Evesham iplayer - the Freeview PVR you've dreamt about!

[BirdyRob]

Hi Chaps.

I've been watching this thread with interest since ordering the evesham iplayer. Having recently refurbished our kitchen and installed a 26" Sony Bravia HD LCD in prime location, the iplayer seemed on paper to be the ideal alternative to a pc - which for some reason, cut in half and stuffed into a cupboard didn't pass the 's safety inspection

Firstly the bad bits - The internet features to my mind are a joke! "the iplayer allows you to browse the internet, compose, send and receive emails and play Podcasts with ease". That is false IMHO! To be honest I wasn't entirely surprised - but probably worth bearing in mind if this feature is essential for a potential purchaser. Fortunately I've found an extremely cheap miniature compaq ipaq 866Mhz which handles the internet side of things no problem, sits and fits nicely in the cupboard next to the iplayer and is pretty quiet.

With the iplayer attached to the HD LCD via HDMI with upscaling enabled I am very impressed by the picture - and the recordings seem to be of very high quality. The epg is good, and selecting the programs for recording from that is easy enough.

Considering that the small 80Gb HDD was imho justified only on the grounds that the recordings could be exported over the network and/or to usb external drives, the fact that currently the iplayer seems to be able to none of these satisfactorily is mind boggling. On top of that it appears to delete all recordings at a whim without confirmation, without any option to turn this feature turn off. (admittedly in my case I had accidentally left the iplayer on overnight but still :-( it appears that is not the only time this has happened).

- The net export to an ntfs formatted windows XP shared folder is, I feel, relatively slow, and invariably halts at 1.99Gb.

- Export to usb formatted in Fat32 obviously has the same problem, can't remember now but I have a feeling it wasn't working with ntfs.

The media streaming using WMC seems to work well with pictures and mp3's, but the video doesn't seem to work well - even the supplied sample video on the cd is not recognized!

Anyhoo. I would be getting pretty frustrated by now had it not been for the excellent advice to be found in this thread.

Formatting the usb drive as EXT seems to have worked, although I haven't exported anything over 2Gb as all that has disappeared lol! Also under ubuntu linux I was able to set up a upnp server with ushare, I haven't tried audio as of yet but pictures worked fine. A sample recording from the iplayer exported to usb and added to the ubuntu server appeared in the mediacentre but wouldn't play - crossing fingers it will from XP WMC using the ext driver, but who knows! Playing the video from the ext formatted usb drive did work. btw - This means nothing to me, but on one occasion entering the ubuntu network servers panel the iplayer appeared as a server - and on selecting it prompted for a password, perhaps there could be a way of gaining access to the disk directly.

So things are looking up slightly, but unless at the least this timeshift delete problem is sorted out pronto I wont be at all happy with evesham lol!

To the potential buyer - Unless the above linux formatting etc sounded easy, or you are up for a challenge, until the various problems are sorted I think it is fairly safe to conclude the iplayer is not a particularly good buy ;-) - Out of the box I would say that the thing is pretty damn useless! It will be I'm sure in the future as it's nearly there - but I'm still waiting for the update due in two weeks last......

Off my chest at least

Cheers.
Rob

[BirdyRob]

Ooh yes... Anybody seen the two new evesham "customer reviews" for iplayer......

I'd like to meet them and ask what they are doing I'm not lol!

[Bob Crabtree]

Get a webpage up via TvMax. Press the info button, then I think its the green button to add a bookmark. You can assign a channel number there. Note 1: Previously tried to save a bookmark without a channel number and nothing seemed to happen. Note 2: Once bookmark is added if you get up the channel list (press List) you can now toggle between TV channels, Radio and Bookmarks by pressing ffwd/rwd.

Neat eh?!

Great stuff - thanks!

All that will be going into the review - of course.

Another properly hidden feature - get HD player info up via Diagnostics and press the yellow button. You get an OTA update screen! What a shame there are no updates ...

Mmmm, interesting.

Also interesting, I know you said exactly what you meant but I misread it and went to the last item in the Diagnostics menu (Digital Recorder) rather than the first (iPlayer HD INFO) and very nearly pressed the yellow button (which, of course would have erased the hard disk!)

Ok I have to admit to being a luddite here. I just had a disk of various movies, mostly camcorder stuff, and very few of them worked. I either got blank screen or picture break-up, even when I played them off a USB stick. So I can't really give a decent scientific answer, just that most of what I tried didn't work!

If you can be bothered, there's a little app you can install - AVIcodec - which lets you right-click on a video file in a My Computer/Explorer window and check its properties, including Codec

And I see its happened again. For what its worth when it happened to me I think the disk was nearly full and I'd turned the iplayer off and back on again.

Thanks for the info.

No take on this as my VCR is now in a cupboard! I'm a PVR convert (when it works)

No sweat, I'll check this out myself.

[Bob Crabtree]

Ooh yes... Anybody seen the two new evesham "customer reviews" for iplayer......

Oh dear. Five out of five in both reviews.

