Picture Intermittently Pixelating - Many Sky Branded Channels

[squareeyeschris]

Syfy channel is intermitently pixelating. I've not seen this on other channels. Could this be a fault with the puck? 

Moderator note:  Amended title to better reflect query

[Fothergill1]

@squareeyeschris. It is possibly a software glitch so try restarting your puck by going into Settings > System Management > Resets & Updates > Restart device (do not do a factory reset).  It takes about 3 minutes to completely reboot. You will have a blank screen for a couple of minutes before the Sky logo appears so don’t worry when you first start the process.

[squareeyeschris]

Thanks @Fothergill1. I managed to get in touch with someone at Sky who talked me through a reset using the power button underneath the puck and disconnecting the power cable. Not sure why both. It didn't work. I'll try your method and see if that works any better. However, I was talking to a friend last night who has the same problem when watching Syfy programmes on Sky Mix with Freeview so I think it must be some problem with the source material.

[Fothergill1]

@squareeyeschris  If the reset you did with the adviser didn't work I suspect my suggestion will also fail to resolve the problem but maybe still worth a try as it is easy enough.  As you say the problem might be something to do with the broadcast material.

As a general rule the restart I have suggested is a good starting point whenever a problem starts to materialise.  I do it on a fairly regular basis to clear any minor glitches before they develop into a problem.

[squareeyeschris]

@Fothergill1 

Noticed the problem on one of the Sky movies channels yesterday, so perhaps not a transmission fault after all. Perhaps the similar problem my friend has is not the same as mine and is aerial related? I wonder if Sky would let me have a replacement puck to try.

[DuckieBoos]

Ive notice the same on sky witness and sky showcase and 1 of the movie channels. Other none Sky live channels seem ok. Its happening on 2 different pucks 1 over wifi the other wired. Its probably a transmition fault but getting Sky to admit this and fix it in my experiience is never easy. 

[squareeyeschris]

@DuckieBoos 

I got Sky to send me a replacement puck, (which led to more problems getting it to link to my account and ages on the phone to Sky to get it working). However it hasn't cured the problem so I don't know where I go from here.  I wonder if you were able to watch the same channel on both pucks at once (two tv's), if you would see the problem on both at the same time? Probably not practical but perhaps it would rule out a puck fault. I was beginning to suspect my tv but if we both see this then it's not the tv. Are you on Sky broadband? I can't really see how that could be the culprit but there's not much else left. 

[DuckieBoos]

Yes i have sky broadband. Yes its the same on all pukes at the same time. have no issues with anything other than these sky live channels. Years ago i had had similar issues with channels on sky satellite and the exact same problems on now tv. I spent months pushing for sky to investigate and eventually they admitted it was a problem at their end not mine. My only conclusion is that sky dont watch their own output. If they did they'd probably fix these issues much sooner.  Hopefully they'll read this thread and others and fix it. However they are in my experience too quick to blame individual's equipment and set up even when multiple people and on accasion accross multiple platforms are all reporting the same faults. 

[lettice]

Is this on the live channel or On demand content for the Sky Sci-fi channel?

I watch a fair bit of Sky Sci-fi during the week. Not noticed any pixelation on either of my pucks recently.

Is there a specific programme that you see it on, so we can look to see if it's a particular programme that is suffering with issues, rather than the channel itself?

[squareeyeschris]

Thanks for your reply @lettice. Certainly I see it on the "live" channel. Not sure if I see it on 'On demand' channels. It's not just SiFi. I've seen it on one of the movie channels too, again when watching "live". I'll keep an eye out for it on 'On demand'

As far as the Si-Fi channel is concerned I think it may be only on Star Trek episodes I notice it. (TNG, Voyager and Enterprise) but it's not something I've been taking note of. As it also occurs on Sky Movies it seems unlikely it's on particular episodes. I might try rewinding to before an occurrence if that's possible and see if it's present at the same point when I play that section again. If it is baked in to an episode then it should also be present on the 'on demand' version I should think. 

If you haven't had the problem and I (and others) have, then it would seem to point to the puck, notwithstanding I've had a replacement one. By the way, I've had the broadband speed, latency, Wi-Fi etc checked out by Sky and that's all ok.

I'll investigate further and report back. 

[Fothergill1]

@squareeyeschris Despite my previous answers to this thread last night I started experiencing a pixelation issue on anything I tried to watch so it was not isolated to specific channels (this included live and on demand programmes).  It rather reminded me of the satellite system in bad weather. 

I did a restart through settings and so far the problem had no reappeared 🤞

[DuckieBoos]

Sky witness was bad last night and an series recording of Fire Country season 2 episode 5 was the worst I've known this issue to be so far. 

[Mister_Dalek]

Could be that Sky's servers are suffering a little and struggling to buffer and send stable streams to everyone's pucks. Remember that everything on Sky Stream is coming from a server, only the most basic bits of the OS are on the device itself. All the apps, streams, playlist info etc is coming via your broadband.

With little on-board memory, the puck is a slave device. If the master servers have a bit of a choke for whatever reason, it may be that the pixellation is as a result of their buffers and caches struggling to catch up and pump the audio and video down to your pucks. 

[squareeyeschris]

Thanks @Mister_Dalek This sounds a more likely explanation. I suppose, knowing there is a problem, Sky will now upgrade the capacity of their servers to prevent this happening in future. No?😊

[MarkGoldsmith]

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@squareeyeschris wrote:

Thanks @Mister_Dalek This sounds a more likely explanation. I suppose, knowing there is a problem, Sky will now upgrade the capacity of their servers to prevent this happening in future. No?😊

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Typically these types of issues would affect  multiple customers though. Where a particular problem isn't being widely reported it's generally an issue local to the user.