A-100 latest firmware - Back to menu problem

[Benquin]

Had my A-100 for more than a year (I also just bought a A-110) and since the latest firmware I have an annoying problem.

Every file plays fine then I try to play a file and it just go back to the menu and I need to reboot to have it play file again. (From the point no file type works avi, iso, video_ts,mt2s,... until I reboot)

It wasn't happening with the older firmware and playing the same file sequence on my A-110 doesn't show the problem.

For the moment it looks random but I'll do some more tests.

I though it was related to the new bookmark feature doing strange things but reading other older thread made me think otherwise.

Unless there is a better way, I'll roll back to the october firmware and hope for the best.

[Benquin]

It might be related to the standby mode. I unpluged the Hard Disk to see if it was related and everything was fine until I went in standby mode. On the first file I started (An ISO), after powering it back on, I saw the start of the last bookmark (which was on another file) and it went back to menu. No file would play from that point.
Only a power down fixed it.

The problem might have been there before the last firmware because I wasn't using standby before...

From reading the post I know I'm not alone. Any known fix ?

[Dervish]

I've been dealing with this issue since day one, last summer. So far, there IS NO FIX! I'm training my wife to unplug & replug the unit everytime it happens because I'm kinda tired of it.... I wish instead of 2 pages long fimware update fixes, they should just concentrate on this one annoying single problem, once and for all. I don't play any HD or other exotic files, only simple DVD files for crying out loud!

[philco]

(02-15-2009 07:07 PM)Dervish Wrote:  I've been dealing with this issue since day one, last summer. So far, there IS NO FIX! I'm training my wife to unplug & replug the unit everytime it happens because I'm kinda tired of it.... I wish instead of 2 pages long fimware update fixes, they should just concentrate on this one annoying single problem, once and for all. I don't play any HD or other exotic files, only simple DVD files for crying out loud!

Since the last firmware, I am also member of the 'boot twice to see' team.
It is now a well-know procedure : I have to turn the power on, wait for the global menu to appear, then power off/on and wait again for the menu.
At least 4 minutes later (elapsed time from the first operation), the menu is coming in and the .avi & .mkv files are viewable.

OTherwise, the video files appear but are not playing : returning directly to the menu.

And this week-end, for the first time, one of my 2 popcorn PCH-A100 has completly lost its setting : no more name, IP, share,.... returned to the default.

Well, I hope it is not a sign of upcoming hard days...

[moment22]

Me too, i´m really fed up with this MAJOR problem. I dont care about the fancy apps. i only want my pch to play my SIMPLE avi or mkv files without the need to reboot every single time!! This mainly error are making me very close to smash the tank in the dustbin. i really agreee with you, fix this major problem and skip the minor once..And i dont think the right solution is to keep the poor box on power 24/7...

(02-15-2009 07:07 PM)Dervish Wrote:  I've been dealing with this issue since day one, last summer. So far, there IS NO FIX! I'm training my wife to unplug & replug the unit everytime it happens because I'm kinda tired of it.... I wish instead of 2 pages long fimware update fixes, they should just concentrate on this one annoying single problem, once and for all. I don't play any HD or other exotic files, only simple DVD files for crying out loud!

[tomcat]

(02-25-2009 09:33 PM)moment22 Wrote:  Me too, i´m really fed up with this MAJOR problem. I dont care about the fancy apps. i only want my pch to play my SIMPLE avi or mkv files without the need to reboot every single time!! This mainly error are making me very close to smash the tank in the dustbin. i really agreee with you, fix this major problem and skip the minor once..And i dont think the right solution is to keep the poor box on power 24/7...

Well, I wish I had not upgraded my fireware. Now I can't watch any of my iso's, avi's etc. I too have had to reboot and restart with limited success. The main reason I bought the popcorn was to watch videos from my NAS. Wife is mad and I am sad.....

[cheaper_popcorn]

(02-15-2009 07:07 PM)Dervish Wrote:  I've been dealing with this issue since day one, last summer. So far, there IS NO FIX! I'm training my wife to unplug & replug the unit everytime it happens because I'm kinda tired of it.... I wish instead of 2 pages long fimware update fixes, they should just concentrate on this one annoying single problem, once and for all. I don't play any HD or other exotic files, only simple DVD files for crying out loud!

For the majority of all users, this problem only occurs when playing incompatible or corrupt files, and is very rare. If Syabas or the beta testers could reproduce it, it would be solved by now or at least priority 1.

I use my A-100 3-4 hours every single day and I've gone months without it happening. The files I play the most are a mix of XviD AVI, MKV, DVD ISO / VIDEO_TS and mpeg4 plus WMV clips.

