PS3 PlayTV broken - Solution now found!

[Rissy]

@Rissy That's fair enough!

I was also wondering if "something" in the received signal has changed and that is triggering the problem. Does the software give you any options to turn things off, like perhaps stopping it from automatically downloading the TV guide or interactive services (just trying to think of optional things which could be susceptible to "something" changing).

Another angle to troubleshoot from, given that it is just a USB tuner, would be to use a PC. It looks like there is good compatibility with the device on Linux, so trying it with that might at least reveal if there is anything odd with the signal, or even the device. At the very least you'll get access to view more detailed log information than you'll get from the PS3, even with CFW.

https://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Sony_PlayTV_dual_tuner_DVB-T

Yes, I'd thought about tying my breakout box on my laptop, but all the links to drivers, and knowing which software to try it with, were old, confusing, and dead. I'm not really into Linux, and would need a walkthrough of what to do for that, so it's an interesting suggestion on your part, but i fear I'd need help with that!


Oops! Forgot to say that I'm not able to stop PlayTV from loading whatever it needs/wants to load.

You can't go straight from 4.87 to 3.40. That's what I've said before. It doesn't matter if you use CFW or OFW.

Version 3.55 is the breaking point, and even with that version is not as easy as installing a PUP.

Could I go to 4.55 OFW OK? This would take me to the beginning of 2014, shortly after the last PlayTV software update to 2.04.

 

[Agrippa]

I do not understand what is the point in downgrading the firmware, if it does look like a hardware problem.
1. Faulty hard drive - timeshift buffer does contain bad sectors, that could explain hard freeze during the playback.
2. Faulty RAM - the issue should not be PlayTV exclusive, though.
It would be better to test the tuner with different PS3.

 

[Rissy]

I do not understand what is the point in downgrading the firmware, if it does look like a hardware problem.
1. Faulty hard drive - timeshift buffer does contain bad sectors, that could explain hard freeze during the playback.
2. Faulty RAM - the issue should not be PlayTV exclusive, though.
It would be better to test the tuner with different PS3.

Thank you for your feedback.

So far, I've tried PlayTV on 5 different PS3s.

1 Phat running OFW 4.90 and then OFW 4.91
3 Slims, one running OFW 4.91, one running various CFW versions, including 4.91, 4.89, 4.87 and one other Slim running OFW 4.82.
1 Super Slim running OFW 4.75

All exhibit the exact same results, but with slightly varying time from boot until crash results. Typically it happens between 3mins and 8mins. The result is always the same. The PS3 freezes, stops responding except for quitting PlayTV from pressing the PS home button, but then the console crashes with a triple beep, and reboots itself.

I've tried all of these machines running PlayTV V1.00 and V2.04.

My only other options are earlier firmware, hence my questions to help me achieve this; and trying a different PlayTV breakout box to rule out a PlayTV hardware issue. I have a NEW PlayTV system coming through the post soon. If it's the same issue with that, then that leaves me with firmware version, or TV broadcasting signal non compliance.

People seem to put their energy into criticising me rather than simply helping me with my questions. Why is this?

I am looking for a simple straight forward answer. Can I downgrade in one go, from CFW 4.87 (EVILNAT) directly to OFW 4.55 (with the QA flag set true) without bricking the console?

Please advise. please. please. please.

 

[Berion]

That's not criticism but finding alternative for solution You stick so much. None of us I believe ever used that device so feedback relying mostly on your observations and for that, our assumptions and predictions. Take that in mind. Would be cool if You can record whole process, since console turning on through to freeze. Also settings menu etc. if have any.

Yes, You can downgrade.

About Linux drivers. Paste the links. Maybe drivers are already in kernel. :P Or maybe they can be easily compiled and load on demand.

 

[LuanTeles]

You can't go straight from 4.87 to 3.40. That's what I've said before. It doesn't matter if you use CFW or OFW.

Version 3.55 is the breaking point, and even with that version is not as easy as installing a PUP.

