Bearing in mind that this is reported as a Huawei box issue, but not a Humax one, then if this is indeed the case, the flags can’t be entirely bogus.
So something that doesn’t faze Humax boxes, but fazes Huawei ones; maybe something like the P/F signal going past too quickly for the Huawei firmware, but Humaxes cope OK?
‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ Wm Morris
@Roy , yes, you could well be right, although given the lack of details from @Louise Murdoch and the specific failure situations I wonder if it's just that it hasn't been stumbled upon and/or reported on Humaxes.
Could you give it a go on your Humax? Schedule a series recording of Ch4 News on 4 (SD) and force the box to have one tuner on BBCA (e.g. BBC1, 1) and the other on SDN (e.g. Legend, 41) coming up to it, and let's see...
Thursday: same setup and same result as Wednesday.
The main box had its tuners set on D3&4
and BBCA and Ch4 News on both 4 and C4+1 recorded fine.
The secondary box was set to BBCA and SDN and Ch4 News on 4 Failed to Record but succeeded on C4+1.
Good to hear you folks have reproduced the problem. I got distracted this evening and didn't set up the tuners on my main box, which were left on BBCA and SDN and so, as expected, Ch4 News at 7pm Failed to Record. I did get to it soon afterwards though and flipped the watched channel to 4 and so it recorded it ok on the +1.
Before getting distracted I thought I'd try something else on the secondary box and set its tuners to 11 & 12, i.e. ArqA and ArqB, and Ch4 News recorded ok, both at 7pm and on the +1.
@Roy , yes, you could well be right, although given the lack of details from @Louise Murdoch and the specific failure situations I wonder if it's just that it hasn't been stumbled upon and/or reported on Humaxes.
Could you give it a go on your Humax? Schedule a series recording of Ch4 News on 4 (SD) and force the box to have one tuner on BBCA (e.g. BBC1, 1) and the other on SDN (e.g. Legend, 41) coming up to it, and let's see...
Thursday: same setup and same result as Wednesday.
The main box had its tuners set on D3&4
and BBCA and Ch4 News on both 4 and C4+1 recorded fine.
The secondary box was set to BBCA and SDN and Ch4 News on 4 Failed to Record but succeeded on C4+1.
@Roy , yes, you could well be right, although given the lack of details from @Louise Murdoch and the specific failure situations I wonder if it's just that it hasn't been stumbled upon and/or reported on Humaxes.
Could you give it a go on your Humax? Schedule a series recording of Ch4 News on 4 (SD) and force the box to have one tuner on BBCA (e.g. BBC1, 1) and the other on SDN (e.g. Legend, 41) coming up to it, and let's see...
Thursday: same setup and same result as Wednesday.
The main box had its tuners set on D3&4
and BBCA and Ch4 News on both 4 and C4+1 recorded fine.
The secondary box was set to BBCA and SDN and Ch4 News on 4 Failed to Record but succeeded on C4+1.
Hmm, I’m wondering about the forcing. I reckon to get the tuners how you describe, I need, after scheduling Ch4 SD News for series record, to be recording Young Masterchef on BBC 1, and while it’s recording, select Legend to watch, and then leave the box like that (switched on, or in standby, or doesn’t it matter?) to encounter Ch4 News when it comes on. (But I’m assuming standby).
Otherwise, I can’t be sure when I select Legend that it hasn’t just reused the current tuner for that, and not the second one.
Or is there a simpler way?
‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ Wm Morris
@Roy , yes, you could well be right, although given the lack of details from @Louise Murdoch and the specific failure situations I wonder if it's just that it hasn't been stumbled upon and/or reported on Humaxes.
Could you give it a go on your Humax? Schedule a series recording of Ch4 News on 4 (SD) and force the box to have one tuner on BBCA (e.g. BBC1, 1) and the other on SDN (e.g. Legend, 41) coming up to it, and let's see...
Thursday: same setup and same result as Wednesday.
The main box had its tuners set on D3&4
and BBCA and Ch4 News on both 4 and C4+1 recorded fine.
The secondary box was set to BBCA and SDN and Ch4 News on 4 Failed to Record but succeeded on C4+1.
Hmm, I’m wondering about the forcing. I reckon to get the tuners how you describe, I need, after scheduling Ch4 SD News for series record, to be recording Young Masterchef on BBC 1, and while it’s recording, select Legend to watch, and then leave the box like that (switched on, or in standby, or doesn’t it matter?) to encounter Ch4 News when it comes on. (But I’m assuming standby).
Otherwise, I can’t be sure when I select Legend that it hasn’t just reused the current tuner for that, and not the second one.
Or is there a simpler way?
That's the technique I've been using, and assuming the answer to (a) of my questions up-thread is "yes". It seems to be.
Note, that's BBC1 SD (1) for the BBCA mux, and, if you want, having got a recording going on that mux and tuned to Legend to watch, you can cancel and delete the recording, as that tuner should stay on the BBCA mux.
