Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Myth-connected TV does not reliably wake from standby #325

Open
Jpilk opened this issue Mar 6, 2021 · 10 comments
Open

Myth-connected TV does not reliably wake from standby #325

Jpilk opened this issue Mar 6, 2021 · 10 comments

Comments

@Jpilk
Copy link

Jpilk commented Mar 6, 2021

  • Platform: x86_64, Android

  • MythTV version: master after 4 Feb 2021

  • Package version:

  • Component:

What steps will reproduce the bug?

This has already been aired on the mythtv-users list, and dismissed as a coincidence - but the problem persists and would be serious in a family situation, so I'll go on. I think there is a connection to issue #299. I had other strange events at the same time which were traced to an unexplained update in the UPnP section of ~/.mythtv/conf.xml and have not happened again.
e787645#comments
10b5291#comments

I have a Panasonic TV, model TX-L32E5B, bought in 2012, which still meets my needs. It has HDMI and ethernet connections to several MythTV boxes and a FireTVstick 4K. Shortly after a CEC-related commit on 4 Feb 2021 the TV could not be woken from its normal standby state with its remote control. The LED on the TV will flash, maybe red, maybe green, but often there is no other visible response. Mythfrontend settings has a 'CEC off' option, but its state doesn't seem to affect matters.

Internet searches found several 'guaranteed' cures for this. I still have not found something that works reliably; the best seems to be to switch off 'at the wall' for at least several minutes and then power-up while the power button on the remote is pressed for several seconds.

A quote from the TV Handbook:

VIERA Link "HDAVI Control (tm)", based on the control functions provided by HDMI which is an industry standard known as HDMI CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) is a unique function that we have developed and added. As such, its operation with other manufacturers' equipment that supports HDMI CEC cannot be guaranteed.

Once the TV has been successfully woken everything works as normal. After it enters standby mode, normally by the remote power button but alternatively because no buttons have been pressed for some time, all bets are off.

How often does it reproduce? Is there a required condition?

What is the expected behaviour?

What do you see instead?

Additional information

@Jpilk
Copy link
Author

Jpilk commented Mar 6, 2021

To continue... Waking it up took a lot of quasi-random button pushing and power-cycling again, but I now find that enabling Viera Tools ( from the Panasonic remote ) allows it to control the Firestick, with Mythfrontend and leanfront as well as the Firestick native apps. The libcec webpage has some Panasonic-specific stuff too, although that hasn't worked yet for me.

@Jpilk
Copy link
Author

Jpilk commented Mar 9, 2021

At present this is far from user-friendly, but with the TV's Viera tools having been activated its wake-from-standby now seems less likely to fail, using the power-on button on the Firestick's remote, perhaps interleaved with its twin on the TV's remote. The Firestick menu has sections for Equipment Control, Remotes, Preferences and more. Menu operations in leanfront using the TV remote are more sluggish than with its own, and the input is identified as EC/HDMI rather than HDMIn, n=1,2,3 or 4. No doubt Alexa wants to be involved too.

@bennettpeter
Copy link
Member

My Vizio TV used to be unable to power on via remote or the TV power button. This used to happen about once per week. The solution was to unplug it at the wall and plug in again. Eventually this problem went away. I have noticed the TV doing updates and also I have switched from using mythfrontend on Linux to leanfront on a fire stick. So I don'y know what fixed it

My suggestion - put a time switch on the wall to power the TV off for 1 minute and on again, once per day at a time you are not using it.

@Jpilk
Copy link
Author

Jpilk commented Mar 18, 2021

There has not been any real change. I have been able to wake the TV without unplugging or pushing buttons hidden round the back, by using only the power buttons on the remotes of the TV and/or Firestick. Just unplugging, as Peter suggested, seems less effective.

I have asked both the 'Which' and Panasonic teams for suggestions; they have been responsive but had nothing more than the website that I had already seen:

https://support-uk.panasonic.eu/app/answers/detail/a_id/4410/~/why-cant-i-switch-my-tv-on-from-standby%3F

So the suggested cures seem at present to be no more certain and more inconvenient than what I have. I'll stick with it...

@Jpilk
Copy link
Author

Jpilk commented May 11, 2021

That was then: an inconvenience. After an auto-update of my FireTVstick 4K in April and a 'trial' change in its 'Devices Control' menu I was not able to get any useful response from the TV. Pressing the remote's ON button and switching ON 'at the wall' changes the LED from red to flashing green, and the flash rate increases when buttons on the remote are pressed, suggesting that some magic combination might work; but I never found one and the screen has remained black. The LED reverts to red after about a minute.

The Panasonic 'chat' helpline has told me that I cannot perform a factory reset of the TV if the screen is black. They suggested contacting an authorised repairer or offered a discount on a new TV. Given the age of the TV, a paid repair seems unlikely to make financial sense.

I have now replaced that TV with another of the same model that I had elsewhere, and can use it with MythTV via DLNA.
I have not yet tried HDMI connections, either from BE/FE or Firestick, because it seems likely that some unknown CEC misconfiguration caused the 'irreversible' problem and might also affect the second TV; or perhaps it's hardware...

I suspect that this sort of thing is industry-wide and not specific to Panasonic - if it breaks, get a new one.

I would still like to get the first TV working again. Suggestions welcome.

@bennettpeter
Copy link
Member

If you unplug everything from the TV HDMI input is it still dead? I am thinking perhaps it had its HDCP keys withdrawn? Apparently any device can send a message to a TV withdrawing its keys and disabling HDCP for ever after that. I had an experience that suggested this happened on another TV (Mitsubishi) a long time ago. It would work fine connected to HDMI from a computer running Linux, but connecting to a DVD player or blue ray player gave only a black screen, although those players worked on other systems.

@Jpilk
Copy link
Author

Jpilk commented May 11, 2021

Interesting, and thanks, but probably not my problem. TV1 still won't wake after days off-power and with all inputs (including the OTA antenna) unplugged. The only hopeful activity seems to be the green flashing LED and an occasional 'trying to connect' thump from the audio system connected via the headphone socket. I set up a PIN long ago and wondered if all the flashing wanted that, but it didn't help.

The biggest worry is that any replacement TV could be affected in the same way, with only any guarantee that it might have as cover.

@kmdewaal
Copy link
Contributor

kmdewaal commented May 11, 2021 via email

@Jpilk
Copy link
Author

Jpilk commented May 11, 2021

Hi Klaas: Thank you for the background info and suggestions. All good stuff but I doubt that I could apply much of it. :-)

FWIW the handbook tells me that LGPL source code is 'freely available' at http://www.am-linux.jp/dl/EUIDTV12/, but Firefox says that is 'taking too long to respond'. And there's lots of non-LGPL code too, including M$ DRM

@Jpilk
Copy link
Author

Jpilk commented Sep 29, 2021

Just in case anyone else sees something like this I should perhaps report that I eventually connected my second example of the 'same' 2012 model Panasonic TV and it worked - for a few weeks. I could watch OTA-direct, or mythtv by HDMI, DLNA or leanfront on a FireTVstick 4K.

All looked good with the devel/http builds. But then that TV died too, and now neither will boot to give any on-screen display. I have located and downloaded the 77 MB latest firmware but the loading instructions seem to expect a working screen - and a larger SD card than I have lying around.

I've also been looking at current TVs, of course, but no decision as yet. I was using the earphone socket to drive vintage stereo. Bluetooth now?

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment
Labels
None yet
Projects
None yet
Development

No branches or pull requests

3 participants