He can go from 4.91 to Rebug 4.21, then Rebug 3.55.4 then any ofw below 3.xx. This is the way i got 2.80 working here.

 

[Rissy]

That's not criticism but finding alternative for solution You stick so much. None of us I believe ever used that device so feedback relying mostly on your observations and for that, our assumptions and predictions. Take that in mind. Would be cool if You can record whole process, since console turning on through to freeze. Also settings menu etc. if have any.

Yes, You can downgrade.

About Linux drivers. Paste the links. Maybe drivers are already in kernel. :P Or maybe they can be easily compiled and load on demand.

I put together a YouTube video illustrating the issue, it's on post #10 of this thread, but here it is again for your convenience:

For those who may be interested, I've added a quick video on PlayTV. My hope would be that Sony see this, and fix the issue; but with less than high hopes on this, at the very least, it lets people see PlayTV in action. For a bit at least, until it crashes.

Enjoy!

If there is anything else you might want to see or know to give me advice, i'm all ears. I've tried already on multiple machines and multiple firmwares, as advised above.

I just want to go back to 4.55, and then take it one by one up to 4.65 (all OFW), and if it's still not working with any of those, even with a brand new unused PlayTV breakout box, then I'll give up and put it down to Television broadcasting signal changes which PlayTV cannot handle. Without someone clever like you guys to analyse what's going on in the code, i'll never know what is happening to the PlayTV software, whether it be a cache or buffer memory filling up, or something else.

He can go from 4.91 to Rebug 4.21, then Rebug 3.55.4 then any ofw below 3.xx. This is the way i got 2.80 working here.

Thank you! I'm FINALLY getting some good answers. I don't think I need to go down as far as that. January 2014 should be far enough back, then creep it forward through time. So I just want to jump from EVILNAT 4.87.2 CFW straight to 4.55 OFW, and then move up one by one through OFWs to about 4.65. Eventually i'll take it back up to 4.91.2 CFW again. This is all just an experiment. Not a permanent affair. This is just to completely quiet my brain and its confusion over this PlayTV thing. I'm very tenacious, as you're now seeing yourself. :-D

Thank you. I'll let you know how i get on. Hopefully I'll not brick this console doing this!

 

[Berion]

Ah, sorry. It was from beginning of March so I just forgot. ;p Thanks for making the video. Could You show us what Settings this app have? On the "roller menu", in back I see "toolbox icon".

For me looks like this application specific issue (hw issue can be excluded by test with other PlayTVs and fully functional HDD (no bad sectors or mechanic problems, but also fresh format to exclude UFS2 and FAT32 filesystems damages)). Probably he doing something in background which causing that freeze I believe. You could get some info from Target Manager but that's needs from You resigning app to be fakeself, loads debug kernel and pirating Sony SDK... So not really an option for You. Let's see what will behaving on older fw first. Yet I thinking problem is not in fw but in application side (trying calling to home, or some codecs issue etc. etc.).

 

[Rissy]

Ah, sorry. It was from beginning of March so I just forgot. ;p Thanks for making the video. Could You show us what Settings this app have? On the "roller menu", in back I see "toolbox icon".

For me looks like this application specific issue (hw issue can be excluded by test with other PlayTVs and fully functional HDD (no bad sectors or mechanic problems, but also fresh format to exclude UFS2 and FAT32 filesystems damages)). Probably he doing something in background which causing that freeze I believe. You could get some info from Target Manager but that's needs from You resigning app to be fakeself, loads debug kernel and pirating Sony SDK... So not really an option for You. Let's see what will behaving on older fw first. Yet I thinking problem is not in fw but in application side (trying calling to home, or some codecs issue etc. etc.).

Yes, we will see. It might be to do with something Sony have in there, requiring it to call home to mummy periodically, and IF that is the case, then that is really naughty of Sony, as receiving TV, if you've paid for the product to use in the first place, shouldn't require Sony to still have something active to be able to use it. Worse yet, they still have the PlayTV app purchases available on the PStore too, meaning IF they know it wont work any more, they still don't mind charging people for something they know they've broken already. No accusations here, just thinking out loud.

