My guess is that the checks were changed in the last update.
My Humax Forum » Freesat HD » HDR 1000, 1010, 1100S
help - unable to use ondemand or showcase
(935 posts)-
| Sun 11 Jan 2015 15:16:18 #811 |
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REPASSAC - 4 minutes ago »
My guess is that the checks were changed in the last update.I agree. And that seemed to clear it up for most of those who posted here. But not all, and new reports trickle in, mutant_matt for example. Freesat seem to think it's Humax's fault, which implies they don't think the changes in the update were sufficient.
| Sun 11 Jan 2015 15:30:36 #812 | -
freesat would have specified what they want, I really think the main problem is their relative lack of experience.
I put down the "contact Humax" advice to someone on a help desk who has reached the end of their checklist (a simple logic tree).
I guess we will never know but it is well past time for a clear statement from freesat.
| Sun 11 Jan 2015 16:43:28 #813 | -
Some quick news. Chaps, thanks for the continuing discussion, some good points there. To answer a previous couple of questions:
1. I very occasionally have to reboot the box as it becomes "unhappy" or unresponsive or something odd happens, but it's not very often. I put this down to mostly, always being on (the worst of the two evils IMO).
2. My OnDemand stuff stopped working on Monday or Tuesday. I hadn't done a reboot recently so the two would appear not to be linked.
Other news. I have built a transparent proxy in a VM and have done some testing. The quick news, requiring further analysis, is that the box talks to Freesat less often than I was suspecting. From what I can see, the "network connected" check seems just to be if there is an ethernet connection. The further "checks" mentioned, look like possibly to be just a DNS name resolution, and the problem seems to be that once you try to use Showcase or OnDemand, my box is asking for JSON resources on the Freesat server that the server is reporting do not exist.
I did a Wireshark capture at the same time, due to stupidity, in Promiscuous Mode, so the trace is stupid busy. I plan to redo my tests in non-promiscuous mode, and then present what the box is doing, as accurately as I can, using the packet trace and the HTTP payload data captured from the transparent proxy. Good news, it's not HTTPS (though I did see some PGP authentication stuff going on, but that was when using the actual iPlayer, I think).
Right now, it looks to me like Humax/Freesat are going to have to talk to each other, as either the box is asking for web resources that Freesat are not expecting, or Freesat are not correctly providing the resources the box is correctly asking for.
We'll know more when I have a better data set to work from. Once I have a better handle, I'll post here, and/or, then start hassling Freesat again (and perhaps Humax also), unless Freesat have come back to me by then (they have so far, only had one working day, so I'll give them a chance (you never know
)).Cheers,
Matt.
| Sun 11 Jan 2015 23:30:56 #814 | -
But the question is, why are most boxes unaffected? As yours was, until recently.
| Mon 12 Jan 2015 14:57:18 #815 | -
"Right now, it looks to me like Humax/Freesat are going to have to talk to each other, as either the box is asking for web resources that Freesat are not expecting, or Freesat are not correctly providing the resources the box is correctly asking for."
"But the question is, why are most boxes unaffected? As yours was, until recently."
Could it be a matter of server load (insufficient resources) at the time the unit was booted.
| Mon 12 Jan 2015 15:09:32 #816 | -
REPASSAC - 9 minutes ago »
"Right now, it looks to me like Humax/Freesat are going to have to talk to each other, as either the box is asking for web resources that Freesat are not expecting, or Freesat are not correctly providing the resources the box is correctly asking for."
"But the question is, why are most boxes unaffected? As yours was, until recently."
Could it be a matter of server load (insufficient resources) at the time the unit was booted.The poster says the box hadn't been recently booted at the time the problem manifested.
But could it be that a single failure (whatever the exact cause) results in a flag being set, such as to assume non-connection until box is rebooted. Think you suggested something like this earlier.
| Mon 12 Jan 2015 15:25:23 #817 | -
All good questions. From what I saw, and I will check again, the Humax makes a request to the Freesat servers *every* time you try to enter the OnDemand or Showcase areas (but not the reverse EPG). So, the "state of things at boot"/flag theory, I don't think is valid. Even though the box was having problems with OnDemand, Showcase and the Reverse EPG, it was still talking to the internet every time you would expect it to (it does DNS lookups to various addresses, plus the contact to Freesat (well, attempted, in my case), and directly to the BBC when using the iPlayer).
I'll have to do some more tests, as I said. Annoyingly (sort of), now I've got the VM setup, my box has magically started working again today, so nearly a week with it not working, and in the end, I did nothing to fix it.
Freesat server load/problems seems the most likely, but I would expect it to have worked *some* of the many times I tried over the last week, not having had a single problem in 5 months until last week. It's very odd.
I'll try and see if the box ID is in any of the traffic, as that might explain why people who have the problem, often are the only ones (ish), and continue to have problems when others don't. Perhaps the server remembers boxes that are "high demand" and puts them on an "ignore" list sometimes. Who knows, random guesses that don't sound all that likely to me, but, it's a strange one.
I'll do some more testing even though it's now working again, to see what the "good" traffic to Freesat looks like. Perhaps I *do* have enough to piece together something useful.
We'll see, I'll let you know when I have something.
Cheers,
Matt.
| Mon 12 Jan 2015 19:04:21 #818 | -
I had the problem arise over Christmas, was connected, got DHCP allocated address, was pingable, allowed freesat android app to connect, 901 worked, but got 'on demand not available' message when tried to select. Can't comment on showtime, it's something I've never used and hadn't found this forum then. Anyway called freesat, they asked me to power cycle box and router, I refused as it isn't router issue (although I had reallocated it's DHCP allocated address just to ensure Humax box wasn't in some confused state with IP it had - no change). Eventually the freesat woman said if I emailed they would send me the patch to fix the problem!! I asked them to send, but she said they can only reply to emails not just send. Anyway within a couple of hours after emailing an email arrived back with patch (it turns out to be v2.02.07).
Flashed it, and rebooted box and now on demand is restored, so all looks just fine.
Hope this helps.| Tue 13 Jan 2015 11:54:46 #819 | -
Sluggo,
I was already on 2.02.07 when this first happened to me last week (first and only).
Everyone,
I have a *little* news. I logged the call last Friday night with Freesat asking for a technical person to contact me. Yesterday, during the day, whilst I was at work, they called and spoke with my wife. Unfortunately, she didn't write anything down, but the jist is that they know about some problems and there is an upcoming fix. It wasn't clear if this was a firmware update, a website fix, or both. It kinda sounded like it might be both.
I've sent them a mail tonight asking them to write it down in a mail to me, as my wife wasn't really able to pass anything useful on to me. I've sent them a bit of one of my traces which shows the 404 error their webserver was sending back to my box, every time the OnDemand or Showcase menu option was selected (in response to the JSON web asset being requested).
We'll see if they come back to me, and even if they don't, I guess we'll all find out *something*, when they change whatever it is.
I will still at some point, try and do some tracing whilst it's working, so I've got some "known good" info, just in case, for the future.
I'll let you know if/when I have anything,
Cheers,
Matt.
| Thu 15 Jan 2015 20:13:25 #820 |
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