iPlayer stopped working?

The HD/R-Fox T2 firmware page of the Humax website is still available.

The cost to the supplier is essentially trivial since the same issue has already been addressed for other models, which were obviously using the same certificate (or one of the same batch) as they all failed at the same time.

An obvious benefit is reputation management, both with customers and by supporting the content provider whose logo may well have been on the product packaging and was definitely in the manual (as was Sky, a different case, as their app was withdrawn).

When I pointed out that the EPG had stopped working on a 10-year-old Panasonic LCD (NIT too big, 2012-ish, I think), the manufacturer sent out a special reply-paid CI card to update the firmware, which certainly gave me more confidence in their product, if not as much as if they'd got it right originally. Admittedly it now doesn't work properly again but it's no longer the primary tuner for the screen.

Is /mod/etc/hosts a thing? I thought /tmp/hosts was it.
 
/df said:
The cost to the supplier is essentially trivial since the same issue has already been addressed for other models, which were obviously using the same certificate (or one of the same batch) as they all failed at the same time.

An obvious benefit is reputation management, both with customers and by supporting the content provider whose logo may well have been on the product packaging and was definitely in the manual (as was Sky, a different case, as their app was withdrawn).
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We're talking about Humax here...
 
Thanks, yes, it's mentioned through a shell variable. Anyhow it seems to be necessary to refresh the lookup as the BBC recycles its IP addresses. Partly that may be load balancing, but I suspect addresses are liable to be repurposed after some time.
 
Black Hole said:
Why would any supplier devote resources to providing an update for an end-of-life product? What's more, the main method for distributing HDR-FOX/HD-FOX updates is no longer available.
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Because they don't want their name dragged through the mud? The HDR Fox T2 was very popular in its day. If people see that Humax will still fix a serious issue, it gives them confidence that if they buy an FVP-4000T Humax will provide similarly long support.
 
Can someone point me at some good documentation for what new-portal might do for me. I've searched the forums and CF wiki and what few pages that finds give very little information.

I would prefer a separate package however for fixing iPlayer.
 
Black Hole said:
The various custom portal developments were moribunded by the switch to Opera.
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My understanding is that new-portal is the only one that works. I've found statements it needs the most recent Humax firmware version. Unfortunately it says very little else, like what it actually does.
 
Black Hole said:
...
The various custom portal developments were moribunded by the switch to Opera.
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And replaced by new-portal, which works fine.

When you activate the Portal button or menu item, the STB program loads Opera (or, historically, some other web code) and navigates to a specified URL.

By default this is the URL of Humax's Portal site, but new-portal changes this to a local page, in which one "application icon" links to the original Portal page, though I don't believe this adds any value for the user -- its rationale pre-GDPR being for Humax to track user's activities, but also to manage what they might have hoped would be a dynamic ecosystem of Portal applications without firmware updates.

Theoretically any website that can be used with just cursor keys and Enter could be linked from the local page; more sophisticated sites would require some JS injected to map other remote buttons to virtual keys, which is a research problem.

new-portal's limitation on firmware versions (CF based on OEM >= 1.03.06) might concern the way in which the portal URL is specified (a file in RO flash, mounted over to change it). As the pre-Opera firmware won't support iPlayer anyway, those don't matter. I doubt that this interface has changed since Opera was introduced, but all my machines have latest stable CF (and why not?). So I can vouch for HD and HDR with CF3.13 based on latest OEM firmware.
 
Owen Smith said:
tells me almost nothing about what new-portal does and why I might want it.
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The main distinction is that it provides short-cut access to the standard Portal services without the tedium of going through the Humax server to get to them. If you have a fast connection you might not notice, but with a slow connection it takes ages just to load up the menu from which to select iPlayer.

However, it is also a platform from which to launch alternative services (as they might be developed/discovered). In this case, it could be used to access a working iPlayer URL instead of the faulty one.
 
The interstitial page that is used by both Humax and new-portal to launch iPlayer claims that it is essential to the application but I suspect this is obsolete. To get even the marginally usable GUI on the HD/R the iPlayer application has to know what type of device is being served, so we can't go far from the normal thread of processing. Therefore the preferred solution above just spoofs the problem domain that wants the device certificate. In other words, it's a minimal intervention.

I set the quoted script as a crontab action running every 10 minutes and was able to stream "Love Life" and "Ghosts S1" without an unusual number of hangs. But ideally there'd be a way of getting dnsmasq to change its configuration without clearing the rest of its DNS cache.
 
Black Hole said:
The main distinction is that it provides short-cut access to the standard Portal services without the tedium of going through the Humax server to get to them. If you have a fast connection you might not notice, but with a slow connection it takes ages just to load up the menu from which to select iPlayer.

However, it is also a platform from which to launch alternative services (as they might be developed/discovered). In this case, it could be used to access a working iPlayer URL instead of the faulty one.
Click to expand...

Thanks, that makes the point of it much clearer on both counts. It's a shame https://wiki.hummy.tv/wiki/Custom_TV_Portal doesn't say that, or doen't say it clearly anyway.
 
I think it's possible to render any website through an entry in new-portal, such as WebIF, but interacting with them is difficult so there's not much point.
 
Well I have to admit I finally cracked and bought one of the latest generation Chromecasts (the older ones are dirt cheap now, but the lack of a remote put me off). Pretty neat, and iPlayer now considerably more snappy. Once we've caught up with some things on that there's 6 months of bundled Netflix sub to get stuck into over what could be a pretty grim winter.
 
Any news from Humax on a real fix? All it needs is a firmware update that is identical to the previous release but with a new certificate. How long can it possibly take to generate that? The certificate can be inserted at binary level if they're not sure they can rebuild the firmware or don't want to take the risk. I sense some heel dragging.
 
The new Chromecast remote control in itself is of no added value to me as I just use my Harmony universal remote combined with the TV's CEC functionality to Play / Pause / Stop but does the new Chromecast offer more playback control? Being able to skip back / forward or rewind / FF would be useful.
 
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