I think you're asking about the settings menu from within PlayTV, and if this is the case, I doubt there is anything in there to cause this bad behaviour. I'll see about showing you all, just for good measure though. Do you think this app might be something that could be investigated by someone at the coding level to understand what it's doing, and potentially find a mechanism in there which answers these unknowns to why it doesn't work any more? Even better, fix it!?

 

[Rissy]

Right, my report back. I've now successfully downgraded my console back to OFW 4.55. That takes me back to January 2014 in real time reference. This is a time where PlayTV worked fine, without issue. I could also try updating the firmware to a slightly later time, but I suspect the same as it is now. So the result......it doesn't work. Same issue. Crashes the console after about 3 mins. I booted it up and started videoing the settings options within PlayTV, as requested above on this thread by "Berion". I didn't even make it to streaming any TV yet, and mid way through making my video, it crashed!

I'll upload my video to YouTube and make it available here for you to see.

This leaves me with 3 possibilities:

1. I have a hardware fault with my PlayTV breakout box (I doubt this severely, but just in case, I have a BRAND NEW boxed PlayTV coming from Ebay very soon - hopefully)
2. There is something different about the TV broadcasting signals today in the UK compared to 2014. If you read all about British Television broadcasting and the history of changes made etc, you'll probably reach the same conclusion as I have......PlayTV should still work ok today.
3. Sony have boobytrapped PlayTV to stop it from working after a certain time, or without access to a certain server or something, which isn't in place now (this is all guesswork of course because without digging through the PlayTV code as it is installed on a console, I'll never know. This would take a cleverer, more experienced mind than my own at these things). This particular possibility fills me with sorrow that Sony could be so cruel. I hope they haven't been, but I may never know.

I'll return with my YouTube link asap, and then there will be nothing for me to update with until I try my new PlayTV breakout box when it arrives in the post. Watch this space.

 

[Rissy]

I'm back. As promised, here is a PSX-PLACE exclusive! Only found through this link here:

This shows you (some) of the PlayTV settings in the menu, before the app crashes (without even going to start watching anything on the TV!)

 

[Rissy]

I had another thought last night after signing off here.

Time (and Date). I'm wondering if this could be a factor.

I very quickly tried changing the clock year of the console to 2014, to reflect the same year 4.55 OFW was active. This didn't make any difference. Then I thought to myself, maybe this is not the only place the Time/Date are stored active on the machine, so here's a question:

Question:
Where else does TIME/DATE get stored on the console? Does anyone know? Are you changing the only source of Time/Date on the console from the front end, or is there another source deeper down in a more inaccessible place?

This then led me on to doing a bit of googling to understand if the date and time are sent across the airwaves on the television broadcast signal. They are! THIS, is something no-one here could manipulate, BUT, if this is being used by PlayTV and Sony have coded a time-bomb into the software to stop the software working after a certain date without any update from them to adjust this, then this could also be a thing stopping PlayTV from working! This would be particularly bad of Sony! Would this even be legal!?

So here's another question:

Question:
With PlayTV installed on to the HDD of a CFW console, is it possible for a clever person to look at the code running on the console, and see what's going on, and even better, manipulate it!? Is this even possible? You guys have done SO MUCH here, is this also something you could look into? I'm a bit obsessed now, but I don't have the skillsets for this.

 

[Berion]

So indeed, nothing really interesting in those Settings which could be potential issues source like Yours (besides those which You already turned off). What is below audio settings?

XMB date & time settings doesn't matter to anything but human eye only. Real date & time is taken from RTC. Strongly not recommend to mess with it. SSL using it and all depends from it like game licenses etc. If You really want that, just take out CMOS battery to get production date :P (after test, put it back and use internet sync to get current one).

Not legal, at least in Poland. But in the past they violated GPL many times, installed rootkits on Windows, storing CVV2 codes etc. And what happened? Nothing really. Whole PS2 models from DESR series are time bombs clusterfuck.

Possible.

