Laggy EPG with version 1.03.xx

af123

af123

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I suppose I was hoping that Humax would fix the EPG speed issue, widely reported on here and hopefully spotted by their beta testers with the unofficial 1.03.06 & 11, with the final OTA release. Unfortunately not which got me thinking about the problem as I tried to get to sleep last night.

What we know is:

The problem occurs both with and without custom firmware.

Good : ) I'm always happy to eliminate CFW early on.

The performance appears to be related to the number of entries in the schedule (I'm as yet unconvinced that expired or non-matching entries contribute to the problem more than any other type of entry in the schedule);

So, this could mean that every time the EPG is scrolled and the screen refreshes, the software is doing a scan of the schedule database to work out where to put the scheduled icons... I can't see why this would be worse than previous versions though.

A factory reset followed by schedule restore or re-input helps some people. It didn't help me. Some people find the problem returns;

As prpr has pointed out in another thread, a factory reset wipes the schedule database. If restoring the same schedule following a factory reset results in better performance then perhaps automatically cleaning up the database on each boot would be beneficial? (SQLite3 Vacuum). Last time I looked at it the Humax software copied the database into memory at startup (I suspect using the SQLite Online Backup API) and only periodically flushed it back to disk. I haven't looked at 1.03.xx in detail.

The EPG is now updated in the software update window

I can't see how this could have an effect but if they have broken something in the EPG update code then the EPG database could be getting larger each day. 'diag epgrange' will show you. Mine's actually going back to Jan 31st at present so I will do an EPG reset from maintenance mode later and see if it helps.

Humax have begun to implement remote scheduling and EPG over IP in 1.03.xx

This could be one of the new portal apps that they're crowing about. This could be a factor - more investigation required.. a network packet trace while scrolling the EPG could be interesting.


So, let's see if we can bottom this out and come up with a fix ourselves or at least a set of things for people to try over and above the existing good advice to remove expired entries and factory reset.

Can anyone think of a way of quantifying the lag? How about bringing up the EPG on channel 72 and holding down the right button until the end of data is reached and timing that? That would let us broadly compare boxes and see if specific things fix the issue.
 
Wow.. On my 1.03.12 it's taken me 7 minutes 23 seconds !!
It's scrolled all the way to Thurs 13th march but the data stops on the 7th.
Scrolling from the 7th to the 13th only took approx 30 seconds.
 
4 minutes got me to overnight on Monday with 1.3.12. Remote now on charge!
 
I've noticed that if you take the epg all the way to the left, if you press left a few more times in quick succession it reloads the info pane at the top of the screen. Could this be related? A forced refresh on that field when scrolling could be causing the whole thing to lag..?
 
Going to try a full time channel as there will be more entries.

101 A tad quicker at 1Min 54 sec. ( I have 15 reservations including 4 expired)
 
Found someone at MyHumax who has 1:03:12 and has done a reset and restored 21 recordings, and on request did the time test.

Time on 101 5 minutes 15 seconds.

I increased number of recordings to 21 (box has CF and 1:02:29) Time 1 min 35 seconds.

Graham
 
I would give you the BootHDRs ones but it's so bad I give up. I had noticed it was pretty bad before but since the software isn't suppose to run on the box not so bad.

Is there not a user interface issue here about how you scroll the screen, you use the >>| and |<< button for moving between chunks of time (days) and the left and right for finer movements. You can see if people don't know that they can use >>| and |<< buttons for EPG navigation and are using left and right only then they would be getting more unhappy than people who do it the way they should or could. I know we do.

Probably us people who are reasonably happy use the change day buttons whilst other just slam through the grid in ignorance ?.

I will time it at the weekend on my HDR at home and give you a proper reading.
 
With 15 active and 9 dead items in my schedule the CH72 scroll right (for 1 week) takes 9 Mins. 25 Secs. can I suggest a shorter test :). For Group = TV a scroll down from CH 1 and back to CH1 takes 76 Seconds. 107 'TV' channels across the 8 MUXs. F/W = 1.03.06
BTW
The original Humax Remote seems to keep going, but my One-4-All times out after about 60 seconds as the '72-right' test took 9 re-presses
 
grahamlthompson said:
EPG on 72, 2 minutes 7 seconds including a number of times I had to push the button again (1:02:29). Now have thumb with RSI
Click to expand...
The remote times out after 30 seconds. When 1.03.06 was first available timing the epg navigation was a lot easier once I realised that as it's very predictable when a fresh press is needed.
 
Tell said:
Is there not a user interface issue here about how you scroll the screen,
Click to expand...
Possibly some times but if I have an urge to read each programme title then using 'right' is far easier to read. I can just keep my eyes steady as the epg flips through the programmes. If using the 3 hour skip I have to develop a side to side roving eye which isn't as easy to do as a plain stare.
 
Probably us people who are reasonably happy use the change day buttons whilst other just slam through the grid in ignorance ?.
Click to expand...


I use the change day buttons but even using those I couldn't have put up with that lag on the new update, it was truly awful and reminded me of the Sagemcom HD pvr that ended up in the cupboard within a week of use for same reason.
 
Luke said:
Possibly some times but if I have an urge to read each programme title then using 'right' is far easier to read. I can just keep my eyes steady as the epg flips through the programmes. If using the 3 hour skip I have to develop a side to side roving eye which isn't as easy to do as a plain stare.
Click to expand...

Agree with that. Mine doesn't skip 3 hours though, mine is only 2. Why's that as it's not customisable is it?
 
I suspect so. More stuff to move about... Drag in and out of memory so that's a variable. One for af123. I do tend to use the custom software for putting events in, but will use the EPG if I know the programme is on at a specific day or time. But generally not browse with it.
 
Black Hole said:
Meaningless unless everything else is identical.
Click to expand...
I think it's clear enough that there's a quantifiable difference between 1.2 & 1.3 with 1.3 being around 4 times slower. Testing the results of any tweaks would obviously require repeating the test on the same box with everything else remaining near enough the same.

I suggested 72 as it has lots of short events. A test which takes a long time is easier to compare across boxes and the results of any changes should be more obvious.
 
Just connected to telnet and ran the top command.
While scrolling the epg, the CPU %age against the humaxtv process spikes at 102%. How's that even possible? Lol
 
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