How are people finding MySky ?

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › How are people finding MySky ?

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

272 posts

Ultimate Geek

#30745 15-Mar-2006 09:57

JohnPorter: Unfortunately, the only one of those that showed up as a future booking was Ellen. No Criminal Minds, no One News, and 3rd Rock (Sky 1) had disappeared too (it has been recording ok all along). I rebooted, and they all showed up. That was the first reboot since the EPG change.

So it appears that a reboot is required to finish the EPG change? Perhaps the old versions of EPG data were still in transient memory and needed a reboot to fix them.

Maybe they would have recorded even though they didn't show in the list, I don't know. Someone else can test that! :-)

Not saying that there is not a problem here, but future bookings may not show up in the planner immediately. Series link data is not cycled continuously but is set up to play in certain windows, e.g. during the linked programme or just before the next episode. The box keeps a series link alive by having at least one linked item in the planner, whether that is the last viewed programme or a booking for the next one. If this linked item is deleted then the series linking is cancelled. If it is present then the decoder is on watch for the link data and will make a Planner entry when it comes across it. This kind of mechanism is necessary to cope with cases, for example, when the next episode playing is outside the 7-8 day window of the EPG data.

Thanks for the feedback, and I hope this helps.
M.

TonyAndrewMeyer

22 posts

Geek

#30746 15-Mar-2006 10:44

manaia: You do not have to use a SCART-SCART cable. If you hit the AV button on the remote then MY SKY will go into loop-through mode.

Have you actually done this? I spent a great deal of time trying to get this to work, and couldn't.

If you have done this, I would be very interested to know what you did, because this would be very useful.

manaia

272 posts

Ultimate Geek

#30762 15-Mar-2006 12:46

TonyAndrewMeyer:
manaia: You do not have to use a SCART-SCART cable. If you hit the AV button on the remote then MY SKY will go into loop-through mode.

Have you actually done this? I spent a great deal of time trying to get this to work, and couldn't.

If you have done this, I would be very interested to know what you did, because this would be very useful.

SKY tested this functionality before the launch, both ways, with SCART-SCART (i.e. signal available on pin 8) and when connected to devices with no SCART socket. They have always tried to support AV mode for non-SCART devices, hence the provision of the 199 channel on the non-PVR decoders.

On my MY SKY hitting the AV button immediately puts the TV into blue-screen "no input" mode as I have no input on my VCR SCART. If you are not getting to that point then there is a serious problem. If you get to that point but don't see input from your external device then my best guess would be that your SCART cable might not be bi-directional. I've seen all flavours of SCART cable: input, output, bi-directional and one-way but switchable, and they are seldom labelled.

JohnPorter

187 posts

Master Geek

#30773 15-Mar-2006 14:56

The installer hooked up my MySky to my HDD recorder with a scart to S-Video cable that he provided. When I push the AV button nothing at all happens.

The S-Video end is connected to the HDDR's AV3 input. Pardon my ignorance, but wouldn't my HDDR have to OUTPUT on the AV3 INPUT in order for loopthrough to work?

JohnPorter

187 posts

Master Geek

#30774 15-Mar-2006 15:31

manaia:
JohnPorter: Unfortunately, the only one of those that showed up as a future booking was Ellen. No Criminal Minds, no One News, and 3rd Rock (Sky 1) had disappeared too (it has been recording ok all along). I rebooted, and they all showed up.

Not saying that there is not a problem here, but future bookings may not show up in the planner immediately. Series link data is not cycled continuously but is set up to play in certain windows, e.g. during the linked programme or just before the next episode. The box keeps a series link alive by having at least one linked item in the planner, whether that is the last viewed programme or a booking for the next one. If this linked item is deleted then the series linking is cancelled. If it is present then the decoder is on watch for the link data and will make a Planner entry when it comes across it. This kind of mechanism is necessary to cope with cases, for example, when the next episode playing is outside the 7-8 day window of the EPG data.

I can understand that in the case of Ellen, which recorded correctly today but does not show up as a future booking. It has been preempted by the commonwealth games - poor choice of a test program on my part! I was expecting it to show up as ..searching though, as that is what it is doing.

It doesn't explain why One News and 3rd Rock did not show up. And weekly programs have always shown up before, so I would have expected Criminal Minds to show up. Are you saying we should just trust MySky to record things that don't show up in the planner? And the programs would have recorded even without rebooting?

