Stopped playing encoded material

C

Cindoboy

New Member
Last night I was watching a recording of channel 4=1 (SD) and 22 minutes through it came up with a message saying lost signal or programme encrypted. It was recording BBC1 HD at the time.

I checked and found it would playback some SD stuff, not all but no HD, including the BBC1 recording that was still recording as far as the box said.

After waiting for the BBC1 programme to stop recording I powered the box down. On switching on everything played fine apart from the BBC1 recording, it had only recorded the first 25 minutes, possible this is the time both events went weird.

Any ideas, or could this be a one off. Just had the box replaced because of it freezing at times.
 
Cindoboy said:
Any ideas, or could this be a one off.
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This is a problem that we see maybe once or twice a year; mildly irritating but not sufficiently common to be a major problem. The important thing is to realise that recordings being made will be useless from the point the message was displayed on screen and to power cycle (ie turn off power, count to ten and turn it on again) as soon as convenient and then restart the recordings. I have seen the suggestion that the root problem is that the box has got confused about its encryption keys which sounds plausible but I don't know whether it has been confirmed.
 
This is the sort of thing I have had if I don't put the box into standby periodically.

The situation starts to show its symptoms by not getting the onscreen picture for the radio station we normally listen to through the hummy (leaving a black screen but the station keeps playing), then the screen saver stops updating the time. If the box is not standby cycled to relieve these symptoms eventually the symptom you mention occurs.

I beleive what happens is that there is a memory leak in the Humax application code and it gets to a point where there is no longer any memory left for video buffers.
 
MartinLiddle said:
I have seen the suggestion that the root problem is that the box has got confused about its encryption keys which sounds plausible but I don't know whether it has been confirmed.
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Please sir it was me.

I have postulated that in some rare event it is possible for the encryption key to be corrupted, which would mean all existing recordings (made before the corruption) refusing to play until the corruption is cleared by a reboot, and any recordings made after the corruption only playing until the corruption has been cleared (never afterwards).

This is only a hypothesis based on very few reported observations, so no it is not confirmed. However, if somebody aware of this hypothesis observes it happening to them, assuming they do not panic and go straight for a reboot, it will be possible to gather further data (checking the predictions above are correct) which would result in the hypothesis becoming confirmed theory.
 
I've had a similar problem twice recently, I started to wonder whether it was an upgrade from the standard 500GB to a 2TB WD drive that was the problem, until I saw this and other posts.
1st Occasion: Started watching an HD recording that we'd partially watched the previous evening. We were skipping through to find the appropriate point before we'd started falling asleep the night before (so we knew most of the file was OK). The HDR then started to record 2 HD channels. The replay went blank and came up with the message about missing or encrypted channel. Nothing at the time would make the file replay, although other SD and HD recordings were fine. None of the various suggestions I'd seen online resolved the problem, so it was deleted and watched on iPlayer.

2nd Occasion: One recording in progress, started replaying another HD program. Part way through, we got the same scenario as above, but this time the screen showed a dialog to select HDD or Network before complaining about encrypted channel etc. Again other recordings (SD & HD) are fine, but this one isn't.

Unless the other half has deleted the file, it should still be on the HDR and I can make it available to any of you folks who know much more than I, to look at the format/structure.
 
I had one recently, not at all the same situation though. I was playing a decrypted recording by network share to a HD-FOX, and it came up with the "scrambled" slide somewhere in the middle. I skipped back half a minute and resumed play, and the second time around everything was OK.

GordoB said:
2nd Occasion: One recording in progress, started replaying another HD program. Part way through, we got the same scenario as above, but this time the screen showed a dialog to select HDD or Network before complaining about encrypted channel etc. Again other recordings (SD & HD) are fine, but this one isn't.

Unless the other half has deleted the file, it should still be on the HDR and I can make it available to any of you folks who know much more than I, to look at the format/structure.
Click to expand...

The biggest question here is whether the recording was made completely in the first place. How big does the file claim to be, and how long was the recording supposed to be?
 
We were about 10 minutes into playback when the problem occurred. "Play from start" just gives a black screen with the error, if skip is used, you can skip through to the end (59 mins) at the specified interval (2 mins). If you stop part way the "Resume Play" option is available, but you only get the black screen and error.

According to the display on the TV, it's 59 minutes (1 hour prog) recorded from BBC1 HD. From the web-if (running custom firmware 2.15) the size is 2.66GiB
 
Black Hole said:
That's much too small for an hour of HiDef.
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2.66 GiB for 59 mins of BBC One HD looks perfectly OK to me. I have just checked some of my recordings, and have a 30 min recording at 1.31 GiB, and a 60 min recording at 3.34 GiB.
The recording size does vary depending on the content, and probably whether it is an HD, or an upscaled SD programme.
 
Thanks for that info Brian, I was going to ask what size files should be,

I've just checked other files, we've got 10 episodes of Borgen from BBC HD ranging from 2.33 GiB to 2.46 GiB. The reason we've got that many is because we haven't watched them yet, we usually delete them once they've been watched!

I skipped/fast forwarded through the smallest and it appears to be OK.
 
2.66G for an hour of Hi-Def video is quite feasible, especially if you are using Custom Firmware package shrink/auto-shrink
 
GordoB said:
I was going to ask what size files should be
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Disregarding other factors (like custom firmware shrinking), proper HiDef recordings straight from air come in at around 4.5GB/hour. However, I record the StDef channels as a rule, and only HiDef for something that needs the picture quality.
 
The only CF packages I've installed are auto-unprotect, poweron-channel, redring and webif. I can't see shrink/auto-shrink in the list of available packages. I've now enabled show development and advanced, there's rather more listed as installed and available but I still can't see it. I didn't think my eyesight was that bad :)
 
They are options in the WebIF itself, on the media browser OPT+ buttons. Shrink applies to individual recordings, Auto-Shrink applies to all recordings in a specific folder (and any subsequent additions to the folder), Recursive Auto-Shrink applies to the folder and all sub-folders branching from it.
 
Black Hole said:
Disregarding other factors (like custom firmware shrinking), proper HiDef recordings straight from air come in at around 4.5GB/hour. However, I record the StDef channels as a rule, and only HiDef for something that needs the picture quality.
Click to expand...
I think that nowadays, recordings from the HD channels tend to average around 3 GB per hour. This article FreeviewHD bit-rates and file sizes revisited from 2010 is quite interesting, though not necessarily fully accurate now.
 
Strictly Come Dancing last autumn came in at over 4GB per hour. I have one recording that is 8.02GB for 118 minutes, but another that is 8.14GB for 86 minutes! High time I shrunk them (deletion pending).
 
SCD was broadcast with 5.1 surround, so that probably explains it being a bit bloated, the same can also be said for films broadcast with 5.1 surround.
I have recordings of Waterloo Road from BBC One HD at 2.51 - 2.63 GB for 60 min, and Top Gear from BBC HD at 3.75 - 4.12 GB for 60 min.

We seem to have drifted rather off topic.:)
 
[offtopic]
So we are looking at the inconnectedness of things, then.
[/offtopic]

Is this thread now addressing Gordob's problem? I am confused.

Cindoboy,

Has your problem re-occurred?

Martin
 
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