topic Re: EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic in TV

EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic

naylor2006 — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 12:23:40 GMT

Hello all.

I'd been investigating this for a couple weeks after my recordings of various Premier League football matches were failing, it seems like a meta data issue with the TV Guide, not one that is there with my equipment and I reckon if anyone else see's this post they can probably confirm the same issue.

I record all the Premier League Games on Sky Sports on my BTTV Pro box which is in Internet Mode, last season it worked 99% of the time, this season however it has failed so many times, particularly annoying when I sat down at 2000 to watch United vs Arsenal only for the recording to have failed without any error message at all, luckily I was able to download it, actually wish I hadnt...United woes another issue.

At the time I didnt notice thumbnails not being correct, however now I can "confirm" the issue and it comes from the TV Guide, please see the below screenshow from my phone showing todays scheduled recordings....(Well and one yesterday)

The Liverpool game is showing some generic SPORT thumbnail, this recording will fail, I will have to either go into the EETV app and record the game once it has started OR do the same from the TV itself....unless the guide updates the correctly...but even if the guide updates, this recording will fail, I will need to delete this recording and add the corrected one once the guide updates. It is actually possible to have two entries for the same game once the guide updates...thats if it does, I can have the corrected one in there with the correct thumbnail and the one with the generic that I added before it was fixed.

I factory reset my box because I knew I might get asked, issue remains, but it cant be the box right because the generic thumbnail is both there on the planner on the box itself in the guide and on the app....so if I click on the below entry in the guide it will show the SPORT thumbnail.

I wont post all the other games with the correct thumbnail because by this point I hope my point gets across.

On the opening weekend of the premier league, all the sunday games failed in this way, Friday night was ok the Liverpool Bournemouth game, I think from memory MNF failed also....last weekend before I had noticed this thumbnail difference I decided to JUST record the Fulham United game....which failed...but I was wise to it failing so just waited until the program started then hit record from the app and it recorded fine then.

I'd put alot of money on all my recordings (based on their thumbnails) working today but that Liverpool game failing, because the issue is there on the actual TV guide and the EETV app guide...then I assume its nothing specific to me?

Is anyone able to have a look at their planner and look at the thumbnail for Liverpool vs Arsenal please and see if its the same? Maybe even schedule recording it and check if it fails.

I will post again here at the end of the day once I know for sure how the recordings went but im fairly sure of my findings....

[Mod edit: The profanity filters were a bit over-zealous here added in the name of a North London football team]

Re: EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic

DarrenDev — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 11:53:25 GMT

Thanks for all the detail @naylor2006

I know they're still having frequent calls to review issues with the data, but I'm not sure if they've connected the recording failures with the different images. I've pointed them to this thread.

Re: EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic

naylor2006 — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 12:24:28 GMT

No problem @DarrenDev , as annoying as it is, I just need to make sure I can get on the app once the game (I am missing) has started and I can trigger it to record that way, due to work and family I am not always able to watch those games in the afternoon/late afternoon, which is why I just record everything so I can catch up on what I miss. I was so mad when the United Arsenal game failed, was so hard to make sure I didnt hear the score all day....I was even more upset when got hold of a copy of it and watched it till the bitter end.....even more annoyed when the Fulham game didnt record and I forgot to double check....trawled the internet again for a copy....then had my weekend ruined again 😛

For now I will just double check the most important games to me and like I said, with todays stack of recordings...I should be able to post the results inline with what I think is happening, for now I can confirm that the two programs that started at 1300 have successfully started, as I would expect as they have the correct thumbnails there....isnt that Michael Dawson as well, how old is that? lol

Here we can see in the planner they have shifted to Recording 🙂

And below is reflecting the actual multicast traffic flowing from my WAN interface out through my designated IPTV interface....20Mbps per Sky Sports HD stream is what I expect and see...

I expect the Liverpool game to fail as still its thumbnail is showing some generic thing, ill confirm later.

[Mod edit: The profanity filters were a bit over-zealous here added in the name of a North London football team]

Re: EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic

naylor2006 — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 12:14:54 GMT

Thats so funny that the North London Club The 'Gunners' is bleeped out when you write it as Backside nal.... lol

Re: EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic

DarrenDev — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 12:18:07 GMT

😂 I thought it was you doing that! I didn't realise the forum censored.

