better TV error messages (lady-friendly) (1 Viewer)

Al_Capone

MP Donator
  • Premium Supporter
  • September 26, 2006
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    Norway Norway
    I've seen somebody get frustrated over media portal, and restart it, and even tried swearing at it.. because the error message is .. little intuitive at best.

    Error: -"no audio/video stream detected, unable to start graph"
    this was caused because this particular DVB-S channel did not broadcast at the time. - no wonder restarting did not help.

    proper error message would be; "no audio/video stream detected - <b>try to select another channel, this one is not transmitting</b>"

    (who needs the crazy "unable to start graph" anyway ? - most users won't know what it means.)


    Error2: "unable to start timeshifting"
    - yeah right, but WHY ? - is the channel busy ? - did TVserver fail ? - a little more *helpful* info would be great.
    - on a technical level of: what can my girl do to make it work ?.

    Error3:
    happens when user starts TV(tv attempts to tune channel2, but the TV server is busy recording channel3)
    another message is given, instead of: Tvtuner is busy tuning these channel(s) - and give user choice to select such channel, or exit.



    Thanks to all contributors/developers for MediaPortal
     

    wonkyd

    Retired Team Member
  • Premium Supporter
  • August 29, 2007
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    United Kingdom United Kingdom
    I agree the wording of some of the error messages can be a little too technical. Whilst it’s OK for me, if you're not on board with all the terminology then it's a mystery what some of the errors mean!

    errors like you say "no audio/video stream detected, unable to start graph" could really say "Channel unavailable. Tune to previous channel?" etc. More advanced errors could be given in the logs or even in the TV Server configuration itself.
     

    jonaskp

    Portal Pro
    October 23, 2006
    438
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    Home Country
    Denmark Denmark
    I agree entirely. The "Unable to start graph"-error is one of the things I hate about MP. okay, MP is unable to start the graph. Great to know! But why is it unable to do so?
    The same with the timeshifting error. Not only is this confusing for non-technical people, but I get confused too. I consider myself rather technical, but when it comes to software malfunctioning I am pretty much lost. I can usually solve problems by looking at the error messages and then figuring out what is going on - problem is when error-messages don't give any clue as to what is wrong.


    If this is used for troubleshooting by devs and other programmers why not give the ability to show "bug-fixing style errormessages" or "WAF error messages".
     

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