BUG: U4 HDMI-IN strange behaviour starting from standby

[MrQuade]

Ok, I have seen this happen a few times now, and I think I have the sequence of events down.

Firstly, I have added the HDMI-IN service as the last entry in my Favourites bouquet, and I think this may be important to the issue I see.
Secondly, My U4 is not set to display any particular service when resuming from standby or Deep Standby.

I have yet to see this issue happen on my T4, though that may only be because I haven't done a lot of HDMI-IN testing on the T4 since I started adding the HDMI-IN service to Favourites.....maybe.

Steps to reproduce (I think):
Press BLUE from Live TV, then select HDMI-IN fullscreen mode.
Observe video/audio signal from HDMI-IN playing normally.
Press BLUE from Live TV, then turn off HDMI-IN fullscreen mode.

What happens now is that the service stays on the HDMI-IN service, which is not too unexpected, given that I have the service in my Favourites bouquet. On my T4, when I didn't have HDMI-IN in Favourites, turning off HDMI-IN fullscreen mode would return me to the previous Live TV service. This isn't really the issue though.

With the HDMI-IN service still being displayed on screen (though now with HDMI-IN fullscreen turned off), zap to a different FTA service (using numbers or CH+/-).
Observe everything looks normal, and the Live TV service is playing normally.
Put the U4 into standby.
Bring the U4 out of standby.
Observe that the audio that is playing will be from the last FTA service you were on prior to going to standby, but the video is coming from HDMI-IN.


I have had this happen on numerous occasions, and after being initially confused as to what was going on, I think I have gotten the sequence of events sorted now.

Anyone else seeing this?


Also, something that is a minor annoyance, is that if you press BLUE, and activate HDMI-IN fullscreen mode, then simply zap to a different FTA service, the BLUE popup menu will still show the HDMI-IN fullsceen mode as being on (in that it offers the "turn off" entry). If you do try to turn it off, it doesn't actually turn off. You sort of need to disentangle yourself by zapping back to HDMI-IN, then pressing BLUE and selecting to turn off HDMI-IN fullscreen mode, and *then* you can zap away from it.

Also, also, it would be great for the HDMI-IN PiP option to be removed from the U4 if it is known to be unreliable and that is unlikely to change.

[Grumpy_Geoff]

...Anyone else seeing this?

Nup, the FTA audio/HDMI-IN video overlay didn't happen to me on the U4. I tried it first by making Terrestrial TV LCN the current bouquet and followed your steps, then I added HDMI-IN to Favourites and repeated the test.

I originally didn't have HDMI-IN in Favourites as I was feeding this bouquet to EPGRefresh and it used to cause the plugin issues. I usually use the WIZTV button to switch to HDMI-IN.
I tried again now with HDMI-IN in Favourites, the only issue was a muted audio when EPGRefresh got to background scan/fake recording the HDMI-IN service.

[Paul_oz53]

Can't comment on the start from standby since I don't use that mode.

...
Also, also, it would be great for the HDMI-IN PiP option to be removed from the U4 if it is known to be unreliable and that is unlikely to change.

If fixing it isn't on the radar screen then I'm inclined to agree that the option should be removed or at least hidden. My experience was that it didn't work at all well. It ended in a need to reboot. The lack of other commentary suggests no one else has even tried it.

It might disappoint someone wanting to monitor a security / baby camera in PiP mode though. Better that it was fixed if possible.

[Paul_oz53]

Update on both issues - accidentally...

Just revisited HDMI-IN PiP. The behaviour has changed from my first experience. Previously, pressing zero in PiP mode would rotate through a variety of different screen formats. Standard was one, cascade another - there were about five of them. Now, it does not change. The other formats were novel but pretty useless so this is a positive. It was in this mode that I experienced the lockup mentioned in my other posts.

As of now PiP in HDMI-IN only allows the HDMI-IN to be the main focus. The small PiP window only displays the live TV channel, never the HDMI-IN picture. So the HDMI-IN function can kind of be used with PiP but well below expectations.

...
Observe that the audio that is playing will be from the last FTA service you were on prior to going to standby, but the video is coming from HDMI-IN.
...

Also, something that is a minor annoyance, is that if you press BLUE, and activate HDMI-IN fullscreen mode, then simply zap to a different FTA service, the BLUE popup menu will still show the HDMI-IN fullsceen mode as being on (in that it offers the "turn off" entry). If you do try to turn it off, it doesn't actually turn off. You sort of need to disentangle yourself by zapping back to HDMI-IN, then pressing BLUE and selecting to turn off HDMI-IN fullscreen mode, and *then* you can zap away from it.

