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Sky Q
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helimachoptor wrote: »3 people of out a huge number.. if thats all it takes to put you off then i guess you are still using an FM radio as your source of entertainment
You expect the programme to have all those with complaints in studio or visit their homes?
Yeah. 0 -
helimachoptor wrote: »3 people of out a huge number.. if thats all it takes to put you off then i guess you are still using an FM radio as your source of entertainment
No, it's a medium wave radio actually, though I can't figure out why I can't get RTE on it anymore and it's a nightmare trying to get valves for it.0 -
The issue is primarily with the wifi mesh. Some customers who don't have a second wifi network in their house or within range of their house will not experience any issues. For non sky broadband customers the problems would tend to be more widespread. The reason is the strict use of the 80Mhz band on channel 36 only for the wifi mesh between the boxes. They did recently change a setting in the engineering menu whereby you can change the channel, BUT the only options are:
Channel 36/80Mhz
Channel 36/40Mhz
Channel 44/40Mhz
The problem with the above change (and most worryingly as it would seem the people working on this do not understand the basics of wifi channel overlap) is that essentially all the above do not resolve any issues with overlapping wifi networks.
The below image explains this easily:
In a typical setup a non sky broadband customer (or a sky broadband customer with an second router) has a 5Ghz AC wifi running on channel 36/80Mhz. This means any time they use it they will cause issues with their mini boxes. Whilst this is "fixable" for the end user, it is not the case whereby another wifi network that is within range of your sky mesh is using channel 36/80Mhz. I had an issue whereby if my neighbour was using their wifi my TV would lose signal.
What I cannot understand is why add a configuration that allows selection of channels that will not resolve the issue? Why not make the option available to select any usable wifi channel to run the mesh on?0 -
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The issue is primarily with the wifi mesh. Some customers who don't have a second wifi network in their house or within range of their house will not experience any issues. For non sky broadband customers the problems would tend to be more widespread. The reason is the strict use of the 80Mhz band on channel 36 only for the wifi mesh between the boxes. They did recently change a setting in the engineering menu whereby you can change the channel, BUT the only options are:
Channel 36/80Mhz
Channel 36/40Mhz
Channel 44/40Mhz
The problem with the above change (and most worryingly as it would seem the people working on this do not understand the basics of wifi channel overlap) is that essentially all the above do not resolve any issues with overlapping wifi networks.
The below image explains this easily:
In a typical setup a non sky broadband customer (or a sky broadband customer with an second router) has a 5Ghz AC wifi running on channel 36/80Mhz. This means any time they use it they will cause issues with their mini boxes. Whilst this is "fixable" for the end user, it is not the case whereby another wifi network that is within range of your sky mesh is using channel 36/80Mhz. I had an issue whereby if my neighbour was using their wifi my TV would lose signal.
What I cannot understand is why add a configuration that allows selection of channels that will not resolve the issue? Why not make the option available to select any usable wifi channel to run the mesh on?
I think it's more that Sky Q the platform seems to still be in the very early stages of development as a whole right now. Until they've had time to develop it a bit more they're keeping it very limited as to what you can configure and what options the software has available.
Same goes in a way for the fact Sky Q Silver has 12 tuners but each tuner is hard assigned to a particular task at the moment rather than being able to dynamically allocate itself according to what's needed right now.
(4 recordings, 2 Q mini, 2 tablets, 1 for live viewing, 1 for live preview, 1 for EPG, 1 for picture-in-picture (unused at present). Even if you aren't viewing on tablets, the 2 "tablet tuners" can't be used for something else like a fifth recording or a third Q mini.)
The immediate problem with opening up the additional WiFi channels is because all of the other channels outside of 36-48 are DFS (Dynamic Frequency Selection) which is not solely set aside for WiFi alone but is shared with radar.
This creates two problems:
1) it needs the "main" WiFi access point to constantly scan for the presence of radar and if it detects radar immediately stop all traffic on that channel, find a new clear channel, announce the new channel to every device connected to the WiFi network then change to the new clear channel and this all has to be done instantaneously - all of that needs to be implemented in software
2) not all devices support DFS (or the entire range of DFS channels) which will impact the hotspot feature
All of that's before the whole Airties mesh aspect even comes into it.
Sky have made indications they intend to loosen up the above tuner restrictions early next year so I'm sure in time Sky will also open up the DFS range for use with the mesh and figure out ways of seamlessly channel hopping across the DFS range.
Plus there's another big aspect of the mesh technology, Powerline, which hasn't officially been enabled yet either. You could up to now manually enable it on Sky Q TV boxes, but it was completely locked out and unavailable on the Sky Q hub and Sky Q boosters until very recently.
For now it is probably easier from their end if they keep the software simple and somewhat locked down until they can develop the platform out a bit more. Even if by doing so they're in effect helping to contribute somewhat towards WiFi connectivity problems.
There's plenty of other underlying bugs and issues to be fixed as it is!!0 -
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