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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

v2.02.09 is the latest software. No issues with mine.

If it continues – try a standby cycle so that the unit rechecks good access to the freesat server.

Simply put the unit into standby with the off button, wait 10 mins (The HB-1000S takes a while to go into full standby) and then start it again.

It is thought the checks on the freesat server take place at the end of the startup cycle.