I have to assume, though, that these really are members of the public who, to date, are happy with the iplayer.

Anything else is unthinkable.

[Bob Crabtree]

I've commented very selectively here, not to downplay other things that were said but simply to try to concentrate on providing answers or especially relevant remarks - Bob C

On top of that it appears to delete all recordings at a whim without confirmation, without any option to turn this feature turn off. (admittedly in my case I had accidentally left the iplayer on overnight but still :-( it appears that is not the only time this has happened).

Ah, someone else who's had that little problem!

That's three of us, that I know of so far. Anyone else had this, too?

- The net export to an ntfs formatted windows XP shared folder is, I feel, relatively slow, and invariably halts at 1.99Gb.

It's been confirmed to me by Evesham that this 2GB limit for exports over Ethernet is a bug - and that it's being worked on.

- Export to usb formatted in Fat32 obviously has the same problem, can't remember now but I have a feeling it wasn't working with ntfs.

I think this is a subtly different issue. But, with an ext2-formatted drive connected by USB you will be able export directly VERY large files (biggest here so far was over 8GByte).

The media streaming using WMC seems to work well with pictures and mp3's, but the video doesn't seem to work well - even the supplied sample video on the cd is not recognized!

This may or may not be because you've used the PC's name, rather than its IP address, when setting up the iplayer.

To test this properly, what you need to do (having made sure you've told iplayer the PC's IP address, not its name) is to try to export a recording from the iplayer to the PC and then see if that can be played back over Ethernet.

I've given up exporting directly to the PC via Ethernet, cos it's so slow (I've reported the data rates in a recent comment).

I have the luxury of exporting rather more speedily (though hardly at high speed) via USB to an ext2-formatted HDD and then I attach that drive to the PC and copy the recordings to the one I'd have used in the first place if I'd been willing to wait for exports via Ethernet.

Anyhoo. I would be getting pretty frustrated by now had it not been for the excellent advice to be found in this thread.

Formatting the usb drive as EXT seems to have worked, although I haven't exported anything over 2Gb as all that has disappeared lol! Also under ubuntu linux I was able to set up a upnp server with ushare, I haven't tried audio as of yet but pictures worked fine. A sample recording from the iplayer exported to usb and added to the ubuntu server appeared in the mediacentre but wouldn't play - crossing fingers it will from XP WMC using the ext driver, but who knows! Playing the video from the ext formatted usb drive did work. btw - This means nothing to me, but on one occasion entering the ubuntu network servers panel the iplayer appeared as a server - and on selecting it prompted for a password, perhaps there could be a way of gaining access to the disk directly.

Pleased to hear about the ext2 working for you.

As for ubuntu, I simply haven't any clues at all but I kind of suspect that you won't be able to play back video at all via that route.

So things are looking up slightly, but unless at the least this timeshift delete problem is sorted out pronto I wont be at all happy with evesham lol!

This thread has highlighted a considerable number of issues but the business of recordings just being vaporised is, of course, the most significant to date and one that Evesham and Netgem need to sort out in double-quick time - and to let folk know what the timescale is going to be.

To the potential buyer - Unless the above linux formatting etc sounded easy, or you are up for a challenge, until the various problems are sorted I think it is fairly safe to conclude the iplayer is not a particularly good buy ;-) - Out of the box I would say that the thing is pretty damn useless! It will be I'm sure in the future as it's nearly there - but I'm still waiting for the update due in two weeks last......

Off my chest at least

Cheers.
Rob

Well, like I said, there are plenty of issues - including that dreaded disk-vapourising one - and when you add them all together, it's not unreasonable to say that, with the current state of play, virtually all purchasers (except for two? cough!) are highly likely to be thinking very negative thoughts.

Of course, it's easier for someone like me to come along and knock a product (and cast nasturtiums) than it is for someone to design a product that is so good that it's not open to so many knocks.

But, all the same, the iplayer does seem to me to be work in progress, with no way of anyone telling when the issues will be addressed or whether, indeed, they ever will be.

[Cliff203]

In the (optimistic) hope this thread will have some influence on future development I would like to nominate the facility to erase files from the USB drive.
If the 2G file size over Ethernet is sorted the only reasons for a USB drive would be as a backup against phantom deletes or as additional storage.
As it stands now once a file has been watched the only way to delete it is to;
Put the iPlayer into standby
Switch it off at the mains
Disconnect the USB drive
Reconnect the drive to a Pc
Boot up said PC
Erase file
Then reverse the above procedures.
An unnecessary and protracted chain of events if you could delete files using the remote.

Of course, it's easier for someone like me to come along and knock a product (and cast nasturtiums) than it is for someone to design a product that is so good that it's not open to so many knocks.

Point taken, but PVRs are not a new technology and a quick glance at other forums would have shown the developers what the consumers expect as a minimum. The iPlayer falls a long way short of even basic requirements. Build quality and presentation also fall short of reasonable expectations.

