Football scores and Freeview set top box issues
Post categories: Freeview, Sport Multiscreen, Under the bonnet
| 15:27 UK time, Monday, 23 March 2009
Normally our services run without problems, however we've recently had two issues which some users will have noticed - one for football scores, the other relating to problems on some Freeview boxes.
Football Scores
The first was a problem with Football scores not updating correctly in our sport section.
The problem was inadvertently introduced as part of a change to one of our publishing systems.
Traditionally the sports scores and results data has been supplied by the same systems that publish Ceefax. However the process of converting the Ceefax pages to digital was often slow and prone to mistakes.
In order to improve the reliability and speed of the service, the sports feeds have been moved to a new XML based system which has given a huge speed improvement - previously updates to BBC Red Button could sometimes appear 20 minutes after the same update had appeared on Ceefax. This has now been reduced to seconds at most, and updates are now sometimes appearing on BBC Red Button before Ceefax.
There is still some reliance on the old system, as not all the scores come via the new XML process. It was a code error indavertantly introduced in the processing of data from the old system that resulted in the football scores not updating on screen.
When it was spotted on Saturday, an interim fix was deployed to ensure the scores updated properly. The same problem also occurred on Sunday, with the fix again being applied.
Our engineers have now deployed a permanent fix which should stop this particular problem happening again.
Freeview issues
The second problem occurred on Friday and saw a small number of Freeview boxes crash when tuning to a BBC channel - according to a thread on the Digital Spy forums, boxes made by Wharfdale, Tevion and Nichimen were amongst those affected.
When you tune to a BBC channel on Freeview, a hidden application is run in. This application adds the ability to press red to access BBC Red Button - there would be no way to do this otherwise.
A code change was made to the application last week, and it's this change that appears to have caused problem. As soon as we heard reports of boxes crashing, we reverted back to an earlier code version which we knew should work fine.
We're working to find out why these particular set top boxes didn't like the code change. We test all our changes extensively before launch in order to prevent such issues arising.
We also work very hard to ensure our code is completely standards compliant, which means it should work perfectly on any set top box or TV which carries the Digital Tick - this appears on digital equipment which has been tested and confirmed that it will work correctly during and after digital switchover.
There are hundreds of different Freeview boxes and TVs and because of this, it is not possible for us to test each and every one. We test on a large, representative sample of the boxes on the market, and unfortunately this did not include any of the affected boxes.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~24~RS~)
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what were the code changes for, you didnt post a reason, so why not just leave it as it is?
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For the Freeview issue, ironically the code changes were a backend change to simplify the code and make it easier (and thus cheaper) for us to support and maintain.
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I have another idea. How about we get rid of these "press red" irritations for good.
I don't see the point of them. Very few people know how to clear them off the screen. Do we need to be constantly reminded that there is an interactive service available?
Apologies, I seem to be one of those off-topic ranters. I just fail to see the point of this onscreen advert.
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Here here, if we got rid of the annoying red blobs, people would quickly get used to pressing the text button like in the old days, which works just fine..
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I think the Press Red trigger can be quite useful, but I think it is overused (i.e. it pops up on screen every time a news programme starts on BBC One). Also, and more importantly, I think there should be an option in the STB menu to disable the trigger from appearing so that those who get annoyed with it don't have to see it (and of course you could change it back if you know that there's specific Red Button functionality you want to use). I think I remember reading that this is possible on Sky, but I don't think you can do it on other platforms. (I realise that you can get rid of it temporarily on all the platforms, as explained by another post on this blog: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/pressred/2009/02/pressred.shtml ).
On a slightly off-topic note, I always found it funny that when the BBC shows sports footage that has been recorded from a BBC channel, it often has "Press Red" in the corner. Presumably the people recording the footage can't be bothered to get rid of it (or don't know how).
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Oops, looking at what I wrote I realise that of course you don't need the trigger on screen to use Red Button functionality. And the method for having the Press Red trigger disappear after 30 seconds on Sky boxes is described in the comments section of the blog post I linked to.
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I am new to this blog and may be in the wrong place, but trying to get some help with my red button. I have been watching the F1 GP and wanted to see the extra feeds available through the red button. When I press the button I get the menu up and have the option of F1 Onboard but when I select it I get a black screen with with white writing saying "This service is temporarily unavailable... see the Help menu for further details" I seem to get this with several red button options - some work some don't. Any ideas? The Help Menu certainly doesn't cover this. I have Humax Freeview PVR.