It also doesn't explain why the future bookings appeared when I rebooted. Or maybe you meant the decoder doesn't look for series link info except on certain occasions. The EPG data is clearly is being broadcast all the time, as it takes only a minute or two after a reboot to fill the EPG data up to a week out. Surely the series link info is part of the EPG data?

BTW, noticed last night the future booking for Kings of Construction (7 days from now) showed up while last night's episode was recording.

manaia

272 posts

Ultimate Geek

#30781 15-Mar-2006 17:26

JohnPorter: The installer hooked up my MySky to my HDD recorder with a scart to S-Video cable that he provided. When I push the AV button nothing at all happens.

The S-Video end is connected to the HDDR's AV3 input. Pardon my ignorance, but wouldn't my HDDR have to OUTPUT on the AV3 INPUT in order for loopthrough to work?

Hi John,

From your description I would think that your installation is capable of recording the MY SKY output onto the HDD recorder but not allowing material replayed from the recorder to be passed back to MY SKY for loop-through. To do the full loop in the best way you need a bi-directional SCART cable in MY SKY's VCR SCART with both input and output jacks at the HDD recorder end.

M.

manaia

272 posts

Ultimate Geek

#30782 15-Mar-2006 17:43

Hi John,

I can understand that in the case of Ellen, which recorded correctly today but does not show up as a future booking. It has been preempted by the commonwealth games - poor choice of a test program on my part! I was expecting it to show up as ..searching though, as that is what it is doing.

So long as we stop seeing '..searching' when we book TV1&2 I will be happy.

It doesn't explain why One News and 3rd Rock did not show up. And weekly programs have always shown up before, so I would have expected Criminal Minds to show up. Are you saying we should just trust MySky to record things that don't show up in the planner? And the programs would have recorded even without rebooting?

I agree with what you're saying. I am though saying that some programmes that are series linked may not show their next booking in the Planner until the last minute (provided that you have not deleted the last viewed/recorded programme from the Planner that was keeping the link alive). In that case you do have to trust MY SKY. I would like to believe that the programmes you saw in the Planner after the reboot would have appeared there without the reboot.

It also doesn't explain why the future bookings appeared when I rebooted. Or maybe you meant the decoder doesn't [i]look for[/i] series link info except on certain occasions. The EPG data is clearly is being broadcast all the time, as it takes only a minute or two after a reboot to fill the EPG data up to a week out. Surely the series link info is part of the EPG data?

Yes you're right, it doesn't. The reason for bookings appearing in the planner in my experience after a reboot is a broken series link manager process. I don't know if the decoder only looks for series link info on certain occasions (like on boot) - that's very possible but is outside my knowledge. I have been told that each programme's series link data is only broadcast at certain times. SKY broadcasts a torrent of service information data which we could loosely term EPG data. Crucial information, such as the channel bouquet and the now/next information, is broadcast very frequently. Data like series link doesn't have to be broadcast so often to work properly.

Hope this helps,
M

Quic Broadband

Move to New Zealand's best fibre broadband service (affiliate link). Free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE. Note that to use Quic Broadband you must be comfortable with configuring your own router.

JohnPorter

187 posts

Master Geek

#30783 15-Mar-2006 18:13

manaia: The reason for bookings appearing in the planner in my experience after a reboot is a broken series link manager process.

Exactly my concern. So there are two reasons a booking (eg 3rd Rock in my case) does not show up:

1. A broken series link manager.
2. It hasn't found the next episode in the series yet, even though the program is daily, has always worked ok in the past, and it has been six hours since the recording, and the required series link info just happened to be broadcast within a few seconds after I rebooted.

Three guesses which one I find more plausible! For the time being I think I will try rebooting rather than trusting!

Has anyone else tried trusting? Did it work?

manaia: Hope this helps

It does, a lot! Thanks for your contributions, and for being honest. You are doing more good here than Customer Services has in all my dealings with them, in my estimation. Keep it up! I'm sure I speak for a lot of lurkers too.

TonyAndrewMeyer

22 posts

Geek

#30788 15-Mar-2006 21:09

manaia: SKY tested this functionality before the launch, both ways, with SCART-SCART (i.e. signal available on pin 8) and when connected to devices with no SCART socket. They have always tried to support AV mode for non-SCART devices, hence the provision of the 199 channel on the non-PVR decoders.