Alternatively if you don't want to be around to mess with it, just set it to watch Legend and record anything on the BBCA mux before Ch4 News starts. It (at least, the Huawei) always maintains the "watched" channel if it can, so it will switch the other tuner to BBCA.
My T2100 recorded the Channel 4 News successfully and completely.
Beforehand, at about 3:30, I had set Ch4, on 4, to series record the News. I had then set BBC1 to record the second YM, and a Google Home alert for 4:15, midway though. On getting the alert, I changed channel on the box to 41.
I then put it in standby.
YM recorded completely, showing it had survived me switching to 41, no doubt on the second tuner.
I see three remaining hypotheses here:- Humaxes work and Huaweis don’t; It’s transmitter-dependent, and even Humaxes would do it where you are; If you had tried it this Sunday afternoon, it would have worked on your Huawei.
I think Occam’s razor would favour hypothesis 1 here, though, and I hope you did try it along with me at home to eliminate hypothesis 3. I should have asked you to…..😢
‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ Wm Morris
Yes and no. For the last few days, as I'm now confident about how to get D3&4 programmes recorded on my main box, I've been playing with various mux combinations on the secondary one (see reports for Friday and Saturday).
Today it was scheduled to record (mirroring the main box), 5.15 Lego Masters on E4, 5.35 Ch4 News on 4, 6.35 Ch4 News on 4+1 and 7.00 Andrew Neil on 4+1, and I had it tuned to ArqA and Local (watched) beforehand.
Lego Masters Failed to Record and all the others succeeded, and it seems to be a common (albeit not always) result that the first D3&4 recording fails but later ones often succeed.
So, while not exactly the same test as you ran I think we can still eliminate your hypothesis 3.
I guess 2 is a possibility (I'm on Crystal Palace) but I too suspect 1 is the right one.
As there are 42 permutations of 2 tuners with 7 muxes, unless @Louise Murdoch or @Rohit ask me to I think I'm going to stop going through mux combinations now.
Although I am puzzled and curious about what the problem could be, given the info so far...
Hypothesis; while the first D3&4 recording fails for you, then as noted above, the box knows something is happening as the required P/F comes by on the non-D3&4 mux, enough to know it should be making a recording, and of what, but it somehow fails to latch onto it.
However, this is still enough to flip a tuner onto that mux, so that subsequent recordings can use the D3&4 P/F directly, and don’t have to rely on the D3&4 P/F carried on any of the other muxes.
Would this fit your observations?
‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ Wm Morris
We (or at least those investigating this) need more information on YouView’s tuner selection algorithm. Or Huawei’s, if this is down in the firmware, though I don’t think it will be.
But from that result, either there’s a problem with a tuner already on D3&4 picking up a D3&4 programme (which is not what we thought the problem might be) or the box is hanging on to its last-watched tuner for as long as it can, and so is trying to use the tuner set to SDN, and thus could still be hitting the problem we though this might be, of picking up the D3&4 P/F from a different mux, in this case the SDN mux.
‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ Wm Morris
@Roy Looking at my table above it's beginning to look like having either tuner on either SDN or Local is the proximate cause of the D3&4 recording failures, irrespective of which mux the other tuner is on -- including D3&4.
Well I'm off for a week so the table above (updated to this evening) is it for testing from me. Not quite sure what to make of the last result, that was a bit of a surprise; I expected it to fail (as prior ones with Local in the mix had). But maybe the problem has been fixed ... and if not hopefully it will be by the time I get back.
It's been nigh on a month now and when I first reported it @Louise Murdoch replied to say "We are aware of issues with the D3&4 MUX failing to record on Huawei devices and are looking in to this with D3&4", and on 3-Feb @Rohit said "we have been able to reproduce these failures" so what's the hold up in fixing the problem?
You know when it started (19-Jan by "@Louise Murdoch's comment) so something must have changed then (what?) and you know how to reproduce it, and so with some debugging you should know what the problem is, so what's the hold up?
We’ve passed all of this information on to D3&4 who have
managed to reproduce the issue, and are now looking in to a fix. Unfortunately
as the fix would require an update to the MUX we have no time frame for this.
In the meantime we have added some guidance to our Support Site & TalkTalk
have updated their customer contact areas.
Well, firstly, just to point out that the guidance on your Support Site you linked to is incomplete and incorrect. The failures are not only on ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 SD channels but also on anything else on that mux. I.e. also ITV2, ITV3, E4, Film4, Channel 4+1, More4, ITV4, E4 +1 and ITV1+1.
Also, as you can see from the table of my tests above, the advice to remaining tuned to these channels when recordings are starting isn't effective; recordings can still fail regardless as it seems that which mux the other tuner is on appears to cause the problem.
That aside, could you be so kind as to explain what is actually happening here, please? You've said that this is a D3&4 problem, but the recordings can fail when neither tuner is on D3&4, and without either changing to it. So, it would seem that the problem is being caused by what muxes other than D3&4 are sending out (but only some of them, from my tests). So, what's going on?
