Continue Watching

[MarkGoldsmith]

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@VirtuallyVlad wrote:

Resurrecting a zombie by the looks of it, but I've only just got Sky stream and having made it through the bluetooth remote fiasco, (even though it's still an issue) I am now trying to watch the damn thing!

Continue watching clearly does not work (on mine😉). 

Faced with a choice of watch live, continue watching or watch from start, the continue watching does not do anything.

If the programme appears in the continue watching raill, then it does at least try to play, but only from the start.

Any ideas?

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The continue watching rail does have its limitations. For example if you start to watch a show via the live channel, lets say BBC 1. You decide to watch 10 minutes of it before having to go and do something else. Once the show is available on BBC IPlayer the show should appear on the continue watching rail but because the source of the show has changed from live streaming to on-demand via IPlayer it won't pick up where you stoppped watching the live broadcast. This seemingly is because the show launches in the on-demand app and that app isn't aware you started watching the live broadcast so its marker is that you haven't watched any of the episode. I've just gotten used to not many shows live (except from sports) as a result of this and just watch them on-demand once it flags as them being available and the live broadcast being over.

Some users also suffer quite badly with shows/episodes not disappearing from the continue watching rail. Personally i've only experienced this a few times where i've watched a show and the completed episode it still listed as the next episode on the rail, but I know there are some users that have reported this happening quite frequently. From my experience this seems to occur only on certain on-demand apps, for example i've seen it occur for me only on Paramount + shows, but its always worked fine on ITV X, BBC I Player, Netflix and Apple TV + personally.

We know Sky are working on improving the continue watching rail and have been for some time but I believe its quite complex due to the number of streaming sources (on-demand apps etc ) that the system needs to hook in to, and the data that each service makes available to Sky.

[VirtuallyVlad]

Thanks again @Jporch316 !

I'll try that and hope that dropping the power doesn't resurrect the dreaded bluetooth remote problem😬.

Although thinking about it, as my remote does not currently connect with bluetooth (again), perhaps it will kill 2 birds with the one stone!

Fingers crossed!!!🤞

[Jporch316]

@VirtuallyVlad 

Once the remote has the updated firmware it will be fine 

[Jporch316]

@VirtuallyVlad 

There is a new software update rolling out in batches we are going from qs24 to 25

Always a good idea to pull the plug on the puck for a minute or two after you've got the update 

[VirtuallyVlad]

Thanks @MarkGoldsmith 

That could very well be the answer and now I realise that Sky have created a behemoth with many complex interactions behind the scenes.

I guess the problem is how to present all of this to the punter in a way that makes sense.

I'll persevere😬

[VirtuallyVlad]

@Jporch316 

I thought it already had!!!  I've been through the update routine sooooo many times!!😄

Can you remind how to see what version the remote is on so I can check?

Thanks

[MarkGoldsmith]

Yeah its a little bit frustrating, but after a while you tend to get used to it and come up with a system that works for you.

One of my biggest annoyances is usually ITV X, as on a number of shows the on-demand content doesn't tend to show up on the playlist for sometimes a few days. Sometimes this is because ITV are taking ages to upload the show to ITV X but in other times if you open the ITV X app you can see the next episode is available, but that its been tagged incorrectly in ITV X with it not showing a series or episode number, and just showing a broadcast date. Without the full metadata about the show being available it tends not to appear on the playlist until that gets corrected a few days later.

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@VirtuallyVlad wrote:

Thanks @MarkGoldsmith 

That could very well be the answer and now I realise that Sky have created a behemoth with many complex interactions behind the scenes.

I guess the problem is how to present all of this to the punter in a way that makes sense.

I'll persevere😬

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[Jporch316]

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@VirtuallyVlad wrote:

@Jporch316 

I thought it already had!!!  I've been through the update routine sooooo many times!!😄

Can you remind how to see what version the remote is on so I can check?

Thanks

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Settings - system management - remote control version 

[VirtuallyVlad]

@MarkGoldsmith 

I hear you - we've been trying to understand all of that and it does seem that ITV X are bad at it.

Just going back to the continue watching thing. I just checked wit Mrs Vlad about this programme, and it appears to be the following order of events:

Select a cricket match on Sky Sports Cricket that will broadcast at 9am. Start watching the programme at about 9:30am. 

Stop watching at about 10:10am.

Try to continue watching at about 12pm. Fail.

The live broadcast is still ongoing. It hasn't gone to on demand as far as I'm aware.

Just another aside, is that the programme claims to be recording! Presumably in the cloud, but I wonder how long it keeps the recording for? Do we know how long we get to watch 'recordings'?

