Button Lag - Portal / iPlayer

dan888

Member
Hi,

My new box has quite a lot of "lag" between pressing a button and the Portal or iPlayer actually responding.

All other functions have no lag.

I'm on the FW the box came with rather than the very latest so I think it's one release behind.

Is this normal?

Cheers

Dan
 
Brian, when you say that a "lag" is normal ... what sort of lag would you find acceptable?

I sorted out my network access to the area behind the tv, in the living room last Friday night (15/07/2011) ... this took a lot longer than expected (but that's not necessarily a concern here) so I didn't have time to really investigate the Portal ... but I did open it, browse the iPlayer and watch a minute or two of a programme (Torchwood) in SD and then the same programme in HD just to check that the bandwidth of the wi-fi bridge that I'd just installed was up to it all ... I don't remember any particular "lags" from that brief tiral. I then went away for the weekend.

Since arriving back, whenever I push the TV Portal button I get a "Connecting" message on the screen for 10 secs, then it carries on showing TV for around 1.5-2 mins, then the screen goes black (but with tv sound) with the "Connecting" message and rotating circle shown, for another 1.5-2 mins then (slowly, over another minute or so) the TV Portal screen gets built up. These delays make the thing completely unusable!!

I've tried turning off and back on, changing the network settings and re-setting to factory settings and nothing seems to get me back to where it was a few days ago ... I may consider re loading the firmware I got v1.02.20 over OTA last week, but is that likely to resolve this?

Thanks in advance.
PhilB
 
The times you mention do seem quite slow, I will check later on and see what my times are.
 
Hi,

I get a lag when hitting the portal button (5 to 10 secs) and also when hitting any button once in iPlayer (3 secs). I also get a lag when rendering the screen for iPlayer, but not to the extent of PhilB.

I wonder if this is anything to do with the load on the portal website or the way the portal website is coded?

Looking at the site firstly I see its running on MS IIS 6.0 ! Eugh!
Also the web server is not using compression which could speed it up a great deal.
There also aren't any "Cache-Control" or "Expires" headers.

So every element of the page is likely to be fetched from the webserver on every page load, not very efficient for comms and also additional load being put on the webserver.

The entire first page is approx 625Kb and take 3.13 secs to load on my desktop browser.

Room for improvement I rekon?

Dan
 
I have just tried timing my access to the TV Portal and BBC iPlayer, and here are my times.

Pressing "TV Portal" button to fully displayed TV Portal screen took 23 seconds.
Selecting BBC iPlayer to fully displayed screen took 13 seconds.
Selecting an SD program to get ready to play took 13 seconds.
Selecting an HD program to get ready to play took an extra 9 seconds.
Starting SD playback took 59 seconds.
Starting HD playback took 62 seconds.

So from the first press of the TV Portal button to watching an SD program,(not allowing the time taken for me to select the various options) it took 108 seconds, and the HD version took 120 seconds.
 
Hi Dan

Thanks for the info about durations of lag ... I think I can now be sure that what I am experiencing is a real problem with my Humax box/portal software. When I timed the portal loading earlier this evening it was 5 minutes 20 seconds between pushing the "TV Portal" button and having the portal loaded and responding to left/right/up/down button pushes. I gave up waiting for the iPlayer to load ... I'm sure the suggestions you make will improve the performance generally, but I doubt that that's the solution to my problem.

So does anyone have any ideas what will help fix my problem? Is there any way of "resetting" the portal software? Resetting to factory defaults made no difference, will a reload of the firmware make any difference? Is that even possible? Can I do a manual upgrade from v1.02.20 to v1.02.20?

Thanks
PhilB
 
So does anyone have any ideas what will help fix my problem? Is there any way of "resetting" the portal software? Resetting to factory defaults made no difference, will a reload of the firmware make any difference? Is that even possible? Can I do a manual upgrade from v1.02.20 to v1.02.20?

How does the portal behave if you load it in your PC browser? Still slow or loads quicker?

Is your Hummy home plugged or WiFi?

Dan
 
But mines a few secs - much better than PhilB who is waiting ages and appears to be on the latest FW?
 
It's still worth going to 1.02.20, you can back-track if you don't like it (we do!). PhilB seems to be having problems unrelated to the firmware version.
 
Daft question maybe, but have you eliminated your Internet connection?
Have you ran a speed test for example?
Hi Chris, I thought I had done that by doing my initial test when I first networked the thing up, and it seemed to work fine then, but you are right I should go back and check.

Is your Hummy home plugged or WiFi?
Dan, it's cable-connected to a Wi-Fi router which is then set up in client mode, connected (over Wi-Fi) to my ADSL Wi-Fi router, which is connected out to the internet. This set-up took me a while to sort, but I think (famous last words), I did sort it and my initial tests suggested all was good. I was able to use the TV portal without any noticeable lags at all.

I'm not at home at the moment ... I'll re-check the networking later ...
How does the portal behave if you load it in your PC browser? Still slow or loads quicker?
... could you let me have the URL and I'll check that as part of the test!

PhilB seems to be having problems unrelated to the firmware version.
Hi, I agree. My problem feels (to me anyway) like it may be down to, either ... some problem with the TV Portal software being corrupted as part of the firmware installation, or ... some code/item that got downloaded as part of my inital use of the Portal, that was cached corrupted and now is slowing down the loading of all the rest. Which is why I feel I may need to clear a cache (which as far as I can tell isn't an option) or re-sintall the firmware.

Is there any way of "resetting" the portal software? Resetting to factory defaults made no difference, will a reload of the firmware make any difference? Is that even possible? Can I do a manual upgrade from v1.02.20 to v1.02.20?
Anyone got an answer to those questions?

Thanks all,
PhilB
 
If you plug in a USB with the .hdf for 1.02.20 in the root directory, the Humax will load it on boot no matter what the current firmware version is. When I read your posts earlier I thought you were running one behind.
 
Hi Dan, thanks for that ... and to Black Hole for the re-install info.

The Portal works fine in a browser over my Wi-Fi connection (from my laptop direct to my ADSL WiFi router) and cabled up to my Wi-Fi Client router (the one the Humax is plugged into) ... and then when I connected my Humax back to the Wi-Fi client router (I'd used the cable to connect to my laptop), I opened up the TV Portal on the Humax and the "lag" is back to how it was last Friday i.e. the Portal works REALLY WELL again ... I didn't time anything but it felt like it was loading a lot quicker than Brian mentioned above and the lag is certainly no worse than Internet Explorer ;)

I had previously turned the Humax off (that's a full "switch at the back" off), the router off, both off at the same time and this had made no difference whatsover ... but it seems that pulling the cable out when both were switched on for a minute to run the test seems to have sorted it ... I noticed that the DHCP has allocated the Humax a different IP address (.11 instead of .10, from a range .10-.20) but I doubt that that would make any difference (the other router allocates in the range .100-.199 and so I don't think there could have been any conflicts)
... other than that I can't see anything had changed

Anyway, I'll keep investigating, but for now my problem has disappeared. Thanks for all the help

PhilB
 
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