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U&W not decoding

M

mikmakmok

New Member
Afternoon all. This is odd. Just wondering if anyone else has seen it
My Foxsat HDR has recently stopped decoding u&w from a Freesat tune. Black screen with the 'channel is scrambled or not currently available' box, no audio, but subtitles are showing?
A quick look at lyngsat tells me this is the only UKTV channel at 12129V in mpg4 SD. All others are mpg2 SD and are receiving fine.
But then Sky Arts and Together TV are the same parameters as u&w and work.
I'd guess an encryption/decryption issue, but it should be in the clear.
Any help or thoughts gratefully received. The first time, I rescanned in Freesat mode, and got it back. Now that's not fixed it.
Here's hoping.
Mark
 
Same symptoms as described.
Tried recording a few minutes of the current broadcast program using the remote but when the recording was stopped the on screen interface reported the the recording was less then 30 seconds and nothing was saved. Pausing and restarting Live TV didn't appear to work (hard to tell with just the Tipping Point subtitles showing).

Then FTP'd the 0.ts timeshift buffer file to a PC and was a little surprised that this file played on VLC as expected (video, audio and DVB subs). This would suggest to me that there is something very odd going on, but no idea what.
 
Well that's bizarre. Nice work with the time shift buffer. I think I'll try and contact UKTV and enquire. Just hope it's not the start of something that our old boxes can't decode.
Thanks for confirming it's not just me, appreciate it.
If work is quiet this weekend I'll try and get a Tandberg IRD to downlink and check what the stream looks like.
 
Mark,
As the timeshift buffer file appears to have a playable version of the broadcast it suggests against being a decoding issue but I'm just guessing really. For information, I have custom firmware and nowster patch but can't see how either is relevant in this case.
Could do with someone who has a different freesat rx device to check if it affects other platforms. Is that what the Tandberg can do?
Contacting the broadcaster seems a good option. I don't really see them as being pioneers of new broadcasting techniques but who knows.
Good luck and let us know.
 
Thanks Dino.
I'm also CF and nowsters installed.
The Tandberg will give me things like sampling type, gop, encoding profile - the sort of thing we should not ever need to care about. As you say, it's all guesswork at the moment. Hopefully I can find the time to compare a few channels, but there's lots of rugby and football using the satellite gear this weekend.
Cheers.
 
I think the HDR-1xxx were the next generation after the Foxsats.

Just checked my 1010s and that's OK too - same generation as the 1000s
 
Yeah, I'll try an old 1290, it's not used for transmission anymore. The 8200's we still use are old enough to be Ericsson branded but now run Mediakind firmware. In fact the 1290 may be older than my Foxsat!
 
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Well, I had a bit of quiet time this morning, and I'm not much the wiser.
I've looked at all channels at 12129V, and a couple of others elsewhere that appear to have the same parameters as U&W.
The helpful webmaster at Lyngsat confirmed U&W did change to MPEG4 on the 11th from MPEG2.

U&W now appears as an H264 4:2:0, High@Level3.0 interlaced stream. Low bitrate at below 1MBit/s.
I get Sky Arts without a problem - absolutely identical stream according to my 1290 except this is Main@Level3.0 for the H264 encoding profile. So is High profile pushing the Foxsat too far?
But a quick look at BBC News HD shows that's High@Level4.0 (albeit HD) and again, this has no issues. I'm confused.

The other U& channels are still MPEG2 and work fine.

This is all quite dull, but if H264 encoder levels and profiles are potentially going to leave behind my beloved machine, I'll be quite disappointed.
I've contacted UKTV, who predictably asked me to factory reset and reinstall my apps (!). Having tried a better explaination and replied to them myself, I'm waiting to see what they say.

Attached are some screen grabs from the Ericsson 1290 at work. If anyone else can see anything helpful, jump in. Otherwise I'll chase up UKTV in a couple of days. Hopefully they are willing to listen and help find a solution. But if it's a handful of users, who knows.
 

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I have the same problem and am as confused as all others on this forum. However, I put my Foxsat into non-Freesat mode and performed a manual tuning of the 12129V transponder. Lo and behold, U&W works fine in non-Freesat mode ! The problem therefore does not appear to be linked to the ageing Foxsat itself. (Mine is coming up to 16 years old and remains just about the best bit of tech I’ve ever purchased.) There’s something about being in Freest mode which is preventing the decoding from happening.
 
Wow, that's nice detecting. It did seem from my downlinking yesterday that there's nothing that should prevent this working, but that may be really useful information.
Still waiting for another response from UKTV, maybe they'll get back to me after the weekend.
 
Just tried my Foxsat and U&W is now working showing Tipping Point.

Have now just checked my #2 Foxsat and guess what U&W was not working on this one. I tried a Freesat Tune without success. So next, remembering that #1 had had a Factory Reset yesterday as I had altered the LNB feed from x2 to a single feed so I could use the spare for my 1010, did a Factory Reset. Foxsat #2 is now showing Tipping Point on U&W. Go figure!
 
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Well life got in the way for a week, apologies for my lack of response.
Tim, you're a star. A factory reset and all is back. How utterly bizarre.
Hopefully this helps someone in the future. As usual, this forum helps me out.
Always appreciated ☺️
 
Glad it worked for you too. I just hope that any further changes don't always require a factory reset as it is bit of a pain. I have written myself some notes for settings changes required as I always forget one of them!

And I just thought of another change
 
Thanks for that David. There are a frustrating number of things to reconfigure after a factory reset, so good to know this is an option.

So it seems to me that the new parameters for U&W aren't different enough, so the HDR keeps the old info on a rescan because everything is the same expect the encoding. And then it expects mpg2 and gets mpg4 and doesn't know what to do. I had assumed the rescan cleared and started again, I guess not.

At least we're able to work around. It's likely this will crop up again. Thanks again everyone.
 
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