Re: EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic

Christopher_G — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 12:26:28 GMT

The profanity filters were a little too cautious in this case, @naylor2006

I've painstakingly edited the first four letters of said football team. 😄

Chris

Re: EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic

zulu17 — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 14:24:26 GMT

Some thoughts

I suspect the generic thumbnail is indicative of an incomplete set of metadata for the programme.Arguably the thumbnail itself won’t affect the recording .

What is interesting is that for the Liverpool. V (team from North London) today at 4pm is that it is missing Series CRID data on both Main Event and SS Premier channels. So the program in the EPG. Isn’t marked as part of a series currently.

I would think anybody scheduling a recording now would get a successful single recording of a single episode.

So did the 4pm Premier League game originally have an EPG entry with a Series CRID and subsequently get updated/changed to one without, What impacts would that have on scheduled recordings already selected .

So one spectulative theory could be

Viewer sets up a recording in advance or their existing series record finds the next episode and a program is scheduled. If that program metadata changes subsequently in the EPG so it is not considered to be the same recording as that already scheduled what happens. Well the original schedule programme might drop off the schedule or it might stay there until after the time scheduled passes but as it it is not now a match for the broadcast programme doesn’t record.

Re: EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic

naylor2006 — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 15:10:33 GMT

Yeah I should clarify @zulu17 ...I dont and never meant the thumbnail IS the problem, I'm just saying its a way of predicting which recordings will fail, indeed because it indicates a metadata issue.

I dont use series link for the for Sky Sports football, never had, I just look at the planner and find the games and manually schedule them, I usually do it early in the week or something when enough of the planner is there, I just cant rely on series link for stuff like sport where the scheduling can change and/or metadata, we've all seen that before before NOW and EE dont always marry up. I really dont want to miss games and this method has always worked for me, IE wait until the week's TV guide is all that and find the games and select record.

I have a single recording of the Liverpool game, because its meta is broken still my theory was it would fail...however it has worked this time.

Seems I was putting 2 and 2 together and getting 5.....

In which case I am still in the dark about why so many recordings failed this season....maybe I need to queue up the recordings later on and not so early in the week....although that was never an issue last season, I could do it on the monday for friday-mondays games the upcoming week and it would always work, its never failed on TNT Sports ill add, just Sky.

Opening weekend, Friday was fine, the Saturday 1730 failed and all the games on Sunday, all 3 of them, following week the Sunday 1600 failed and that was the only one I selected, but again I think I did it quite early in the week.

There is definitely quite a significant problem, but my thumbnail theory as an indicator has just been a coincidence. For what its worth, I scheduled all todays recordings only yesterday, I am probably going to have to do it on fridays more often.

Re: EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic

graybag — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 19:55:06 GMT

Yes @naylor2006 ,I too have had multiple instances recently of scheduled Sky Sports Programmes failing to Record via EPG on my EETV Box Pro 4K HDR Set Top Box Recorder but also had times when Programmes have not been fully recorded.Besides that,sometimes while watching Recordings they abruptly stop and I notice that the Channel that then displays is Channel 1 (which I NEVER watch ,always using 101).Likewise,if I turn on Telly and Channel 1 is showing I know that I'll find all Recordings have stopped (not just Sport).I'd thought this was only down to my Box and having done a Factory Reset (keeping Recordings) hoped that would correct the "Glitch",but it is evident that majority of these problems are also affecting other people.

Just as an other observation,I have noticed "strange" descriptions of Programmes recently e.g. Premier League Rd3 Brighton v Manchester United - although it was the 3rd Game each of them had played NOBODY with any Football Knowledge would use Rd3!Some Domestic Cricket has also been called "Test Match" please excuse me wondering if the Blurbs have been "farmed out" to other Countries without awareness of this Country's Competitions.

Re: EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic

naylor2006 — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 07:15:36 GMT

I'm a bit frustrated with myself that I was so sure, I did think I should have posted at the end of the day and then I would have known that all those recordings in my shared image would have failed or recorded.

