Sexview issues since Friday 30th Oct?

leecovuk

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elmin said:
I'd planned on upgrading to an S2/MPEG-4 HD combo box like yours if they decided to go that route, but for no other reason.
Well, I don't know the exact details involved with any of these points, and I'm continuing off the topic here, but I would strongly recommend you don't get my model, or maybe any recent Technomate. They may have been a good manufacturer a few years ago, but buggy firmware and poor support is the situation with my model. Not just my opinion by the way, others feel the same on another forum I visit.* There is no doubt at all in my mind that I would never buy another Technomate receiver.
I hear Humax are quite well regarded.
However it seems to me that most if not all satellite receivers suffer from bugs and sub standard builds, presumably due to the rush to bang out the next big thing before their competitors.

* In the interests of balance however, others there consider the model 'beautiful' and 'superb'. Beats me.
 

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elmin said:
I'd planned on upgrading to an S2/MPEG-4 HD combo box like yours if they decided to go that route, but for no other reason.
Well, I don't know the exact details involved with any of these points, and I'm continuing off the topic here, but I would strongly recommend you don't get my model, or maybe any recent Technomate. They may have been a good manufacturer a few years ago, but buggy firmware and poor support is the situation with my model. Not just my opinion by the way, others feel the same on another forum I visit.* There is no doubt at all in my mind that I would never buy another Technomate receiver.
I hear Humax are quite well regarded.
However it seems to me that most if not all satellite receivers suffer from bugs and sub standard builds, presumably due to the rush to bang out the next big thing before their competitors.

* In the interests of balance however, others there consider the model 'beautiful' and 'superb'. Beats me.
 

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cat said:
Is it 7 or 8 years SV has been going?

I've just had a quick riffle through my paperwork and all I can find is the fact that my UltraBlueTV sub switched from D2MAC to DVB in 2000. I'm pretty sure I tried the SV 2-channel offering shortly after that - which would be 2001.
 

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cat said:
Is it 7 or 8 years SV has been going?

I've just had a quick riffle through my paperwork and all I can find is the fact that my UltraBlueTV sub switched from D2MAC to DVB in 2000. I'm pretty sure I tried the SV 2-channel offering shortly after that - which would be 2001.
 

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leecovuk said:
Well, I don't know the exact details involved with any of these points,

I'm no expert either. I just try to match up the behaviour I'm seeing with the descriptions of how MPEG-2 works.

As an example; you can save bandwidth by not transmitting a full frame as often. Instead, you replace it with more frames that just describe changes instead of the actual full picture.

These sequences of 'full picture' ,... 'changes', ... 'changes',... are called groups of pictures, or GOPs

_en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_of_pictures

Nearly all broadcasters don't mess with this setting and use the standard pattern IBBPBBPBBPBB...IBBPBBPBBPBB or 3,12 GOP. If you make this sequence longer, you can save bandwidth, but it takes longer for your box to open the channel, because it has to wait for the next complete picture - the 'I' frame.

If a broadcaster was so breathtakingly stupid as to transmit a _really_ long GOP, it might take many seconds for the channel to clear, and it may hit a decoding timeout put in the box firmware, causing a 'channel not running or scrambled' message to pop up on the screen.

That fits what I'm seeing on my box
confused.gif



leecovuk said:
and I'm continuing off the topic here, but I would strongly recommend you don't get my model, or maybe any recent Technomate. They may have been a good manufacturer a few years ago, but buggy firmware and poor support is the situation with my model. []

In the interests of balance however, others there consider the model 'beautiful' and 'superb'. Beats me.

When was their last f/w update ?
 

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leecovuk said:
Well, I don't know the exact details involved with any of these points,

I'm no expert either. I just try to match up the behaviour I'm seeing with the descriptions of how MPEG-2 works.

As an example; you can save bandwidth by not transmitting a full frame as often. Instead, you replace it with more frames that just describe changes instead of the actual full picture.

These sequences of 'full picture' ,... 'changes', ... 'changes',... are called groups of pictures, or GOPs

_en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_of_pictures

Nearly all broadcasters don't mess with this setting and use the standard pattern IBBPBBPBBPBB...IBBPBBPBBPBB or 3,12 GOP. If you make this sequence longer, you can save bandwidth, but it takes longer for your box to open the channel, because it has to wait for the next complete picture - the 'I' frame.

If a broadcaster was so breathtakingly stupid as to transmit a _really_ long GOP, it might take many seconds for the channel to clear, and it may hit a decoding timeout put in the box firmware, causing a 'channel not running or scrambled' message to pop up on the screen.

That fits what I'm seeing on my box
confused.gif



leecovuk said:
and I'm continuing off the topic here, but I would strongly recommend you don't get my model, or maybe any recent Technomate. They may have been a good manufacturer a few years ago, but buggy firmware and poor support is the situation with my model. []

In the interests of balance however, others there consider the model 'beautiful' and 'superb'. Beats me.

