E4 causing STB to crash..

Hi,

Wondering whether anyone else is having issues with E4 this evening..
I've got a philips DTR200/05 STB and every time I change channel to E4,
I get a few seconds of video and then the screen goes black (although
the audio does continue). Once this has happened, the STB appears to be
unresponsive and I'm unable to change channels until I've reset the
box.

All other channels appear to be fine, it appears that it's just E4
that's causing me problems...

Any ideas?

Martin

http://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/cgi-b...num=1129658509


"Martin Bonner" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi,

Wondering whether anyone else is having issues with E4 this evening..
I've got a philips DTR200/05 STB and every time I change channel to E4,
I get a few seconds of video and then the screen goes black (although
the audio does continue). Once this has happened, the STB appears to be
unresponsive and I'm unable to change channels until I've reset the
box.

All other channels appear to be fine, it appears that it's just E4
that's causing me problems...

Any ideas?

Martin

"JRS" wrote in message
...

http://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/cgi-b...num=1129658509


"Martin Bonner" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi,

Wondering whether anyone else is having issues with E4 this evening..
I've got a philips DTR200/05 STB and every time I change channel to E4,
I get a few seconds of video and then the screen goes black (although
the audio does continue). Once this has happened, the STB appears to be
unresponsive and I'm unable to change channels until I've reset the
box.

All other channels appear to be fine, it appears that it's just E4
that's causing me problems...

Any ideas?

Martin





I bought a Sony IDTV with the intention of getting an aerial upgrade then
dumping NTL, but I'm wondering if Freeview is worth the hassle!!
Reading all the problems with Freeview and set top boxes and IDTV, I'm a
simple guy, and all this talk of LCNs, MUXs,rescanning, disapearing
channels, setting the news channels up by hand...!?
I wonder if I'm better sticking with my NTL STB!!

:-/

Chris.

In article .com,
Martin Bonner wrote:

Hi,

Wondering whether anyone else is having issues with E4 this evening..
I've got a philips DTR200/05 STB and every time I change channel to E4,
I get a few seconds of video and then the screen goes black (although
the audio does continue). Once this has happened, the STB appears to be
unresponsive and I'm unable to change channels until I've reset the
box.

All other channels appear to be fine, it appears that it's just E4
that's causing me problems...

Any ideas?

Martin

E4 are currently transmitting a MHEG banner for a few seconds after you
join the channel, advising of the need to rescan: this is crashing a
number of makes of box. (When it wasn't transmitted for a time
yesterday afternoon the crashes stopped). Hopefully they will stop this
after a day or so as it becomes old news, and the problem will go away.
In the meantime some people have reported that E4+1 is unaffected.

I have one of the original Philips OnDigital boxes and a brand new
Sagem. E4 currently works fine on the slow old Philips box and shows
the banner. The Sagem can't cope and switches off. What a pile of
cr*p. Things seem to be going backwards!

In article .com,
wrote:

I have one of the original Philips OnDigital boxes and a brand new
Sagem. E4 currently works fine on the slow old Philips box and shows
the banner. The Sagem can't cope and switches off. What a pile of
cr*p. Things seem to be going backwards!

The banner has currently been removed (1115 on 20 October) and I'm not
getting crashes now. Humax have posted to another forum
http://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/cgi-b...=humax;action=
display;num=1129658509;start=45#45
and say that Ch4 have been asked to remove this banner, so let's hope
it's gone permanently as it seems to have been a major cause of
problems.

"Chris M" wrote in message
eenews.net...
"JRS" wrote in message
...


I bought a Sony IDTV with the intention of getting an aerial upgrade then
dumping NTL, but I'm wondering if Freeview is worth the hassle!!
Reading all the problems with Freeview and set top boxes and IDTV, I'm a
simple guy, and all this talk of LCNs, MUXs,rescanning, disapearing
channels, setting the news channels up by hand...!?

It does make you wonder how everyone - particularly old people, will manage when
when analogue TV is switched off.


I wonder if I'm better sticking with my NTL STB!!

If you can tolerate the hasle, a Freeview PVR is very useful particlarly when
the 7 day EPG is also working properly! - and you don't have to pay a
subscription.

My satellite reception has been much more stable - perhaps because my non sjy
receiver can't handle the 'interactive' stuff.

--

Michael Chare

It does make you wonder how everyone - particularly old people, will
manage when
when analogue TV is switched off.


You ain't wrong! If there seems to be some confusion as to what to do for
the best in what is supposed to be a technical group specificaly for Digital
TV, what hope has Granny Smith and her 15 year old black and white portable
got..??!

Let's just hope they've got all the bugs and wrinkles sorted out before they
switch analogue off... yea right! ;-)

Personally I don't think it is possible to make Digital as simple and
straight forward to use as analogue due to all the extra technology
involved(so much more to go wrong/get mis-configured/need
updating/crash/generally bugger up), therefore some people are always going
to have problems, at least at first.
Some of the solutions to problems suggested here confuse me, and I'm
supposed to be good at this kind of thing, (ok I'm not a DTV engineer, but
I'm a computer programmer, and we're supposed to understand technology... I
think part of the problem is all the TLAs and buzzwords that fly around in
any discussion. Now that I am starting to know what MUXs and LCNs,
RGB,SCART, MHEG, DOGs, EPGs, re-scanning etc etc mean, I am STARTING to
understand what's going on. But as for my mum...

ChrisM

In another forum, this message from Ch 4:

___________________
Hi, have heard from our engineers that there was a problem peculiar to
Pioneer boxes which was caused by the more4 pop up - they have now
deleted this so you shouldn't have any further problems. If you do,
please advise.

Lucy Brooks
Viewer Enquiries
__________________________



So hopefully that's the end of that.

Chris M wrote:

snip

I think part of the problem is all the TLAs
and buzzwords that fly around in any discussion. Now that I am
starting to know what MUXs and LCNs, RGB,SCART, MHEG, DOGs, EPGs,
re-scanning etc etc mean, I am STARTING to understand what's going
on. But as for my mum...

*****

Sure. But it would be easy to have similarly arcane discussions about
blanking intervals, audio sub-carriers, negative modulations and all
sorts of other stuff which relates to analogue tv. We don't, not just
because this is a digital tv ng, but because all of that stuff long
ago reached the stage where 'it just works' and no ordinary consumer
*needs* to understand it.

DTT manifestly isn't at the stage where 'it just works', and mums and
others will potentially be in trouble until it does. But we *ought* to
be getting there, and it seems to me that the reason why it is taking
longer to reach that stage for DTT is a mixture of manufacturers'
stupidity and a political conventional wisdom which fears regulation
and 'lets the market decide'. The market doesn't have a clue about
engineering standards, and it is no longer possible for the BBC to set
those standards, partly because it isn't the dominant broadcaster any
more, and partly because it, too, has been corrupted by
shallow-thinking politicians (both within and without).

But politicians who want to be elected by viewers will make damn sure
the boxes work transparently come analogue switch-off. Or, since it
won't have occurred to them in time, they will postpone switch-off.

André Coutanche