 

[Rissy]

So indeed, nothing really interesting in those Settings which could be potential issues source like Yours (besides those which You already turned off). What is below audio settings?

Nothing of any interest, trust me. Nothing which would have an impact in this way for operation. There is the option at one point when installing where it asks if you want to use something called "TVTV" (i think that's what it's called), but I know that this service has been switched off a long time ago, as Sony warned you about this years ago. It was supposed to be a web assisted tv programme scheduling thing to help populate the schedule showing you what's on TV. I always select NO for this option now, to prevent it from trying to contact this no-longer existing service.

XMB date & time settings doesn't matter to anything but human eye only. Real date & time is taken from RTC. Strongly not recommend to mess with it. SSL using it and all depends from it like game licenses etc. If You really want that, just take out CMOS battery to get production date :P (after test, put it back and use internet sync to get current one).

Interesting. So for the CMOS battery, I've heard of the "CMOS Bomb" for PS3. I believe Sony never fixed this for the PS3, but i'm not really sure what it is. So what is that? If I pull the CMOS battery, and this resets the RTC to default settings (like 00:00 01/01/70 or something), what does this do to the PS3?

Presumably if I wanted to try this, then i'd want to keep the console off the internet, and try PlayTV without the RTC being set to anything as an update from Sony over the internet....?

I guess you're saying that with the CMOS being reset, even with setting the date and time on the XMB, this doesn't fix the clock time on the RTC, and this is the "CMOS Bomb"? Is the RTC only capable of being set by Sony?

 

[andshrew]

Interesting. So for the CMOS battery, I've heard of the "CMOS Bomb" for PS3. I believe Sony never fixed this for the PS3, but i'm not really sure what it is. So what is that? If I pull the CMOS battery, and this resets the RTC to default settings (like 00:00 01/01/70 or something), what does this do to the PS3?

This is what it does exactly. The most prevalent issue that the CMOS battery going dead causes is for digital content, as the license for (almost) every piece of digital content you download from PSN contains a date which the content is valid from - if the console thinks it's 1970 then you're license isn't going to become valid for at least another 35 years.

If you try it, then you simply connect back up to the internet after doing it and it will reset this clock back to what it should be set to.

 

[haxxxen]

this rather looks like a memory leak issue to me than any hardware issue, where its resources/memory containers do not get free'd properly

you could try debug Cobra payload and use socat to see if there is some leaking issue. if so, you will probably see sth. like "busy loop detected" several times

this is nothing, somebody else but S0ny can fix

 

[Rissy]

This is what it does exactly. The most prevalent issue that the CMOS battery going dead causes is for digital content, as the license for (almost) every piece of digital content you download from PSN contains a date which the content is valid from - if the console thinks it's 1970 then you're license isn't going to become valid for at least another 35 years.

If you try it, then you simply connect back up to the internet after doing it and it will reset this clock back to what it should be set to.

So has no clever bod figured out a way of writing in the correct time/date to the CMOS chip (whatever that is called). Is this a function purely reserved for Sony to do over the internet?

this rather looks like a memory leak issue to me than any hardware issue, where its resources/memory containers do not get free'd properly

you could try debug Cobra payload and use socat to see if there is some leaking issue. if so, you will probably see sth. like "busy loop detected" several times

this is nothing, somebody else but S0ny can fix

If its true, why would it work in 2014 on OFW 4.55, but not today? Same PS3 firmware, same PlayTV software, just different date.

When you say: "this is nothing, somebody else but S0ny can fix" - do you mean ONLY Sony can fix this, or it's easy for someone else to fix?