Your comments are sometimes very specific for someone that just knows people that work for SkyTV and doesn't actually work for them <0.5 wink>.

On my MY SKY hitting the AV button immediately puts the TV into blue-screen "no input" mode as I have no input on my VCR SCART. If you are not getting to that point then there is a serious problem.

Yes, I get that. But if I do plug a device into the VCR SCART, I get the same blank screen. If I use the VCR SCART as output (i.e. plug it into the TV) then I get the expected output (with the convenient fixed-audio-level output).

If you get to that point but don't see input from your external device then my best guess would be that your SCART cable might not be bi-directional. I've seen all flavours of SCART cable: input, output, bi-directional and one-way but switchable, and they are seldom labelled.

This is the SCART (to RCA) cable provided by Sky. Presumably it is therefore suited to the task. I see no reason why it would need to be bidirectional - it needs to take output from the external device (PS2/DVD player) and input that to the My Sky device (or rather, to the TV via the My Sky loopthrough). Since it's plugged into the output of the external device, I don't see why the other direction would be of any use.

I suppose that the RCA plugs could be connected only to the input pins and not the output ones, so MySky fails to see any incoming signal.

If that is the case, why did Sky not provide a more suitable cable? More importantly, why does one have to find this out from some random person on a forum (no offense! <wink>) rather than from the My Sky manual or the Sky website, or something like that?

(I see that DSE has a switchable converter for ~$20. I wonder whether it's worth $20 to be able to use the loopthrough).

JohnPorter

187 posts

Master Geek

#30796 15-Mar-2006 21:35

TonyAndrewMeyer: I don't see why the other direction would be of any use.

The other direction would be to enable recording from MySky to your VCR, which would be the normal use. Presumably SKy gave you a cable like mine, that enables recording from MySky output to your VCR input, but doesn't have a second set of plugs for the VCR output to be routed back to MySKy for loopthrough.

manaia

272 posts

Ultimate Geek

#30797 15-Mar-2006 21:36

Yes, I get that. But if I do plug a device into the VCR SCART, I get the same blank screen. If I use the VCR SCART as output (i.e. plug it into the TV) then I get the expected output (with the convenient fixed-audio-level output).

If the SCART cable has only one set of plugs on the non-SCART end and it works as an output (i.e. MY SKY to TV) then I'm pretty sure you have no hope of using it in the other direction (as in input to the SCART socket). I believe that SCART has a completely different set of pins for output as opposed to input (as you surmise below).

This is the SCART (to RCA) cable provided by Sky. Presumably it is therefore suited to the task. I see no reason why it would need to be bidirectional - it needs to take output from the external device (PS2/DVD player) and input that to the My Sky device (or rather, to the TV via the My Sky loopthrough). Since it's plugged into the output of the external device, I don't see why the other direction would be of any use.

I suppose that the RCA plugs could be connected only to the input pins and not the output ones, so MySky fails to see any incoming signal.

If that is the case, why did Sky not provide a more suitable cable? More importantly, why does one have to find this out from some random person on a forum (no offense! <wink>) rather than from the My Sky manual or the Sky website, or something like that?

I believe that the standard SCART cable supplied by SKY installers is an output-only. (Even if you plug it into the output of your external device the signal is still going to be hitting the output pins of the decoder SCART so has nowhere to go). They are, however, supposed to fit cables which meet the requirements of the customer and in your case seem to have not identified your need for a bi-directional cable. I've been told by SKY CS that there is a real demand for simple diagrams showing how to hook up decoders, but the problem is that, with so many possible setups, such a document is difficult to draw up. If you don't have it already, try contacting the web support team through the SKY website and asking for the 'hookups' document. It may not help with regard to SCART but it has some good hard information in it.

JohnPorter

187 posts

Master Geek

#30811 15-Mar-2006 23:55

An update on the recording saga: everything recorded properly today. I am even seeing the overlap with Joey and Lost that I saw previously on the non-..searching channels. So that's good. One News recorded the full session plus overlaps, so that's good. Everything is shown in the list that should be - One News and 3rd Rock for tomorrow, Joey and Lost for next Wednesday, so that's good. Ellen is not on the list, as it has been preempted by the games for a while.