All of you who experience this, should use your energy to network with each other and try to drill deeper into the problem - it doesn't happen for everyone, not even the majority - which means the problem has to do with something in your specific setups.

Compare your setups, settings and files to see what they have in common and how they differ. That way you might find a solution.

[moment22]

(03-03-2009 11:32 AM)cheaper_popcorn Wrote:  For the majority of all users, this problem only occurs when playing incompatible or corrupt files, and is very rare. If Syabas or the beta testers could reproduce it, it would be solved by now or at least priority 1.

I use my A-100 3-4 hours every single day and I've gone months without it happening. The files I play the most are a mix of XviD AVI, MKV, DVD ISO / VIDEO_TS and mpeg4 plus WMV clips.

All of you who experience this, should use your energy to network with each other and try to drill deeper into the problem - it doesn't happen for everyone, not even the majority - which means the problem has to do with something in your specific setups.

Compare your setups, settings and files to see what they have in common and how they differ. That way you might find a solution.

well, i agree with you, getting angry does not solve any problem.
But i dont have the time or the interest as a customer to solve that kind of problem. but thats me-)

i use the firmware 01-17-090116-15-POP-402 and NMT Apps Version : 00-17-090115-15-POP-402, with an 160GB HD.

You say you never experience this problem but do you unplugg your A-100?
I use my A-100 on very rare occations and thats why i dont want to keep it on power / sleep mode.

If i boot my A-100 up and then try to play a movie of any kind ( i never keep any corupt movies, dont think i ever have one really) i have to pull the plug and then reboot. After this, every movie on my hardrive is playable. If i dont cut the power i dont have any problems. The movies wil be playable the next day also. Sure one workaround is to keep it on power but i dont really wanna do that..

thanks anyway for your input

[spawn]

You dont really need to pull the plug to restart if you problems with playback after intital boot - you could do a simple soft reboot.

Press the red standby button and then the usb eject button and the device will soft reboot.

It doesnt explain or solve the problem off cource (and I have no idea why this is happening for you) - but its a bit more comfortable doing.

Perhaps you just got a female PCH, and sometimes you need to ask nice a second time before she will play along - J/K

PS: you should update your A-100 firmware to the latest 01-17-090125-15-POP-402 - there are actually some fixes to memory problems which could perhaps effect your results. Also make sure your screen are turned on and set to the input of the PCH before turning on the PCH for best handshaking to be done. And make sure you are running correct video output and not "Auto".

[werner]

also please install the last bugfixrelease for A-100, then try again!

[garp99]

(03-04-2009 09:22 PM)spawn Wrote:  PS: you should update your A-100 firmware to the latest 01-17-090125-15-POP-402 - there are actually some fixes to memory problems which could perhaps effect your results. .....

To clarify, (as per release notes) you mean the memory fixes related to playing ISO and DVD VOBSUB files
from samba shares, when no internal HDD exists?
I saw no need to upgrade for myself since I never play ISO files.
Are there *other* memory fixes NOT listed in the release notes?
.

---

.
To those un-plugging your units... bad idea!
It's as bad as turning off your PC without doing a proper shutdown.
This could be the reason you need to reboot a second time. The first time it needs to fix any file corruption from a bad shutdown.

To power off, use the POWER + DELETE keys for full shutdown and off.
Note, the + in this case means one at a time with a 1-2 sec pause in between pressing those keys.

When you want to turn it back on, then you will have to unplug it, and plug it back in again... and then it boots up.

As Spawn indicated, a reboot is done with POWER + EJECT keys

[spawn]

Quote:To clarify, (as per release notes) you mean the memory fixes related to playing ISO and DVD VOBSUB files
from samba shares, when no internal HDD exists?
I saw no need to upgrade for myself since I never play ISO files.
Are there *other* memory fixes NOT listed in the release notes?

yes - the ISO fix consist of some tidying up - amongst other things there are some better memory handling which can also have a positive effect on other types of playback. So in general everyone with A-100 should upgrade to latest even if they dont play ISO.

--------------------------------------

Those still having problem with DVD playback - check your video output settings.

It may have resetted itself to component instead of HDMI as described in this thread - causing black screen

http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showth...?tid=18260

[mar_tin]

Since I home sick for the last few days I using the PCH all day long. (If nothing else for torrent downloading.) I get the back to menu problem in the last four days all the time in various circumstances.

The setup:
A100 with the latest bugfix fw. with internal HD (only for torrent and the jukebox).
FTP, SMB, and myiHome always running torrent only if I need it.
Movies on my Synology CS407e NAS. (All files fully PCH compatible and played on it at least once.)
Display: Samsung LE40R88BD (720p LCD).
A/V receiver: Yamaha RXV630.