We very rarely use our BTTV Box outside of the football season, my wife and I will series link very few things, we just don't watch that much normal TV anymore, there are some staples though, Love it or List it, Grand Designs....series link on those has never failed, neither show been on for a while though, The Apprentice, but there is little point recording that now when I can just use the iPlayer app on my ATV's, the ATV's are the default viewing device but being able to fast forward ads on LIOLI and GD is why we would favour the box for those.

During the football season, like I said above, I just go into the EETV app when I get 5 minutes and cross check the Sky Sports app and then schedule all the games to record for the upcoming week. The EETV app only shows 7 days of scheduling so often I was doing it on a Monday or Tuesday capturing any Champions League, Europa....FA Cup, League Cup and EPL games. I cant always tell on the Monday which ones I will be able to watch live and in fact watching games that have already aired and completed keeps me off my phone (as I may invertedly see a score) so I actually watch the game.

Insights into my routines might not be appreciated, but the point is I have been doing that since Jan 2024 so have a good experience it working or not....and it has been working great, I cant remember more than 1 or 2 failures in hundreds of recordings. This season however, aside from yesterday, nearly every single Sky Sports Recording has failed without error, all the ones that failed had the generic SPORT thumbnail and the odd one that worked, and we're talking a small minority, had the normal thumbnail. This led me to believe that the lacking thumbnail was a sign of metadata problems and therefore an indication of a recording that would fail, yesterday I proved myself wrong....it was a relief that things actually recorded though but im not sure ill ever trust it 100% again, im going to have to keep checking.

One that has changed is that I moved to EE from BT between last season and the current season, but I cant imagine that has changed anything and is the cause of the issue. Maybe I was having a different issue that is now cleared, will have to wait till after the international break to find out.

On the point of "RD3", yeah that was a strange thing, I also noticed couple other things during the first weekend of games but the one that I remember is the scheduling error. Now that Sky are actually showing extra games on Sunday we are getting two 2pm kick offs. Main Event was showing one and Premier League was showing the other, on my planner it was the wrong way around, IE the game it said was on Main Event was the one actually on Premier League etc...like I said, apart from Fridays Liverpool Bournemouth game...the Man City failed saturday evening, all 3 games failed on the sunday and MNF also failed. The following weekend I only scheduled United Fulham and that failed....this weekend was a complete anomaly.

Maybe a mod can come along and change the topic from:

EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic

To:

EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing

So that its not misleading for others.

Re: EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic

DarrenDev — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 07:47:29 GMT

I don't think you're far off the mark @naylor2006 and I think your observations are going to be helpful.

The issue isn't related to your move from BT to EE. It's entirely to do with the supplier of our TV Guide data, who have been facing some teething issues. There is very close monitoring in place, and there are review calls multiple times a week to highlight any anomalies found. I'm not sure if that monitoring is capturing the data changing though - I believe the focus was on highlighting gaps or errors. If recording or series recording IDs are changing mid-week then this will cause issues.

Re: EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic

naylor2006 — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 08:09:42 GMT

Thanks @DarrenDev

Yeah, was unlikely it was related to any move, but if I mention it and its rebutted then it closes that line of research for other Googlers.

I am happy to keep reporting back here ones that fail and ones that do not, I dont think many people actually record entire football matches, I am going to check more often now, I will still schedule recordings for all the matches but will around the programming start time to see if the recording has activated, either via my phone or whatever.

Have to suffer the international break first.....

Also mate, can you please sort out Ultra Boost 🙂

Re: EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic

DarrenDev — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 08:31:11 GMT

@naylor2006 wrote:
Also mate, can you please sort out Ultra Boost 🙂

If only I could! Even if there was a manual way to enable it, I'd happily give up my time to enable every customer who wants it - the embarrassment of this situation is just killing me! There's just nothing that can be done at the moment.

Re: EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic

zulu17 — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 08:49:48 GMT

The problems have been ongoing since June and we are now in September. So appropriate escalation from EE management would be welcome as even if the root cause is outside of EETV own teams remit there would I have thought be service levels that may currently be not being met.