So it appears the recent fix has fixed a lot of things. Wouldn't be surprised if it fixes the TV1 truncations and the "Failed: Clashed" scenarios too. Well done, Manaia (and / or friend)!

If only it weren't for the email I got from Sky today! :-( Obviously they misunderstood the problem I reported with rewind and play (see page 3 in this forum, my post dated 27-FEB-2006 23:53). How could I be more clear? It continues to annoy me (the bug, not the email).

Watched an Air Crash Investigation the other day. They had subtitles showing pilot communications, in rapid succession. Wanted to go back a couple seconds and pause it to read it more carefully. After about 5 unsuccessful attempts, I finally wound it way back and played through. Then missed the spot by a half second, and had to do it all over again!

According to the email this is normal. So there must be a randomising routine in there that chooses a random spot within an 11-second range to start playing from! Seems a bit more likely that it has to do with decrypting while going backward, blocksizes read, decompression etc.

At any rate, an 11-second span in some shows represents 4 scene changes and several changes of subtitle! It's bewildering when it chooses a random location during such a show, because you can't even tell IF it behaved itself or not. The reason I chose the credits of Home and Away as the example is that it isn't bewildering - you can see from the location of the walkers what happened. Maybe I should call them.

Has anyone else noticed the problem? Note that a novice might experience the problem and assume they did it wrong, or got the timing wrong.

manaia

272 posts

Ultimate Geek

#30814 16-Mar-2006 06:58

If only it weren't for the email I got from Sky today! :-( Obviously they misunderstood the problem I reported with rewind and play (see page 3 in this forum, my post dated 27-FEB-2006 23:53). How could I be more clear? It continues to annoy me (the bug, not the email).
...
Has anyone else noticed the problem? Note that a novice might experience the problem and assume they did it wrong, or got the timing wrong.

Hi John,

That's good news about your recordings. Thanks for the detailed feedback, it's invaluable.

I know the rewind/play problem you're talking about. It is inherent to the current implementation of the filesystem and playback mechanism used by MY SKY and there is little prospect at this time of SKY getting it improved. When I use MY SKY to review I tend to avoid the rewind/play combination for this reason and use the slomo feature instead. It doesn't improve the rewind/play point imprecision (and allowing for the 2s holding 'play' for the slomo to kick in is a pain) but it reduces the chances of my having to repeat the process.

M.

TonyAndrewMeyer

22 posts

Geek

#30824 16-Mar-2006 10:41

JohnPorter:The other direction would be to enable recording from MySky to your VCR, which would be the normal use.

I would have thought that the normal use would be for looping through a DVD player or gaming console (which is my use). The point of having My Sky is that we don't need to use a VCR any more (it's no good for long-term storage because VHS tapes are crap, and the My Sky box does all the timeshifting).

I suppose those that have a DVD-R might want a bi-directional or output setup, so that they can shift material to long-term storage (personally, if I want long term storage, I'll buy a proper pressed DVD in nice packaging), but I would have thought that would be much rarer than the case where someone has a regular DVD player or a gaming console (PS2/Xbox/etc).

TonyAndrewMeyer

22 posts

Geek

#30825 16-Mar-2006 10:49

manaia: I believe that SCART has a completely different set of pins for output as opposed to input (as you surmise below).

Yes, this is the case.

I believe that the standard SCART cable supplied by SKY installers is an output-only. [...]. They are, however, supposed to fit cables which meet the requirements of the customer and in your case seem to have not identified your need for a bi-directional cable.

My installer had never installed My Sky before. I was lucky it worked at all!

I've been told by SKY CS that there is a real demand for simple diagrams showing how to hook up decoders, but the problem is that, with so many possible setups, such a document is difficult to draw up. If you don't have it already, try contacting the web support team through the SKY website and asking for the 'hookups' document. It may not help with regard to SCART but it has some good hard information in it.

I don't need a set of all the possible setups: just the information that in order to use the loopthrough feature you will need to use a different SCART cable would have been enough.

I also (as with previous post) believe that having an external play-only device (gaming console, DVD player) alongside My Sky must be extremely common, and surely worth considering as a common case.

(Even if the TV has multiple AV channels, it might not have enough to cover a DVD player, a gaming console, and My Sky. And if it does, then the customer can just ignore loopthrough).

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9