 

[haxxxen]

If its true, why would it work in 2014 on OFW 4.55, but not today? Same PS3 firmware, same PlayTV software, just different date.

hm, sounds weird. so you are saying, you have installed OFW 4.55 in 2014, and back then it has worked. but now in 2024, the very same console with the very same unaltered OFW, does not work? if so, maybe a PSN check or messed up internal memory management

When you say: "this is nothing, somebody else but S0ny can fix" - do you mean ONLY Sony can fix this, or it's easy for someone else to fix?

sorry, language barrier and it was a double no. I have ment, only S0ny can fix memory issues

 

[Rissy]

hm, sounds weird. so you are saying, you have installed OFW 4.55 in 2014, and back then it has worked. but now in 2024, the very same console with the very same unaltered OFW, does not work? if so, maybe a PSN check or messed up internal memory management

This is exactly what I'm saying, yes. I've tried PlayTV on 5 different consoles, all with different firmware versions applied (4.91, 4.90, 4.89, 4.88, 4.87, 4.82, 4.75 and 4.55). I've also tried in each case, the PlayTV software at V1.00 and V2.04. The result is ALWAYS the same as shown in my YouTube videos. I've owned PlayTV since 2008. The last time it received an update from Sony, was PlayTV V2.04 which was in November 2013. OFW 4.55 is dated January 2014, so PlayTV was definitely working back then, and continued to work for years after that. I seem to remember it still working on OFW 4.65 (August 2014), but after that, things become a little hazy as my personal circumstances were changing a lot back then.

The point is, in 2014, PlayTV worked, and the OFW version back then was 4.55 onwards. Applying the same OFW today shows that it no longer works in 2024. Why!?

So the only options which might be having this negative influence are:

Option 1. Hardware fault in the PlayTV breakout box (TV coax cable to USB converter box). I doubt this to be the case as I've had someone else on YouTube comment on my first video saying that he bought PlayTV for the first time last year for his PS3, and his does the same thing as mine. So different breakout box. Just to be sure though, I've bought a BRAND NEW PlayTV package from Ebay. It's never been opened, or used. Everything is still sealed in its original packaging. I will test with this again on OFW 4.55, just to 100% rule out a faulty piece of hardware. I'm waiting for it to arrive through the post.

Option 2. British TV broadcasting signals have changed to make PlayTV stop working. Again, I doubt that this is the case because DVB-T technology (which PlayTV is), is still catered for in the UK, but only for standard definition channels. This is fine, because PlayTV has always only ever been standard definition.

Option 3. There is a time-bomb in the software somewhere which stops PlayTV from working in the modern day. This could be looking at the CMOS chip RTC, or it could be looking at the time/date sent over the TV broadcast signals and this is possibly why there is a delay before it stops working (it might take this long for the PlayTV software to complete the receiving of the time/date signal over the airwaves. So 3-8 mins randomly different, as I have observed in each software crash scenario)

So my gut feeling is leaning towards Option 3 right now. I just have no way to prove it unfortunately. This is where it would need someone else who knows how, to look inside the PlayTV software and see if they can find this time-bomb line of code which says "if date received (from source) is greater than #########, then stop what you are doing and crash this persons console, else, continue working". This would be REALLY BAD of Sony if this is what they've done!

I orignally thought there was a chance it could be a memory leak of sorts, but only before I proved it doesn't work now, on an older OFW version, which I KNOW for a FACT it used to work, just fine when that OFW was the latest on offer from Sony!

 

[haxxxen]

I see, do you need an extra hardware item, to be able to use this? possible source

if it was an unwanted official 'feature', S0ny would have let you known with an error code, but not completely crashing system
thus, I have told you, to try debug Cobra payload, which will output internal debugging messages

 

[Rissy]

I see, do you need an extra hardware item, to be able to use this? possible source

if it was an unwanted official 'feature', S0ny would have let you known with an error code, but not completely crashing system
thus, I have told you, to try debug Cobra payload, which will output internal debugging messages

Here is a link to the PlayTV installation. This shows you how the PlayTV system is connected to the console:

This is why I am going to try a BRAND NEW box, just in case my BOX is at fault. I heavily doubt this though.

When the console crashes, there is NO ERROR code, and NO ON-SCREEN message generated.

I WILL do as you suggest, once I upgrade the console I've reverted back to OFW 4.55, to CFW 4.91.2 again. Although, I don't know how to do what you're suggesting yet, so I will have to ask how when I am ready to try, if I cannot figure out how to do this myself.