Casting from the EETV app to my Chromecast dongle issue?

[gomezz]

Over the past week or two I have started to have issues when casting from the EETV app on my phone or tablet to the Chromecast dongle plugged into my TV.  Playback starts OK but at some point down the line it throws an error and I have to stop/start casting, then reposition playback to where I was.

I commonly watch the PREM rugby extended highlights this way as it has the advantage of automatically stripping out the ad breaks and is quicker to fire up than wait for my Youview box to boot up.  Using the EETV app on my Youview box works fine as does using the HBO Max app on the Chromecast dongle.

There was a recent update to the Chromecast Web Viewer on the dongle which seemed to coincide with the problems starting.  So it could be a fault with the updated Web Viewer or a consequent issue with the EETV casting service no longer properly complying with what Web Viewer is expecting to see.

Anyone else had this issue?  I will be raising it over on the Chromecast Reddit forum and I suppose I need to look at the EETV support forum too (as still a BT subscriber not bothered so far).

[DarrenDev]

You're right that Google updated the Chromecast SDK this month. Rollout completed yesterday.

We haven't changed the Chromecast receiver code for 2 years, however there's nothing in this update that should have broken the service.  They have upgraded the mediaplayer they use for it though, which may be handling our video content differently.

I'll take a look at the stats today to see if we can see it affecting others too.

[gomezz]

Thanks. Will be avoiding using the casting option for now.

One thing I have not tried is watching the content directly on my tablet.  Will give that  go this afternoon while I am down the pub.

(semi-retired pensioner and Tuesday is my second Sunday of the week  🙂 )

[gomezz]

Watched the extended highlights of the last of this weekend's PREM rugby matches this affernoon directly on the tablet in the EETV app without it skipping a beat (other than the pub's wif-fi dropping out once for a few seconds).

[Anonymous]

Fun Fact

A colleague of mine used to bore us rigid counting down the days to his retirement 

A year after his retirement he was back  in my office/ cupboard asking to work two days a week part time. 

He had planned retirement meticulously except how to fill his days. 

[DarrenDev]

Google have acknowledged an issue with the update they released for Chromecast and rolled it back to the previous version. We'll continue to monitor for any issues related to future updates from them.

[gomezz]

Thanks for chasing this up.  Will give it a go to see if that has indeed restored the previous reliability,

[gomezz]

Mmm!  Still got a failure.  A CP999 error this time which did not crash quite as badly as casting was still active but did still lose the play position.

[gomezz]

Having done a more general search across the web for anyone else with a similar problem I seem to be the only one to have raised it. So is there something peculiar about my set up?

Would it make a difference if I cast from my Android 16 phone rather than from my old Android 7 tablet?

Would going from my current CCwGTV dongle to the latest Google TV streamer make a difference?

[DarrenDev]

You're not the only one experiencing it, although it's not affecting everyone. 

It doesn't matter which device you're casting from - the issue is that your device is unavailable to decode that specific section of the buffer. I have yet to work out why though.

It also wouldn't make a difference using the latest device - I can see logs of this issue, affecting all device models.

I've updated the chromecast code to hopefully provide a bit more information about the issue - I'll update here if/when I find out more.