Re: EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic

corinnabruder — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 08:11:15 GMT

Just adding my TNT recordings are failing regularly, I have to start them manually, and then they over run by hours. Or like last night, watch them on the 'on demand' mess that is Discovery- , Moto3,2,1,all failed, A-league failed, Roma v Inter failed. Saturday morning 2x A-leagues recorded but overran by 2 hours! The Le Mans Cup 2 hour race recorded fine, but failed to start the ELMS race, started manually and then overran by 3 hours! As you may see I hammer recordings and this is the worst it has been for failing.

Re: EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic

rmarriott — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 21:38:19 GMT

Can I please add my very frustrating issues into this, as they may be connected.

I have been with BT/EE for years, and have signed up to TV recently, with the TV Box Pro and Mini Box upstairs. I also have the Gigabite Broadband with EE and that absolutely isn't this issue here.

Only 50% of programmes I record actually record in full (mix of sports, movies, and terrestrial channels). And even the programs recorded in full seem to 'skip' during them. I recently recorded Educatating Yorkshire on Channel 4 and the recording was 59 minutes. However, watching it back, it got to 55 minutes in and then 'glitched' / skipped to 58 minutes, played the remaining 60 seconds and ended. Even after rewinding and trying again, the exact same this happened.

Along side this, I regularly get the full screen message pop up saying 'techincal issue' etc, and then about 20 minutes later it again glitches / skips, even on live TV with some 'pause time'.

It is unbelievably infuriating and I have zero trust with the TV boxes anymore. Even when it looks like sports and programs have recorded in full, I just sit and wait for it to skip parts with no pattern or reason.

Thumbnails are wrong, descriptions are wrong, ive done the full reset following phone calls with EE tech support etc, and still absolutely no difference to reliability.

Issues in a nutshell...

Failed to record, part recordings, full recording but skips during playback, wrong thumbnails, wrong descriptions, technical issues causing pause time to be lost.

I can confirm my Internet connection is flawless and I have zero issues with all the other streaming and devices in the house. Multiple TV Box restarts/resets have made no difference, and there's no rhyme or reason for what records and what fails, for one reason or another.

Re: EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic

DarrenDev — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 07:21:33 GMT

@rmarriott the stats for both your Pro and your Mini are surprisingly good - I was expecting to see a lot of errors logged, based on your description. This suggests that your internet connection to the boxes is good, and you're not suffering signal loss. You mention the regular message pop up, however logs show it has happened 6 times on your Pro box and 5 on your Mini in the last month.

The issues with schedules, images, and descriptions being wrong is the known one already being discussed in this thread.

The issues with recordings skipping is not normal, not expected, and if it's affecting you enough to be an annoyance then I would recommend pursuing it further with the helpdesk.

Re: EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic

zulu17 — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 08:22:52 GMT

Hi @rmarriott as you mention terrestrial channels I am presuming you are using an aerial feed on your box Pro , is that correct ? So are the issues with the recorded programmes (eg the Educating Yorkshire) skipping during playback only occuring on the aerial fed terrestrial channels or are you also experiencing the issue on the IP movie and sports channel recordings ?

@DarrenDev is this technical issue display a standard EETV error message with a specific error code and listed in the EE Tv help web pages ? Would this error also get tracked if the box is not being viewed but simply making a scheduled recording ?

Re: EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic

DarrenDev — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 08:28:24 GMT

@zulu17 the Pro box is in IP mode. Signal loss (IPC6023) is logged for both watched and recorded programmes - the logs also indicate whether it was displayed or not.

Re: EETV Scheduled Recordings Failing when Thumbnail is Generic

davefowkes — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 10:57:43 GMT

Some of my recordings fail and I know my EE box is fault and is being replaced; but I have discovered the issue. The recordings fail because they use the TV guide and it is wrong for the ITV channels. Is this a box issue; or a transmitter issue. I have seen 5 examples in the last 5 days? (eg on Saturday afternoon ITV racing was on and displayed as good morning britain? I also get recordings I never made? I now know that if the guide says that the program I wanted is now being broadcast it records whatever is really on?