Thursday:
Fresh restart in morning since I can't play any 1080p content from mkv. I quickly tested two 1080p movies played from my NAS both worked. I started them twice to see if the resume works, then I started the torrent app. and added one torrent (1GB) then I put it to standby. When I turned back on (after about 8 hours) the torrent downloaded succesfully, but yet again no 1080p mkv playback. As you can see it not played anything unsupported just downloaded the torrent, yet it lost the ability of playing 1080p mkv's.

Friday:
Morning: Fresh restart. Torrent running downloading one torrent. Copying two files to the NAS using File Mode on the PCH. After the two files copyed and I renamed them also with the File Mode I can't even play any mkv's. Everything else is working fine (avi, ts, mpg etc.) .So I had to restart... again...
Afternoon: I watched about 10 video from Youtube then I also lost 1080p mkv playback. I tried to play about 10 1080p movies this time (none of them started) and after that I lost completly the mkv playback.

Saturday:
Fresh restart. Torrent running downloading one torrent. Watched one TV episode 720p mkv. After that no 1080p mkv playback. Restart. Torrent still downloading. Watched two 720p movies after that no mkv playback at all. Restart. Lisened about 10 mp3 songs after that no 1080p mkv playback. I watched one tv show episode from avi after it ended I lost the picture (HDMI) so I had to restart. After that I stopped the torrent client for the night and put the unit to standby. (I had to add that the torrent client is doesn't want to stop, because I turned of my router I had to turn back on to stop it.)

Conclusion:
As you can see for me the back to menu problem only resticted for the mkv format. Also it's pretty obvious that it's progressive as I always loosing the 1080p playback ability first, then if I using more the unit I loosing the mkv playback ability completly. Also I don't even had to play any worng file to loose the 1080p mkv playback ability. Even simple things like listening to music or watching Youtube or simple file operations can do that.

My thoughts of the problem:
I think it's a memory problem on the PCH. Since I guess the mkv demuxing is running on the 300 MHz MIPS CPU and it uses the part of the memory that is used the by the whole linux and all of it's processes the problem must be there. Either the memory is got eaten up by the NMT apps after time, or simply the memory is not correctly handled.
I had to add that after I loose the mkv playback ability the PCH still reads at least the mkv header because I can hear the head seeking on my NAS, a playback failing when it tries to allocate the file buffer, or the frame buffer in the memory. Keep in mind that I'm just guessing here.

I hope this helps a little.

Ps.: I also get strange rendering problems on the Jukebox gui. After I play and stop a movie I got strange black bar on the highlighted link or if it should display a different image on the link then just a black box. This is also showing memory problems. (I try to add picture later.)

Edit: Here is a picture of it.

[cauldron]

I'm getting the same "back to menu" issue on my A-110. This happens pretty regularly and is usually fixed by a reboot.

I have two A-110s, one is the newer version, "bad", with the power switch on the back, this is connected via HDMI to DVI connector to an LCD tv. This is the one with the "back to menu" problem. I have an older A-110, "good", unit with no power switch and that is connected to an LCD projector via HDMI to HDMI, this one never has the "back to menu" problem. I play the same video files on both so I know there is nothing wrong with the video files (mkv, ts, m2ts, avi). Both have internal HDs and are configured exactly the same and have the latest firmware.

I have noticed the "bad" A-110 runs quite a bit hotter than the older one - although I wouldn't say it is too hot. There appears to be enough space around it to cool correctly. Also this "bad" one sometimes on boot has problems loading the blue background screen and is just white (plus the "back to menu" shows itself), a reboot fixes that. I have found a sort of work around which is when the "back to menu" is exhibiting itself, I've gone into Photos and displayed a photo, gone back to the videos and they played without any problem. I'll continue to test this more.

Sometimes also nothing is displayed on the TV and the "bad" doesn't respond to the remote, a poweroff and on usually fixes that.

The "switch off without shutting down" comment doesn't cut it for me as the "good" unit is regularly powered off without shutting down without problems.

I'm trying to find a pattern that maybe causing this. Some things I'm going to try:

• Switch from DVI to HDMI
• poweroff via unplugging the power supply unit (which I always do on the older unit)
• Test the "photo display" work around.
• Try TV on/off when booting
• Reformat everything.
  

Other than that I'll have to RMA it, I've done this once already with a broken optical board and the support was excellent, by the way!

[spawn]

the "back to menu" problem seem to be related to some kind of image caching / memory leak issues (I dont know the details) but for info Syabas are working on a "bug fix firmware" which are currently being tested by betatesters, this firmware are much more stable in regards to this issue, as well as having fixes for spaces in dvd share names and a few other things. I beleive this firmware will be released in a not to distant future (I cant say more precisely than that so dont ask when )