Thanks

[Jporch316]

@VirtuallyVlad 

If the version is correct then reset and repair your remote as below 

The remote can be reset and paired again following these steps;

1.   Press and hold 7 and 9 together on your Sky remote for three seconds.
2.   Press and hold 4 and 6 together for three seconds.
3.   Press and hold 1 and 3 together for three seconds and follow the on-screen instructions.

[MarkGoldsmith]

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@VirtuallyVlad wrote:

@MarkGoldsmith 

I hear you - we've been trying to understand all of that and it does seem that ITV X are bad at it.

Just going back to the continue watching thing. I just checked wit Mrs Vlad about this programme, and it appears to be the following order of events:

Select a cricket match on Sky Sports Cricket that will broadcast at 9am. Start watching the programme at about 9:30am. 

Stop watching at about 10:10am.

Try to continue watching at about 12pm. Fail.

The live broadcast is still ongoing. It hasn't gone to on demand as far as I'm aware.

Just another aside, is that the programme claims to be recording! Presumably in the cloud, but I wonder how long it keeps the recording for? Do we know how long we get to watch 'recordings'?

Thanks

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Yeah, the continue watching rail doesn't seem to work with live broadcasts. It assumes if you are watching a live broadcast you will watch it to the conclusion. I'm wondering if it does this because people have the habit of switching over the channels during ads and things which would make the system probably really confused and end up adding lots of shows to the continue watching rail. No idea if that is true but literally a thought that just popped into my head.

With regards to the cloud recordings, from my experience they tend to be available until the programme is made available on-demand. But it can change show to show based on contractual rights. For some shows Sky won't legally be able to take a cloud recording, for others they can likely only keep the recording for a specific amount of time. From my experience with a couple of F1 races at the end of last season, i always had the race cloud recording available until the race rerun was available on catchup, at which point the playlist got updated to point to the on-demand version instead of the cloud recording.

[Fothergill1]

@MarkGoldsmith  Interesting that you find iPlayer seems to work fine on the CW rail as I find it one of the worst.  My issue with it is if I add something from BBC to my playlist and then after watching 1 episode and decide it's not for me and I delete it from your playlist it still shows up in your CW rail after every subsequent broadcast.  I find this also happens if I watch from start on a BBC programme.

I  also find that programmes you watched weeks ago and in some cases months ago suddenly reappear in the CW rail again.  I have just looked at my CW rail and it shows 20 programmes of which 14 should not be there as they have all previously been watched.  A couple of days ago there was a programme that neither my wife or I had ever heard of in the rail so I don't know what happened there.

When the continue watching rail is working well it is absolutely brilliant.

[MarkGoldsmith]

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@Fothergill1 wrote:

@MarkGoldsmith  Interesting that you find iPlayer seems to work ofine on the CW rail as I find it one of the worst.  My issue with it is if I add something from BBC to my playlist and then after watching 1 episode and decide it's not for you and delete it from your playlist it still shows up in your CW rail after every subsequent broadcast.  I find this also happens if I watch from start on a BBC programme.

I  also find that programmes you watched weeks ago and in some cases months ago suddenly reappear in the CW rail again.  I have just looked at my CW rail and it shows 20 programmes of which 14 should not be there as they have all previously been watched.  A couple of days ago there was a programme that neither my wife or I had ever heard of in the rail so I don't know what happened there.

When the continue watching rail is working well it is absolutely brilliant.

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Yeah i've always found it interesting how different our experience of CW has been. A couple of times i've had BBC shows added on because IPlayer has randomly started an episode of a different show once i've finished watching whatever and i've not be quick enough to press the back button to stop it autoplaying.

However whens its done this, i have noticed that show has disappeared from my CW watching rail after 3-4 weeks. I have no idea if it is because the show was removed from IPlayer, but seeing how one of the shows its decide to autoplay which i didn't want was MasterMind i would have thought those episode would be on IPlayer for quite a while so i was surprised when that suddenly disappeared from the CW rail ( not that i'm complaining it did).

The issue really does seem to be the consistency between customers. Although as you have previously raised with Sky, at least the ability to remove a show from CW rail would solve that particular problem 😀

[Fothergill1]

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@MarkGoldsmith wrote:

However whens its done this, i have noticed that show has disappeared from my CW watching rail after 3-4 weeks. I have no idea if it is because the show was removed from IPlayer, .........

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@MarkGoldsmith The CW rail will only hold 20 items so if you are patient enough a programme will slowly move down the rail and then drop off so maybe that is what happened in your case 🤷‍♂️.  How quickly this happens is dependent on how many new programmes you watch.  I once had one that took about 3 months to drop off.

Despite the odd frustration like this issue I still love the convenience of the Streaming platform and still use the CW rail despite its limitations.

[Deedee36]

@Fothergill1  Was that Colin from accounts??