs receiving the same data?
People are unlikely to report problems with non-Humax YouView PVRs on a forum that is dedicated to mainly Humax YouView PVRs @Tim C. I suspect that forum members with Huawei boxes are in the minority.
In the last ten days our FVP Panasonic recorder has failed to record on two occasions. Panasonic do not have a forum to discuss issues. They do not state what is in their firmware releases. They do not communicate with their customers.
I suspect that YouView might be unique in the way that they share information with their customers on this forum. I consider that to be a reason for praise.
My old Panasonic PVR has also had failures but these have been restricted to programmes that have been rescheduled due to the World Cup changes , like BBC News at 10 being at 10:20 instead or Holby City moving from Tuesday to Wednesday.
Everything that has been on it's originally scheduled time like Home&Away has been fine whereas on the Youview box H&A has always been the first on a day to fail. So I think the issues are different as the Panasonic doesn't seem to handle schedule changes too well.
So I think the issues are different as the Panasonic doesn't seem to handle schedule changes too well.
I didn't suggest that the reason for the FVP Panasonic failed recordings is the same as the YouView Humax issue @Tim C, because I don't know. I am saying that at least one PVR other than Humax YouView sometimes misses schedules recordings.
There have been multiple claims across the internet from multiple box users of failed recordings. So the 'Its only YouView' claim just isn't true.
If I understand it correctly, for OTA programmes at least, these streams are sent by Arqiva, and are not under YouView’s control.
So any box by any maker that did a similar timeout on these streams would likewise result in failed recordings; even if it’s a Humax-only issue, we might expect their non-YouView boxes to be similarly affected.
Assuming that these incidents you speak of are recent, and are not just the ordinary scattering of incidents resulting from deranged PVRs, @Visonman, can you give us a few citations we can look at?
Off travelling for a while... internet patchy to non-existent....
Comments
broadly it's around how broadcast stream data is processed by the set top box and a particular set of circumstances where that doesn't happen as it should and recording doesnt start.
Just not where you are
It's currently in the testing phase so as long as no other issues surface during this time, we expect for the fix to roll out at that time. We believe that this should hit the nail on the head however we always have to test the software before it gets deployed to make sure no other issues crop up.
If there are any updates or changes to this estimate I'll reply to this thread.
Thanks,
Sarah
Box number - DTR-T2110 / 84B08530
But equally, @TimC, what do you think the difference might be between a box left ‘Always Ready’ and one in the ‘ready’ time period of Smart Standby?
If you think there is a difference here, then the bug must be in the handling of these modes, wouldn’t you say? Which certainly could affect IPTV as well as OTA.
And then what difference do you think the internet blocking is making?
For your workaround to be valid, and necessary in its totality, we need to be looking for a mechanism that requires both aspects of it; otherwise, we are just like pigeons pecking for food at random in a lab experiment, and thinking there is a pattern to be found.
But it assumes that an Always Ready box is dynamically updating its EPG all the time, even in Standby, whereas a Smart Standby box stops doing this in its deep sleep period. Is this true? I don’t know, but maybe @Sarah can tell us.
And it’s also a mechanism without, seemingly, room for Anaglypta’s latest observation, above.
Perhaps we shouldn’t read too much into YouView saying fix, not fixes, but I did very much get the impression there was a single point of failure here, not multiple ones....
Previously we had an older Humax in the conservatory but when we moved in in spring all the recordings I had set failed so I bought the new bt box. It looks to me as if this was actually the same fault so didn't need a new one which is somewhat annoying particularly as the new box had the same problems back in April.
What it does point to is that this is a wider issue than just the bt badged boxes and fixes are needed as a matter of urgency as for a recurrence to occur when it was supposed to be fixed compounds the issue and has led to my dis-trusting both the Humax brand and the Youview platform.
We've put together some information below to explain some detail behind the issue of the failed recordings. Thanks again to everyone who has contributed some information or data to help us when we were investigating, it's been very much appreciated.
Programmes and the accompanying data that describes them (what the next programme is, programme description etc) are batched up and broadcast in different ‘streams’, so some of the BBC channels are in one stream, ITV channels in another etc. To make sure each stream knows about the others, some of the accompanying data, particularly information about what programme is now being broadcast and what comes next is sent on all streams. This information is re-sent at regular intervals.
In this case the information about what is happening on other streams started taking longer to arrive and was timing out when being processed. This led to the Humax layer thinking the information on other streams was invalid and stopped processing it. Therefore, if this time out happened, if you were tuned to a channel on one stream and a recording was due to start on another stream, the current stream wouldn’t know about the programme due to start and wouldn’t give the instruction to make the recording happen.
A change has been in the Humax layer to make sure that it handles the time out processing better – and continues to process the ‘other stream’ information. This is going through testing and we aiming to roll out as soon as possible.
Thanks,
Sarah
There are a number of factors which impact the streams which are still being investigated but whilst this part of the investigation is still ongoing, we wanted to put a change in place to ensure viewers are able to record successfully on their YouView devices.
This issue was impacting both Humax Retail and BT Humax YouView boxes rather than just the Humax Retail devices.
Thanks,
Sarah
Or would this only have worked for programmes on the actual Mux the box was tuned to?
So any box by any maker that did a similar timeout on these streams would likewise result in failed recordings; even if it’s a Humax-only issue, we might expect their non-YouView boxes to be similarly affected.
Assuming that these incidents you speak of are recent, and are not just the ordinary scattering of incidents resulting from deranged PVRs, @Visonman, can you give us a few citations we can look at?