BT Sport App Crashing on Commercial Break - Firestick 4k

[benevs01]

Every time it cuts to commercial break it crashed when trying to rejoin the broadcast program. Incredibly frustrating, sometimes it disconnects and reconnects itself, then I have to re load the app and navigate through as normal.

After a reset and a rest period it now does the same crash but instead hangs on the screen and forces me to unplug the device to reload it.

Any solutions?

[DarrenDev]

We're aware of this issue. Restart the app and it shouldn't do it anymore.

[benevs01]

Restart the app? I've already done that about 20 times today seeing as it CRASHES every time there's a commercial break.

Not sure I understand the logic of now 'one more restart' will solve it? 

[DarrenDev]

Sorry, different people use "crash" for different things.

If the app quits completely and you're returned to the device main menu, then it's a crash - the app has completely quit. I don't see any reports of this from yesterday (I get directly emailed when this happens).

If the app freezes and stops responding to commands for too long, this is classed as a hang - "Application not responding". Amazon unfortunately doesn't provide us with any way to see that this is happening, so we're totally reliant on reports from customers about this.

If the video stops and you're returned to the BT Sport app on the screen where you launched the player, then this was just an error. You should normally see an error on screen when this happens. e.g. we saw a high number of VC011D errors being reported yesterday, so we made a slight tweak to the app config to prevent it happening. This is what I was referring to, when I said about restarting the app.

Which of the above would you say you were experiencing?

[benevs01]

probably none by direct comparison.

when the commercial break ends that's it. the page which says so (a bt sport branded page that shows as the last screen before it should return to the broadcast) is where the stream stops - the audio often continues for a brief period (i can hear the actual broadcast but no video as it is still simply displaying that bt sport page) but then ceases entirely.

this eventually leads to the stream becoming totally unresponsive - no controls work from the remote, and i'm forced to unplug the device (4k firestick) and then plug it back in, starting all over.

in other cases the firestick disconnects itself, then reconnects itself (i know this as messages appear on my TV in its native form) and and ends up restarting the device. i'm then left at the usual starting menu for the firestick

every single time its at the end of a commercial break and its incredibly frustrating. it only happens with BT sport and no other app i use through the device.

any ideas?

[DarrenDev]

OK thanks, that's interesting.
At the point that other devices are reporting an error (that they're unable to resume the normal video stream), your device hardware is freezing completely. We've not had any other reports of this.

Whilst I can't explain why your hardware behaves differently, we do already know that there's an issue with coming out of ad breaks. We recorded detailed logs of it happening yesterday, and we'll be analysing them tomorrow. Until this is fixed, we'll be disabling the special ad handling so that it's not triggered.

I'll update here when we've fixed the known issue with ads, so that you can then confirm you're not seeing your issue either. Let me know if you see the issue occur again in the meantime.

[benevs01]

will do, thanks for the update Darren.

[DarrenDev]

Quick update on this one - we've not found the cause yet, but I have at least managed to reproduce what I believe to be your scenario @benevs01
For me, when coming out of the ad break it caused my TV to reboot itself, which automatically triggers our app to stop the video. The app was still trying to process a dodgy video frame, even after being told to stop, so when I then asked it to play the channel again the device totally froze.

Our experts are analysing the video stream now to hopefully find the cause.

[Davidwt5000]

Hi,

Just wanted to say I have the same issue. On,y difference is I’m using the HD Firestick rather than the 4K one. Exactly the same error though. At the end of every single commercial break the BT Sport tile appears and then the video freezes whilst the audio continues for a bit.

Like the OP the only solution is to unplug the Firestick. It doesn’t force the TV to reboot or anything else. Happens every time there is a commercial break. No issues with any other apps or anything else come to that.

Just wanted to show the OP isn’t alone.

[DarrenDev]

Thanks @Davidwt5000 - I can confirm that we're seeing it on a large number of devices.  For some it manifests as a freeze, and for others it looks like it's buffering for 30 seconds before then showing error VC526.

We're investigating this as a top priority, but unfortunately we've not been able to disable the ad handling for this evening's UCL match on BT Sport 1.  The only thing I can recommend at this point is that you stop the stream during the ads and don't start it again until they've finished - possibly using the BT Sport app on your phone to confirm when that is?

I know this is a ridiculous thing to ask, and I really hope it won't be necessary for this weekend!