Along the way, I discovered I could get the sound from FTA whilst the picture was HDMI-IN. And it took a bit of messing about to disentangle the mess.

HDMI-IN is last in my Favourites bouqet, FWIW.

[MrQuade]

As of now PiP in HDMI-IN only allows the HDMI-IN to be the main focus. The small PiP window only displays the live TV channel, never the HDMI-IN picture. So the HDMI-IN function can kind of be used with PiP but well below expectations.

Oh yes. I certainly wasn't suggesting that PiP be removed entirely. Just that second option on the BLUE menu. If the user chooses to engage PiP in other scenarios, then that's another story, and probably a complicated one.

[Paul_oz53]

As of now PiP in HDMI-IN only allows the HDMI-IN to be the main focus. The small PiP window only displays the live TV channel, never the HDMI-IN picture. So the HDMI-IN function can kind of be used with PiP but well below expectations.

Oh yes. I certainly wasn't suggesting that PiP be removed entirely. Just that second option on the BLUE menu. If the user chooses to engage PiP in other scenarios, then that's another story, and probably a complicated one.

Yep, that was the way I read it. In other scenarios it seems to be OK. I have only ever used it rarely when two sporting events are running. One mode that was there but has disappeared was side-by-side. Possibly a mode that might be useful but it seems PiP is just a novelty for most users.

[007 007]

It would be nice if the HDMI in and PIP cleaned up to either work as expected or broken parts to be removed.
Now that my laptop works on HDMI in It will stay there for convenience as I read a lot of web pages. As a bonus I can get PIP to monitor a tv channel if it decides to work.

Wish list -

When viewing 'HDMI in' and going to the signal information page to show input info ( seems to show last fta channel instead ) or leave it blank or just say 'hdmi in' and include audio signal details. ( this would make it much easier to select the best recording settings )

When viewing 'HDMI in' as main view and having PIP fta it would be nice to select audio from PIP fta. ( eg. reading web page from laptop and having fta PIP with audio )

Remove all PIP menu items that don't work yet from the public firmware feed.
( It's hard to explain but I've had all sorts of issues with 'HDMI in' from audio playing from fta on the 'HDMI in' without PIP to PIP menus changing state but nothing working which requires a reboot )

[Paul_oz53]

It would be nice if the HDMI in and PIP cleaned up to either work as expected or broken parts to be removed.
Now that my laptop works on HDMI in It will stay there for convenience as I read a lot of web pages. As a bonus I can get PIP to monitor a tv channel if it decides to work.

Wish list -

When viewing 'HDMI in' and going to the signal information page to show input info ( seems to show last fta channel instead ) or leave it blank or just say 'hdmi in' and include audio signal details. ( this would make it much easier to select the best recording settings )

When viewing 'HDMI in' as main view and having PIP fta it would be nice to select audio from PIP fta. ( eg. reading web page from laptop and having fta PIP with audio )

Remove all PIP menu items that don't work yet from the public firmware feed.
( It's hard to explain but I've had all sorts of issues with 'HDMI in' from audio playing from fta on the 'HDMI in' without PIP to PIP menus changing state but nothing working which requires a reboot)

My experience is that using HDMI-IN as the PiP minor service doesn't work but you can have it as the main focus with liveTV as the minor service.

If it were possible to select the audio from the minor service that would restore the functionality that is currently missing. One could then expand the minor service window to get a viewable picture.

Of course, this would be a kludge of the highest order but I could live with it since PiP doesn't get much use.

Some of the odd audio behaviour using HDMI-IN is common to the T4 too. And I too have had wierdness with PiP when experimenting with the options. Recently though,I couldn't induce the problem. Rebooting is my goto fix when s#@t happens.

[MrQuade]

I don't even bother with HDMI-IN PiP on the U4. PeterU has acknowledged that it isn't functional, so no sense in frustrating myself.

As for recovering from the audio/video mixup, a reboot is generally not required. You just need to zap to a service and everything comes good.

Other HDMI-IN weirdness may need reboots (I sometimes get strange colour tinting on the T4 for example).

[Paul_oz53]

...
Other HDMI-IN weirdness may need reboots (I sometimes get strange colour tinting on the T4 for example).

Early on I had it stuck in PiP mode with colour tinted ventian blinds. That's when it needed a reboot. Agree the audio comes good changing services.

[kidhazy]

So, I with the Olympics and AFL on laptop (via Kayo) I finally had a scenario to use the HDMI-IN on my U4 (19.3.20210710)

As others in this thread have indicated HDMI-IN Fullscreen works, but the HDMI-PIP doesn't work.

This thread was from 2018, so just checking that this is still the case in 2021 for the U4 .... HDMI-PIP doesn't work.

Correct?