[Bob Crabtree]

Cliff,

You are right - the option to selectively erase files on an attached USB driver would be very useful.

Whether it would be welcome, though, is another matter!

The worry, of course, would be that the iplayer might just take it upon itself to zap the entire USB drive for no good reason, the way it seems to do from time to time with the recordings on its own hard disk.

So, personally, I'd live without file-erasure for USB-attached drives if there was even a tiny chance that the iplayer might do something nasty to that drive off its own bat.

[damianw]

Latest iplayer oddity - anyone else seen it reboot itself? Here's something to try - go to Diagnostics and select HD iplayer info. On there is the "uptime". Does it reflect how long you think its been running for? It never does for me, and just now I actually caught it rebooting. The lights flashed as they do when its powering up, so pondering what it was up to I went to diagnostics to check the uptime. Sure enough - 33 seconds came up! It had literally just rebooted.

Why is it doing this? My guess, which may be unfair, is its flakey and something is causing it to crash, at which point it reboots as a matter of course.

[chrestomanci]

Latest iplayer oddity - anyone else seen it reboot itself? ...

Why is it doing this? My guess, which may be unfair, is its flakey and something is causing it to crash, at which point it reboots as a matter of course.

It will have a watchdog device that is triggering the reboot. Most electronic devices like this have one. The watchdog is a bit of hardware that needs a prod every 10 seconds or so. The software in the box will be configured to prod it about once every second as part of normal running, but if the box crashes, or gets stuck in some sort of infinate loop, the timer in the watchdog will expire, and it will force a reboot.

Kind of like having someone hovering ready to do a three finger salute over your keyboard the whole time.

[Bob Crabtree]

Latest iplayer oddity - anyone else seen it reboot itself? Here's something to try - go to Diagnostics and select HD iplayer info. On there is the "uptime". Does it reflect how long you think its been running for? It never does for me, and just now I actually caught it rebooting. The lights flashed as they do when its powering up, so pondering what it was up to I went to diagnostics to check the uptime. Sure enough - 33 seconds came up! It had literally just rebooted.

Why is it doing this? My guess, which may be unfair, is its flakey and something is causing it to crash, at which point it reboots as a matter of course.

Not ever seen this here - and the uptime shown has, as far as I recall, always reflected what I expect.

Right now it's showing 1hr 08min 50s

[damianw]

Not ever seen this here - and the uptime shown has, as far as I recall, always reflected what I expect.

Right now it's showing 1hr 08min 50s

Leave it for a couple of days and then check. If its just mine then I'll get in touch with support and see what they say.

[Bob Crabtree]

Leave it for a couple of days and then check. If its just mine then I'll get in touch with support and see what they say.

I will keep an eye on this but I'm pretty confident that the problem isn't showing itself here.

One problem I will have, though, is that the uptime shown should relate to the time since the last full power up (assuming nothing untoward has happened) and I am for ever turning off the iplayer by its power switch at the back, so the uptime shown is always going to be limited to a matter of hours, rather than days.

Right now, the uptime shown is 10hr 14m - which is about right, since I think that did a full power off some time after my last posting about this matter.

I will, though, try to avoid full power offs if possible for the next day or so, the better to keep an eye on this.

[Cliff203]

With regard phantom reboots.

I don’t monitor the uptime but have occasionally observed the ‘Welcome! Please wait’ message appear at the bottom left of the screen when I’m watching TV. Menus and the EPG have disappeared of their own volition on rare occasions also. I wasn’t aware of the cause, but it seems likely these were reboots.

[damianw]

With regard phantom reboots.

I don’t monitor the uptime but have occasionally observed the ‘Welcome! Please wait’ message appear at the bottom left of the screen when I’m watching TV. Menus and the EPG have disappeared of their own volition on rare occasions also. I wasn’t aware of the cause, but it seems likely these were reboots.

Keep an eye out for the green and yellow status lights flashing.

I notice it because I'm often watching TV through my NTL box, which is set to SCART 1. Suddenly the TV will switch to SCART2 and back again, and hey presto the green/yellow LEDs on the iplayer are flashing. It often seems to happen shortly after I've used the iplayer, often having browsed a webpage, and then put it into standby.

[Bob Crabtree]

Erm AVI is a container not a codec, in theory AVI can hold all of those forms of video.

Indeed - and as the launch-to-burial editor of Computer Video magazine, I know that only too well!

But 11 in the morning must have been far too early for me to be thinking straight!

[Bob Crabtree]

Okay, I think resets are happening here, too.

The uptime is now showing as 14h 34m and I'm pretty sure that I have not turned off the iplayer by its on/off switch since my last posting about this matter at 11:56am yesterday, when the shown uptime was 10h 14m.

Know, too, part of the problem in my checking this is that I just don't have the time to sit and watch telly via the iplayer, so I don't see the signs that others suggest may be there.

Just in case any one thinks otherwise, the uptime is not showing how long the unit has been connected to the web or Ethernet - as I just confirmed by unplugging the Ethernet cable.