Puck needs restarting every day.

[Gordon461]

Hello all

We have been Sky Stream subscribers for over a month now (previously Sky Q), we have two pucks - both connected by Ethernet, and with the Wi-Fi turned off and set to remain connected on standby and overnight standby turned off.

For the first week or so we pressed the power button on the remote when turning the TV off, but after having problems restarting the puck we now just turn the TV off and leave the puck 'on'.  However we still have problems, pressing the home button seems to bring it to life and also starts the TV, but on selecting TV guide or playlist it won't load them, it either freezes or puts up an error message, or it says internet not connected.  Also most of the thumbnails on the home screen remain blank.

Tonight I decided to try waking the puck half an hour before trying to use it - but still wouldn't work properly.

The way to resolve the issues is to restart the puck in settings, after which it always works perfectly for the rest of the evening - so that rules out internet issues .  It restarts quite quickly and immediately shows thumbnails everywhere.  On one occasion I did a reset by unplugging the power then holding the reset button underneath when switching on which I think reinstalls the apps?  But it didn't change anything.

Can anyone help with this please?  Do we have a faulty puck.?  Our other one isn't used daily but when we do it has no similar problems.

Thanks.

[MarkGoldsmith]

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@Gordon461 wrote:

Hello all

We have been Sky Stream subscribers for over a month now (previously Sky Q), we have two pucks - both connected by Ethernet, and with the Wi-Fi turned off and set to remain connected on standby and overnight standby turned off.

For the first week or so we pressed the power button on the remote when turning the TV off, but after having problems restarting the puck we now just turn the TV off and leave the puck 'on'.  However we still have problems, pressing the home button seems to bring it to life and also starts the TV, but on selecting TV guide or playlist it won't load them, it either freezes or puts up an error message, or it says internet not connected.  Also most of the thumbnails on the home screen remain blank.

Tonight I decided to try waking the puck half an hour before trying to use it - but still wouldn't work properly.

The way to resolve the issues is to restart the puck in settings, after which it always works perfectly for the rest of the evening - so that rules out internet issues .  It restarts quite quickly and immediately shows thumbnails everywhere.  On one occasion I did a reset by unplugging the power then holding the reset button underneath when switching on which I think reinstalls the apps?  But it didn't change anything.

Can anyone help with this please?  Do we have a faulty puck.?  Our other one isn't used daily but when we do it has no similar problems.

Thanks.

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If only one of your picks is doing this it's likely a faulty puck.

One other test you could do to confirm this is to switch the pucks round. If the "good" puck then starts to have issues you will know it's more a local network issue than a problem with the puck. 

[lettice]

Could you try the following;

Remove the power from your faulty puck.

Remove the ethernet cable from the puck and the router.

Restart your broadband router.

When the broadband router is back up, plug in your ethernet cable back into the router and the puck and startup your puck.

Other things to  consider;

Is the faulty puck ethernet cable going through an unmanaged switch or is the cable going direct to the router?

If so try going direct or try plugging into a different port on the switch.

Maybe even try a different ethernet cable.

[Gordon461]

Thanks for your suggestions.

 I'll firstly try swapping the pucks, if it behaves the same there could be something in the network affecting it.  I will come back and tell you how I got on.

[AndrewWMcN]

Don't know if this is quite the same as mine but both my pucks regularly "boot to black". When you wake them from standby there seems to be about a 50/50 chance they will just display a black screen. It's not even "no signal" because my TV was display that. Pulling the power and putting it back in, I.e. full boot, is the only way back to a working puck.

the two pucks are actually 12-18 months apart in perceived age. So, it makes me think it's a bug. They did not do this at the start of my tenure with them. The second puck is almost never used... so it's not like it has been wearing itself down through usage.

i keep forgetting to make the time to call Sky about them. Will aim to try again tomorrow.

[Gordon461]

No, mine have never done that. Good luck getting it sorted.

[Omicron]

We too have been Sky Stream Puck users for a couple of months previously having been on Sky Q.  We too have a problem.  The Puck now and again decides to go slow then stop.  Sometimes this is with all channels and sometimes just with broadcast channels.  This is our third Puck!  I have tried all the recommended checks and tests.  WiFi reception at the Puck is over 50Mbs.  I have also placed an ethernet cable on withthe same problems.  I also have an Apple TV puck.  I have switched that on when the Sky Puck was not working and the Apple TV worked fine.  I deuce from this that conditions at my end are good:  the TV works;  the cables have been swapped and tested as working on the Apple TV; the broadband signal at the puck is good and shows as 54Mbs when tested on Netflix. ; i have used an ethernet connection but with no change.  To my mind that only leaves a couple of things:  the Puck is faulty (but this is my third one); or the connection to the Sky stream servers is faulty but no fault is being reported at Sky.

I am at a loss to know what to do and would be grateful for any suggestions.

[MarkGoldsmith]

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@Omicron wrote:

We too have been Sky Stream Puck users for a couple of months previously having been on Sky Q.  We too have a problem.  The Puck now and again decides to go slow then stop.  Sometimes this is with all channels and sometimes just with broadcast channels.  This is our third Puck!  I have tried all the recommended checks and tests.  WiFi reception at the Puck is over 50Mbs.  I have also placed an ethernet cable on withthe same problems.  I also have an Apple TV puck.  I have switched that on when the Sky Puck was not working and the Apple TV worked fine.  I deuce from this that conditions at my end are good:  the TV works;  the cables have been swapped and tested as working on the Apple TV; the broadband signal at the puck is good and shows as 54Mbs when tested on Netflix. ; i have used an ethernet connection but with no change.  To my mind that only leaves a couple of things:  the Puck is faulty (but this is my third one); or the connection to the Sky stream servers is faulty but no fault is being reported at Sky.

I am at a loss to know what to do and would be grateful for any suggestions.

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@Omicron out of curiosity when you tried with an ethernet cable, did you also set Wifi to disabled in the puck's settings and then reboot the puck?

[Omicron]

I first just connected the ethernet cable.  No chnage.  I then switched off wi-fi on the puck.  No change.  I then re-started the puck.  Sky works.  But it would have done if I had just re-started with just a wi-fi connection.  Someone mentioned latency could be an issue?

[Gordon461 · Accepted solution]

To follow up on my problems I have swapped the two pucks over and the one that was working fine is also working well so far (48 hours or so) in its new location in our lounge, no other changes made.

However, the one that was giving us trouble also had problems in our other room - mainly not connecting to the internet and restarting or unplugging it didn't help.  So I looked into the Ethernet network and found that the cable was routed through a switch situated alongside the router (not enough outlets on the router), so I moved it to the back of the router.  This appears to have solved the problem 🤞.  It's only a couple of days yet but here's hoping that's it done.

 The thing is our lounge also has a switch behind the TV,  to supply Ethernet connections to the things there from a single cable coming from the router.   So it seems one puck is OK with a switch and the other isn't.  Any idea why this might be?  I have bought another switch to try if I have further trouble.

Thanks everyone for their input and I hope this thread is useful to others.