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I am not sure if I can get anywhere with this, but I have a log that shows the following exception error.

2024-04-23 14:07:05.780 T:1283    error <general>: EXCEPTION Thrown (PythonToCppException) : -->Python callback/script returned the following error<--
                                                    - NOTE: IGNORING THIS CAN LEAD TO MEMORY LEAKS!
                                                   Error Type: <class 'ConnectionRefusedError'>
                                                   Error Contents: [Errno 111] Connection refused
                                                   Traceback (most recent call last):
                                                     File "/usr/share/kodi/addons/service.icetv/service.py", line 11, in <module>
                                                       if start.run(sys.argv):
                                                          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
                                                     File "/usr/share/kodi/addons/service.icetv/resources/lib/start.py", line 142, in run
                                                       icetv.update_guide()
                                                     File "/usr/share/kodi/addons/service.icetv/resources/lib/icetv.py", line 591, in update_guide
                                                       output_xmltv(shows)
                                                     File "/usr/share/kodi/addons/service.icetv/resources/lib/icetv.py", line 506, in output_xmltv
                                                       client.connect(socket_path)
                                                   ConnectionRefusedError: [Errno 111] Connection refused
                                                   -->End of Python script error report<--

The full log can be accessed Here (I Hope).


This exception error is apparently conflicting with a Non-IceTV Addon that I am trying to get working, namely "Paramount+", among others.

The guy supporting the Paramount+ addon in the Kodi world has suggested this is the reason the Paramount+ addon is not working.

The reality is that all the streaming addons (Prime, Paramount+, Disney+, NineNow, SevenPlus, TenPlay, etc), I have been running have a similar problem, i.e. The addons work for about 2 weeks and then the programs for "Shows" suddenly disappear from the file lists.  Strangely "Movies" still seem to work.

I can see how this is most likely to fall into the Low Priority list (or more likely No Priority) as it is not part of the IceBox offering.  I am not asking for anyone to devote a lot of time to this, but I am hoping that someone might recognise the Exception error and can shed some light on how it might be resolved.

In terms of supporting information, from what I have researched so for, I am suspecting a Digital Rights Management (DRM) issue.  I have seen examples where "Shows" and Movies" are treated a little differently when it comes to DRM and it may be that the exception error above is interfering with how the DRM is processed.
The interesting thing is that after a soft reset and a reload of all the addons, they all work fine, for about 2 weeks, then all the Program file for "Shows" suddenly disappear on all the streaming addons. Something common to all the streaming addons stops working properly. I have tried uninstalling/reinstalling the two key DRM related Addons that are common to the streaming Addons, namely "WideVine" and "inputstream.adaptive" and Rebooting without any change. Only a soft reset and reinstall of all the addons works (about a day of effort).

FYI I am only running addons I have paid subscriptions for.   

I don't hold great hopes for a solution, and I suspect I will have to just give up on the idea of having a fully functional Media server capability in my IceBox.

Ian,

Given that no one else has answered yet, I suspect the answer is no, but it might be worth having a look on the BYOB (Bring Your Owm Box) pages. 

I had to read this sentence  a few times!

I see what you mean, and I used to be a technical writer. Duuhh

Thanks for that. When I looked at that settings page, for some reason I assumed it was read only. I changed the resolution, and also set the UI resolution limit to 1080. When I rebooted, it came up in HD.

How is the Black Screen/Flashing?

One thing I have noticed with software updates in general (Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, etc.) over the years is that sometimes settings that the person who set up the update had for their setup can sometimes end up in the update. It would explain the alignment of the Black Screen/Flashing with the installation of the update.
I am not saying that happened here, but weird things do happen.

Thanks, but my IceBox is plugged directly into the TV. I don't have another TV I can test it on. In any case, I didn't have any of these issues prior to the firmware upgrade, and the upgrade is the only change to my setup.

Ned

I don't know how the Update might affect video behavior. Note: That comes from lack of knowledge, not certainty.

However, from memory, I recall someone mentioning tweaking their TV to work with their IceBox.
The IceBox video is supposed to work best at 1920x1080 @ 50 Hz.
Is that the setting you are using?

Is there anywhere in your TV's settings where you can specify the screen resolution to 1920x1080 @ 50 Hz?

The two port's outputs are the same as the IceBox is a miniPC which, in its original state, could support two monitors. 

One of the things I noticed when I used UBUNTU to load one of the earlier updates, was that it was possible to "Clone" the outputs to the two ports. This setting didn't hold when I came out of UBUNTU, but it showed it was possible to some degree.

In other words, what is output to the two ports is controllable from software.  Whether that sort of control is available in the LibreELEC/Kodi/IceTV software environment is another matter.