Had the same problem with the snooker so it's doesn't look like an F1 issue??
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Hi leathdev. Based on the error message, I'm presuming you have Freeview. When that error is shown, it generally means the content can't be found for some reason.
Can you tell me if you can get BBC Four and/or CBeebies on your TV? If you can, then it's another problem. If not, then it looks like your set top box isn't picking up all the TV channels - including the red button video.
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Hi Andrew, thanks for coming back to me, I do have Freeview and I do get all of the freeview channels like BBC Four/CBeebies etc.. Any suggestions??
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To be honest it's a bit difficult to know. There's various things that could in theory go wrong, ranging from a mis-configuration at our end, through to your box not working properly. However they're usually rare. The one that normally causes problems are the video channels not being found.
If you spot it again in the future, you might like to try tuning into channels 301 and 302 directly - this is where the video sits. You won't be able to get any special features, like different commentaries, however the video will work.
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Tuning into some BBC channel (BBC One and Three) today is freezing my Humax PVR-9200T after a couple of seconds (the audio lasts a few seconds more before the whole box locks up). Non-BBC channels seem OK, although I haven't tested channels exhaustively since I have to remove the aerial, reboot, change the channel when there is no signal, and the re-connect the aerial to try it out.
I found this thread when searching the web for possible causes, and was wondering whether something had changed again in the BBC service that might be causing it?
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Hello edenstreet2 - It might be worth checking the Reception Advice website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/reception/) as they will have information on known issues or transmitter problems. It could also be a set top box problem. BBC Red Button haven't made any changes on our side that would affect the Humax PVRs.
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I am not a regular Red Button user, but I have been using it recently. When I select, say, the French Open Tennis, I initially get sound & picture normally. However, when the 'blue' menu button then comes up and the matching text at the bottom of the screen, the picture goes blank. The sound is fine. If I select channel 301 the picture comes back, but without the menu blue button.
All this used to work fine. Has something been changed, and if so, what and why? It may be easier for the BBC to maintain, but the risk to your users of unnecessary change is high. If it works, don't fix it.
I certainly don't intend to change my somewhat venerable Netgem iPlayer (nothing to do with the BBC iPlayer!) which works very well indeed, and has done for several years.
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Hello pastim
We're seeing the same problem on the Netgem iPlayer. We're double checking, but we think it was logged as a "known issue" which we couldn't fix.
On very rare occasions we have situations where our code is correct, standards compliant and works everywhere else, but not on a particular set top box. We always work hard to avoid such situations if we can - however sometimes we just have to give up because the fix needs to be made by the set top box manufacturer. I think this is one of those situations.
I'll let you know if I hear any more on it, however I'm afraid the best advice I can give is to tune directly into 301 and 302 if you want to watch the sport video.
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Thanks for your quick response.
What I do not understand is that this has worked fine for years. Why has it changed? I'm sure there are a lot of different types of ageing box out there that may be difficult to maintain (such as the Netgem for which updates are no longer available). Every time there is a significant change there's a risk that one or more boxes may fail.
I'd add that this seems like a good reason to never buy a TV with a built-in tuner. Having to replace a complete TV just because the BBC has changed it's software does not sound like a good deal.
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It's difficult to say why the problem occurred - it could be any number of things. Last year the sport video code was rewritten in order to integrate it with the text service - previously they were two separate applications which couldn't talk to each other, and caused a lot of duplication of effort and costs, as well as not providing a desirable user experience.
So it was rebuilt and the new application was launched in time for the Olympics last year.
Then earlier this year we added in the ability to change commentaries into the new code - the audio switching option has never worked in the Netgem iPlayer for reasons we've never known and that remains today.
Why the new video code doesn't work on the Netgem iPlayer is just something we don't know - the way video is handled is pretty simple and straightforward and won't have changed much.
It's one of the problems we have when we're coding, especially on Freeview.
We always code to standards, and we have have automated systems that check the code to make sure it is right and that we can have confidence in what we publish adheres to standards.
However there's hundreds of different set top boxes on the market and whilst most work absolutely perfectly, we do come across some that cause problems because of a bug in the set top box, or because the set top box doesn't fully implement the required standards correctly.
It's not an easy decision to make but sometimes we have to leave things broken on some boxes because if we don't, we'll never be able to change or improve the red button service
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