Also, if the failings are because of problematic signals from a mux(es), why is this only affecting Huawei boxes? And can't YouView simply change the Huawei YV software to do whatever the Humax YV software does that handles the issue?
We have kept the advice high level for users unaccustomed to
terminology such as multiplex, and rather than list all the channels on the
D3&4 MUX, have limited it to ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 SD channels as
all channels on this MUX are owned by either ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5. This is
not an exclusive list.
As for what is happening, currently D3&4 are testing the issue and looking
to fix, however currently they are still investigating.
The advice we give to remain tuned to the channel is only guidance to reduce
the possibility of failures as currently the only way to guarantee successful
recordings of these programmes is to record their HD variants (or any +1
channels not on the D3&4 MUX).
While we have not seen reports of this happening on Humax, D3&4 believe the
issue lies at their end and they plan to fix.
I appreciate it's not the place to start going on about muxes, but while you, I and I'm sure other readers of this forum know it's not an exclusive list, I'd have thought it would be useful to be explicit about the channels affected -- especially so as the advice to record the HD channels instead is only available for ITV1, Ch4 & Ch5, and not the majority of channels on D3&4.
Anyway, I got a failed to record on 5USA this evening (SDN mux). We'll see if it's just a one-off ....
Comments
Bearing in mind that this is reported as a Huawei box issue, but not a Humax one, then if this is indeed the case, the flags can’t be entirely bogus.
So something that doesn’t faze Humax boxes, but fazes Huawei ones; maybe something like the P/F signal going past too quickly for the Huawei firmware, but Humaxes cope OK?
We've also fed this back to D3&4 who are continuing to investigate.
Thanks again for your help with testing!
Thanks for the very clear recipe.
I can try this Sunday, maybe Monday, on a Humax T2100 and a T4000.
Hmm, I’m wondering about the forcing. I reckon to get the tuners how you describe, I need, after scheduling Ch4 SD News for series record, to be recording Young Masterchef on BBC 1, and while it’s recording, select Legend to watch, and then leave the box like that (switched on, or in standby, or doesn’t it matter?) to encounter Ch4 News when it comes on. (But I’m assuming standby).
Otherwise, I can’t be sure when I select Legend that it hasn’t just reused the current tuner for that, and not the second one.
Or is there a simpler way?
My T2100 recorded the Channel 4 News successfully and completely.
Beforehand, at about 3:30, I had set Ch4, on 4, to series record the News.
I had then set BBC1 to record the second YM, and a Google Home alert for 4:15, midway though.
On getting the alert, I changed channel on the box to 41.
YM recorded completely, showing it had survived me switching to 41, no doubt on the second tuner.
I see three remaining hypotheses here:-
Humaxes work and Huaweis don’t;
It’s transmitter-dependent, and even Humaxes would do it where you are;
If you had tried it this Sunday afternoon, it would have worked on your Huawei.
I think Occam’s razor would favour hypothesis 1 here, though, and I hope you did try it along with me at home to eliminate hypothesis 3. I should have asked you to…..😢
Hypothesis; while the first D3&4 recording fails for you, then as noted above, the box knows something is happening as the required P/F comes by on the non-D3&4 mux, enough to know it should be making a recording, and of what, but it somehow fails to latch onto it.
However, this is still enough to flip a tuner onto that mux, so that subsequent recordings can use the D3&4 P/F directly, and don’t have to rely on the D3&4 P/F carried on any of the other muxes.
Would this fit your observations?
We (or at least those investigating this) need more information on YouView’s tuner selection algorithm. Or Huawei’s, if this is down in the firmware, though I don’t think it will be.
But from that result, either there’s a problem with a tuner already on D3&4 picking up a D3&4 programme (which is not what we thought the problem might be)
or the box is hanging on to its last-watched tuner for as long as it can, and so is trying to use the tuner set to SDN, and thus could still be hitting the problem we though this might be, of picking up the D3&4 P/F from a different mux, in this case the SDN mux.
Apologies for the delay in replying.
We’ve passed all of this information on to D3&4 who have managed to reproduce the issue, and are now looking in to a fix. Unfortunately as the fix would require an update to the MUX we have no time frame for this.
In the meantime we have added some guidance to our Support Site & TalkTalk have updated their customer contact areas.
Thanks,
Louise.
We have kept the advice high level for users unaccustomed to terminology such as multiplex, and rather than list all the channels on the D3&4 MUX, have limited it to ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 SD channels as all channels on this MUX are owned by either ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5. This is not an exclusive list.
As for what is happening, currently D3&4 are testing the issue and looking to fix, however currently they are still investigating.
The advice we give to remain tuned to the channel is only guidance to reduce the possibility of failures as currently the only way to guarantee successful recordings of these programmes is to record their HD variants (or any +1 channels not on the D3&4 MUX).
While we have not seen reports of this happening on Humax, D3&4 believe the issue lies at their end and they plan to fix.
Once there is a fix we will update here.
Thanks,
Louise.