However, the most significant problem was with the ad skipping whereby after the ad break, the video repeatedly cut off and on, until finally there was just a blank screen.

That looks more like a HDMI issue.  Do you have a HDMI cable connected directly to your TV or is there something else in between, e.g. an AV Amplifier, a HDMI extender, HDMI splitter, HDMI switch, etc.)?

Sometimes with HDMI, something that interrupts the data flow can trigger the receiving device to go through a housekeeping check which results in a bit of flashing while the HDMI reconfigures itself. Sometimes the result can be a blank screen.  The more devices in the chain, the worse the flashing can get.

Usually a directly connected TV doesn't do that, but a bad cable may cause something similar.
 

I don't think HDMI is the issue. I am having the same symptoms on various recordings. Today, I was watching a recording of the PBS Newshour, when it started having intermittent black screens, then just went back to the menu. When I tried to restart it, it said "Failed to Start" on both Resume and Play from Beginning. I tried to reboot from the power menu, but the box crashed (looked like a kernel panic), so I did a long press of the Power button and it rebooted successfully. I then played the same recording, and it played without any black screens or other issues.

I'm also having a number of other anomalous problems. Sometimes when I select a recording to play, I just get a black screen. When I press "Back", it goes back to the menu, but I can see the recording playing in the background. When I select it again, it plays.

Something new today: I tried to watch live TV, but I get a message from TVHeadEnd saying "No Free Adapter Available". I rebooted a few times, but got the same result. I looked at the TVHeadEnd web page, and Configuration->DVB Inputs->TV Adapters is an empty folder. Something must have gone wrong during my efforts to watch the PBS Newshour this morning. I unplugged the tuners and plugged them in again, and they have come back. Unfortunately, I didn't do it in time to get today's recording of the PBS Newshour.

During one of the many reboots I've done this week, the box updated itself, so I'm on 11.6.2 now. It retained my channel settings, which is one good thing.

I believe that you are correct in your interpretation that much of what you experienced was related to the initial playback of the PBS recording. Something glitched and caused most of the follow-on issues you experienced.

You seem to have successfully diagnosed the issues and found suitable actions to resolve them.

You shouldn't really be having the Black/Flashing screen issue, but...

I have something similar, but part of the issue in my case is that I have a bunch of devices (HDMI Switches, extenders, splitters and converters) between the IceBox and my TVs. Every time I go from a menu to playing a recording, I get a Black screen and occasionally some flashing. It takes a few seconds while everything settles down.

I would love to find a way to get it more stable, but nothing I have tried has worked. From what I understand it just comes down to how each device in the HDMI chain, including the IceBox, deals with changes in the video data.

It may be that the way your TV does the HDMI handshaking with the IceBox is particularly sensitive to something the IceBox does (or vice Versa).

Have you tried plugging in a different TV to see if the behaviour changes?
 

Try plugging in the HDMI cable to the other port on the IceBox; during beta testing hardware assistance was only working on one of the two ports.

Is there a way to confirm which of the ports (In relation to the power lead) has the hardware assistance?

Yes, I have lost a few of my timers again, and there are lots of blank areas in the EPG.

As for the missing timers, I have a vague recollection that IceBox timers set from the EPG only work locally, i.e. do not get captured by the IceTV servers.  It could be that the Soft reset loses the local timers.

Someone please correct me if I am wrong with this one.

My new IceBox is connected to a Panasonic 65inch TV and nothing i seem to do in the TV menu seems to fix my overscan problem, is there any adjustment i can make in KODI?

Yes there is.

1. From the main Menu, select the Settings "Cog" for the Settings page.
2. On the Settings page select Interface Box to show the Settings/Interface page.
3. On the Settings/Interface page menu, select Skin and then -Zoom.

This allows you to adjust the overall size of the picture.  I find the for my LG, about -6% does the job.
 

There are a few shows where it never works (eg Seven News) but when it does work, watching is a dream.

I don't know why 7 News wouldn't work, but there are a few things that may cause Add Skip to fail. A small reception glitch at the wrong time.  It is also worth being aware of the fact that there is a bit of serial post processing done (one program at a time) on the recorded material. At a rough estimate 1 hour of recording requires 1 Hour of Post Processing.  I have no idea of timeframes really, but it is not seconds or a few minutes.
If for example, you recorded 9 and 7 news at the same time and tried to watch them both an hour later, there is a chance that 9 news had finished post processing, but 7 news hadn't (or vice versa).


 

Do I need to do a hard reset and start from fresh?

If you don't have any recordings, a hard reset might be worth a try.
A hard reset will wipe them. If you don't care the go ahead.

