iPlayer V4 causes HDR-FOX to reboot

MontysEvilTwin

Well-Known Member
I have used the new iPlayer version on the HDR-FOX a fair few times now. It has not been a great experience. The menus have a lag that make the EPG look speedy and the slow motion tile resizing makes the whole site look twitchy and feel spongy. Worse than this I have found that about one time in four, playing a programme triggers a crash and reboot. This has happened to me on two different boxes. Has anyone else had this problem? I have e-mailed Humax customer support, but I am just expecting to be told to do a factory reset and disk format.
 
Has always worked fine for me in the past.. I take it you are on the latest firmware MET?
Both boxes I have used iPlayer (v4) on have 1.03.12/ CFW 3.00 (WiFi friendly build) one box is old style hardware the other is an RE version. As indicated by Luke, I am talking about v4 specifically: I never had this problem with v3. It could be an issue with my ISP (Virgin) or network set up, I suppose, but this is pretty vanilla. This and the fact that it has happened on different boxes is why I am curious if others are having the same problem.
 
I have used the new iPlayer version on the HDR-FOX a fair few times now. It has not been a great experience. The menus have a lag that make the EPG look speedy and the slow motion tile resizing makes the whole site look twitchy and feel spongy. Worse than this I have found that about one time in four, playing a programme triggers a crash and reboot. This has happened to me on two different boxes. Has anyone else had this problem? I have e-mailed Humax customer support, but I am just expecting to be told to do a factory reset and disk format.
I had a couple of future i-player programmes to watch last night and 1 catch up so I used the HDR-FOX T2 instead of my HDR-2000T. No crashes but the iplayer navigation was very frustrating compared to what I have become use to with the HDR-2000T.
 
I had a couple of future i-player programmes to watch last night and 1 catch up so I used the HDR-FOX T2 instead of my HDR-2000T. No crashes but the iplayer navigation was very frustrating compared to what I have become use to with the HDR-2000T.
According to Humax Customer Support there is nothing wrong and any issues I am having are a problem with my network. Regarding the rebooting, I could have just been unlucky, but the menu navigation is VERY slow and they seem to be in denial about this.
 
I thought the version that loaded with the new browser was v4? which I have had for months..?
No, the update to Opera in 1.03.xx software brought with it iPlayer version 3. The update to version 4 happened less than two weeks ago. Does this change your assessment that it is not feasible to access version 3 by modifications/ additions to the new portal?
 
I had a couple of future i-player programmes to watch last night and 1 catch up so I used the HDR-FOX T2 instead of my HDR-2000T. No crashes but the iplayer navigation was very frustrating compared to what I have become use to with the HDR-2000T.
I have just had an e-mail back from Humax Customer Support regarding the performance of iPlayer on the HDR-FOX compared to the HDR-2000T:
Humax Customer Support said:
We have tested both boxes and the speed is comparable with no issues on either.
They have clearly got their head in the sand on this one. I am getting used to their broken promises, but touting bulls**t as fact is a leap even for them.
 
Just loaded up iPlayer and can see what you mean.

Does not change my assesment about v3 unfortunately as it was all hosted on the bbcs end.

Humax customer support have clearly not looked at v4 properly and used the remote to navigate around the screen on the HDR T2.

The bbc need to disable the tile zoom JavaScript as the cpu obviously can't keep up. Was the same with the animations on v2.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I think the rebooting is probably a red herring. It has happened to me on two boxes, but only once on one of them. The other unit reboots regularly when trying to use iPlayer but it is displaying some other odd behaviour (e.g. after a reboot the tuner stops working, though it works properly if you shut it down with the remote, allow the disk to fully spin down and turn on again) so I think it is faulty.
The navigation across the tiles is slow though as you have observed: the tile resizing does seem to cause the sluggishness. What annoyed me was the insistence from Humax Customer Support that there is nothing wrong and that it performs comparably to the HDR-2000T. They also e-mailed me an irrelevant cut-and-paste network troubleshooting guide and tried to blame my router settings.
 
Are they thinking you are talking about buffering? They get easily confused about technical things. That's why they work in customer service and not IT.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Are they thinking you are talking about buffering? They get easily confused about technical things. That's why they work in customer service and not IT.
They knew what I meant. I have been sent the same instructions before when I reported a completely different problem. It was just as irrelevant then as it is now. Sending it probably allowed them to tick a box in some metrics monitoring form.

I have also heard from the BBC. They said that the fault had not been reported before and told me to make sure I have the latest firmware on my device. There was no suggestion that anyone had actually tried to reproduce the fault.

Please can anyone who has time, and is affected by this issue, e-mail Humax Customer Support and use the iPlayer website to report the fault to the BBC. Without more people complaining, no one is going to even acknowledge that there is a problem and there is no chance of a fix until that happens.
 
More on the rebooting. I thought it might be a non-issue, now I am not sure. The box I was using the most suffered from reboots when using iPlayer V4. This always happens at the same point: just as a programme begins to play, but does not happen every time. This box has another problem so I wondered if it was just due to the unit being faulty. I had also had a reboot on a different box. I have had two more reboots on the second box today and it occurred to me that both boxes are revised-hardware (RE) versions. So I have been using iPlayer on two different old hardware units to test further. I have not had a single reboot on either of the old hardware boxes. To be sure my experience is representative more data is required, so if you have an RE box and are inclined to use iPlayer please post if you get a similar reboot. If you have an old hardware box and you have a reboot while using iPlayer please post too.
 
I had a reset tonight on iPlayer and after the box rebooted received a warning that certain packages had been disabled.
 
I had a reset tonight on iPlayer and after the box rebooted received a warning that certain packages had been disabled.
From the kernel version in your footer you very likely have an old hardware box. Did the reboot happen just as a programme was beginning to play?
 
From the kernel version in your footer you very likely have an old hardware box. Did the reboot happen just as a programme was beginning to play?
Yep


Is there any way to use an older version of the player?

I already miss the Radio iPlayer.
 
Last edited:
In case no one has noticed, the lag has disappeared from the new iPlayer gui.
Thanks for the heads up. I have been using the version on my TV or Now TV box for immediate viewing, or if I wanted a download, I used the FOX but went straight across the top menu to search, avoiding the tiles. When I get a chance I will test it on the RE FOX to see if the rebooting has stopped too. I wonder if the changes were made at the request of Humax or if it is just a coincidence stemming from a planned update by the BBC?
 
Back
Top