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Anonymous User
Not applicable

Both Now TV boxes (white & black) lock up completely

I have been using the white Now TV box for a number of months now and discovered very quickly that the iPlayer app is almost completely unresponsive. If you choose something to watch on it then you'd better really want to see it because chances are you won't be able to stop it. Pausing will never happen.

 

Similarly, the YouTube app also causes the box to become responsive.

 

Useless grey screen

 

To my utter dismay I discovered recently that the black box is no different. It takes a bit longer, presumably because of its higher spec, but exactly the same happens.

 

The Now TV box runs “a heavily modified Linux” and as all Linux users know: an app should not be unable to cause a complete lock-up in the system. This suggests that the software (firmware) is fundamentally flawed.

 

The solution is to pull the power out of the box. To add insult to injury you can't power it off, so as time passes the probability of needing to do this tends to 1.

 

Due to the completely and total lock down of the software I have no way to debug, and hence no way to describe the bug any further. I am therefore 100% reliant on someone at Now TV (or maybe even Roku) from noticing there is an issue. I don't have a clean Roku box to compare.

 

What now? Shall I give up on these boxes all together?

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
Anonymous User
Not applicable

@Anonymous User the iPlayer app isn't built to run on the weaker white boxes, unfortunately is suffers from developer feature creep where they keep trying to push the boundaries on the latest hardware sacrificing those on older ones.

As for the black box, is a bug with the homescreen. Whilst other apps when they crash just exit to the main menu, the tweaked NOWTV homepage has nowhere to go when broken.

The only advice is to remember this remote combo code

Home, Home, Home, Home, Home, Up, Rwd, Rwd, FFwd, FFwd

The screen should then go black, and after about 10 seconds it should begin it's reboot process. The code should be sending crash logs to Roku/NOWTV, whether anyone is looking at them I don't know.

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4 REPLIES 4
4268
Legend 5
Legend 5

@Anonymous User  strange my black box doesn't freeze if I watch Iplayer on it.  Have you checked your software is up to date?  You can force an update by pressing home x5 then ff x3 and rw x2  then click update software.

Please take a moment to click thanks or marked as solution if this answered your question. I am a community contributor and pop on when I can.
Anonymous User
Not applicable

@4268 wrote:

strange my black box doesn't freeze if I watch Iplayer on it.


Yeah... I was mistaken there... the white box locks up while you're watching, the black box waits until you're finished.

@4268 wrote:

Have you checked your software is up to date?


Yes.

Anonymous User
Not applicable

@Anonymous User the iPlayer app isn't built to run on the weaker white boxes, unfortunately is suffers from developer feature creep where they keep trying to push the boundaries on the latest hardware sacrificing those on older ones.

As for the black box, is a bug with the homescreen. Whilst other apps when they crash just exit to the main menu, the tweaked NOWTV homepage has nowhere to go when broken.

The only advice is to remember this remote combo code

Home, Home, Home, Home, Home, Up, Rwd, Rwd, FFwd, FFwd

The screen should then go black, and after about 10 seconds it should begin it's reboot process. The code should be sending crash logs to Roku/NOWTV, whether anyone is looking at them I don't know.

Anonymous User
Not applicable

@Anonymous User wrote:

the iPlayer app isn't built to run on the weaker white boxes, unfortunately is suffers from developer feature creep where they keep trying to push the boundaries on the latest hardware sacrificing those on older ones.


 

That explains it! Unfortunately the box suggests quite strongly that it should be able to run the iPlayer when you buy it. The iPlayer, however, is dreadful on most platforms.

 


 As for the black box, is a bug with the homescreen.


 

As long as someone knows about it! Thanks for letting me know.

 


The only advice is to remember this remote combo code

Home, Home, Home, Home, Home, Up, Rwd, Rwd, FFwd, FFwd


 

I should have mentioned that this works, which shows that the box is still listening to input, but you've explained the problem above anyway, thanks.