If you do have recordings you want to keep, you could try copying them off onto another computer (provided you have space.
I find that a computer on the same network will show ICEBOX in the Network folder. 
Open it and navigate to the recordings folder and copy the contents to somewhere that has enough space (if you have space).

When the Icebox gets to the Login point, copy them back and log back in.   

Note: I haven't tried this, so there may be issues.  It may be that you may need to follow with a soft reset the recapture the recordings.

Good Luck.

Thats the trouble with all this daylight saving nonsense. 

• The cows don't turn up at the right time,
• the curtains fade
• PVR timing gets all stuffed up.

Maybe if we pray hard enough, we can get Joh Bjelki to rise up and fix all this stuff up.

It seems the image I embedded in the above post disappeared, https://ibb.co/j84hm12

I see your problem and I suspect there may be a bug behind it, which I can't help with.
It looks like when you set up a timer in the way you have, the Icebox sets the end time 40 hours ahead, resulting in impossibly long recordings.
I also found that if you try to stop or delete the timer, nothing seems to happen. I think it does in the background, but a restart is required to make it apparent.

Before the update, the timers worked as expected. Since the update (and before I reset the config), they have been kaput.

You will need help from the IceTV guys. It may be that the last update introduced a bug. You are using your IceBox in a way that most IceTV enthusiasts wouldn't think to use and as a result the bug may have slipped through the beta testing.

I am not interested in recording a particular program. I am interested in recording blocks of time.

You have an unusual approach, which is basically to record everything on every primary channel (Except ABC) for a block of time and skip to the programs you are interested in later. And an IceBox is one of the few PVRs that can give you the four tuners that will allow you to do that. Do you realise you can probably record secondary channels at the same time as well, i.e. 10 Peach, 7 Flix, etc.?

However, your approach presents a few problems.
1. Your recording approach circumvents most of the advantages of having access to IceTV. IceTV offers a fairly sophisticated way to manage the recording of programs of your choice. I happily pay the $8.99 a month, as I get great value from it. Your recording approach nullifies the all the advantages, but I am not sure whether the IceBox will work without an IceTV subscription though.
2. Unless you are pretty rigorous in deleting the recordings, you will start to run short of drive space fairly quickly. 1TB is a lot of space, but 20 hours of recording a day is also a lot.
3. Add Skipping requires some post processing of the recorded file, and it takes an hour or so per hour of recording to set all the add markers. For the long sessions of time you are recording, you may find that the post-processing struggle to keep up with your recordings. That doesn't stop you from watching the programs though.

However, you are perfectly entitled to use your IceBox in any way you want.

I double checked my regional settings. It defaulted to Sydney and changed it to Hobart. Times are the same.

The change to Hobart time won't have much impact, except you will now get the Hobart program guide rather than Sydney's. There probably isn't a lot of difference though.

As for using the phone app, when I go to the Google Play Store, it says my Samsung Galaxy S23 FE is not compatible. It has Android 14.

I use an Iphone, but I gather Android 14 may be a superseded operating system. Can it be updated to a later version?
In any case, I don't think the app will help a lot for the way you are doing your recording, apart from showing the current TV guide. However, you should still be able to use the IceTV website.   

Regards
Tim

The timer issue is, I used the UI to set the timers, along with the web config via http://lan ip:9981/ which is convenient with PC, 2 of the timers appear to start recording but never stop. Attempts to stop the recording says errors. Attempts to play the recording show displays the text "error". The amount of space (after over 12 hours of recording two channels of HD) seems to be very minimal. I need to restart the box to stop the recording. As it doesn't properly stop, so the shows don't show in the list of recordings. It doesn't start at the correct time, either.

When you say that you used the UI to set the timers, do you mean the HTTP}\[IceBoc IP adderss]:9981/ UI?

If so, I can see why you might have problems.  It may be possible, but it would be very easy to stuff up.

The best way to set a timer is to use IceTV App or the IceTV TV guide website at https://www.icetv.com.au/.  You need to log in with the same username and password as the IceBox.

You simply select a program from the guide and "Schedule a new recording".

You can also go to the on-screen Program guide on the IceBox and select a program to record, but from what I understand, timers set in this last way aren't captured by the IceTV servers.  They are only local to the IceBox.
I could be wrong on this last one though. It may have been fixed by now.

If you are setting the timers from the app or the website, then my apologies.

One thing worth being aware of is that a reset will take the Regional settings to their default settings. From recollection I think that was Australia/Melbourne. It doesn't sound like that would be your issue as that should just move the Start/finish times to be an hour out (depending on your time zone), not endlessly recording and the other strange behaviors.
It certainly sounds like there is something very strange going on with your time and date settings.