When was their last f/w update ?
 

leecovuk

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elmin said:
That fits what I'm seeing on my box
confused.gif
Your understanding of it all certainly seems very well considered.
When was their last f/w update ?
A month or so ago; they do release updates now and then, but grumbling little bugs don't seem to be addressed. Whilst the model more than 'just works', it is persistent little bugs which annoy me. Either they are not interested in correcting them, or cannot.
I have emailed some clear queries a few times, but I get ignored or receive an essentially useless generic reply.

Anyway, I cannot be sure if any of my model's bugs cause the SexView clearing/viewing problems. My guess and overall experience would be 'no they don't'. Some of my bugs do affect the loading of channels, mainly in the unit's 'channel preview' mode, but not exclusively on SV nor generally in the 'extreme' way that SV seems to be problematic.
 

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elmin said:
That fits what I'm seeing on my box
confused.gif
Your understanding of it all certainly seems very well considered.
When was their last f/w update ?
A month or so ago; they do release updates now and then, but grumbling little bugs don't seem to be addressed. Whilst the model more than 'just works', it is persistent little bugs which annoy me. Either they are not interested in correcting them, or cannot.
I have emailed some clear queries a few times, but I get ignored or receive an essentially useless generic reply.

Anyway, I cannot be sure if any of my model's bugs cause the SexView clearing/viewing problems. My guess and overall experience would be 'no they don't'. Some of my bugs do affect the loading of channels, mainly in the unit's 'channel preview' mode, but not exclusively on SV nor generally in the 'extreme' way that SV seems to be problematic.
 

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Ok, it's definitely not a Viaccess problem.

The channels called 'SV-THEME X-INF' that used to be encrypted SV movie channels are now broadcasting free-to-air.

I still have exactly the same problem with every FTA channel, except the one that used to be SV mature content - i.e. the MuxTV ones are screwed, the Scopus ones are OK.

That seems to be the smoking gun that they are actually transmitting flakey MPEG that neither an old nor a new box will decode properly.
 

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Ok, it's definitely not a Viaccess problem.

The channels called 'SV-THEME X-INF' that used to be encrypted SV movie channels are now broadcasting free-to-air.

I still have exactly the same problem with every FTA channel, except the one that used to be SV mature content - i.e. the MuxTV ones are screwed, the Scopus ones are OK.

That seems to be the smoking gun that they are actually transmitting flakey MPEG that neither an old nor a new box will decode properly.
 

leecovuk

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elmin said:
That seems to be the smoking gun that they are actually transmitting flakey MPEG that neither an old nor a new box will decode properly.
You probably need other people to read this, test, and contribute their thoughts on the issue.

Let's hope that the new service will feature a suitably adjusted setup once on air, in terms of compression and encryption.
 

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elmin said:
That seems to be the smoking gun that they are actually transmitting flakey MPEG that neither an old nor a new box will decode properly.
You probably need other people to read this, test, and contribute their thoughts on the issue.

Let's hope that the new service will feature a suitably adjusted setup once on air, in terms of compression and encryption.
 

leecovuk

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Theme-X seems to have already started. From just watching, the picture quality may be very slightly better than last week, but still pretty blocky. Certainly nothing suggesting "poor quality is a thing of the past."

What do we think?

Lee
 

leecovuk

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Theme-X seems to have already started. From just watching, the picture quality may be very slightly better than last week, but still pretty blocky. Certainly nothing suggesting "poor quality is a thing of the past."

What do we think?

Lee
 

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leecovuk said:
Theme-X seems to have already started. From just watching, the picture quality may be very slightly better than last week, but still pretty blocky. Certainly nothing suggesting "poor quality is a thing of the past."

What do we think?

Lee

Same here. I’m guessing if they reduce the total number of channels on the transponder on December 10 - which it looks like they intend to - then things will improve.

Maybe.
 

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leecovuk said:
Theme-X seems to have already started. From just watching, the picture quality may be very slightly better than last week, but still pretty blocky. Certainly nothing suggesting "poor quality is a thing of the past."

What do we think?

Lee

Same here. I’m guessing if they reduce the total number of channels on the transponder on December 10 - which it looks like they intend to - then things will improve.

Maybe.
 

leecovuk

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cat said:
I’m guessing if they reduce the total number of channels on the transponder on December 10 - which it looks like they intend to - then things will improve.

Maybe.
I'm not going to hold my breath in expectation.
I expect most of the bold claims made on their promo will turn out to be lies, which seems to be standard for most satellite mature content operators.
 

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cat said:
I’m guessing if they reduce the total number of channels on the transponder on December 10 - which it looks like they intend to - then things will improve.

Maybe.
I'm not going to hold my breath in expectation.
I expect most of the bold claims made on their promo will turn out to be lies, which seems to be standard for most satellite mature content operators.
 
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