white screen old school internet, no pictures...

Bug #1084845 reported by Israel Dahl
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Netflix Desktop
Triaged
Low
Erich E. Hoover

Bug Description

Over the past few updates the homepage display has gone from the normal screen with pictures of videos, etc... to a white screen.
Running ubuntu 12.04 all recent updates on a 32 bit system 3.2.0-33-generic-pae... I'll give more info if you like.
It worked great in the beginning, and after the update today the secondary screens were messed up so I did the 'rm -Rf ~/.netflix-desktop' command and now the home screen is messed up too as you can see here

Revision history for this message
Israel Dahl (israeldahl) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Israel Dahl (israeldahl) wrote :

Ok, the thing I forgot to mention, it doesn't always happen.
In fact I am not sure how to reproduce the bug, as it seems to happen occasionally... (it also randomly occurred in the update prior to this one). It did not occur when I first tried it out.

and by the way thanks for the program, I have never used Netflix before, and decided to try it out because there was a native app.

Revision history for this message
Erich E. Hoover (ehoover) wrote :

That looks like you might be having connection problems and it fails to properly load the page, are you able to stream video when you're having issues like this?

Revision history for this message
Israel Dahl (israeldahl) wrote :

I haven't tried streaming from that page when it looks like that. I have had the 'sub pages' look like that (e.g. Just For Kids) and I could watch movies on the Home screen just fine. I have tried refresh F5 and Ctrl+F5. Quittting the program and restarting it sometimes works. Not sure how I can reproduce it, really.

Revision history for this message
Israel Dahl (israeldahl) wrote :

I am not sure why this happens occasionally. After the fullscreen close button update it happened again. I rm -Rf ~/.netflix-desktop and then restarted it and it worked fine.

Revision history for this message
Erich E. Hoover (ehoover) wrote :

I really don't know why this would happen, does this happen with any other computers you own? I'm not sure I'll be able to reproduce this, as I haven't seen anything like it in any of my, rather extensive, testing.

Changed in netflix-desktop:
importance: Undecided → Low
status: New → Triaged
assignee: nobody → Erich Hoover (ehoover)
Revision history for this message
Israel Dahl (israeldahl) wrote : Re: [Bug 1084845] Re: white screen old school internet, no pictures...

On 12/19/2012 06:22 PM, Erich Hoover wrote:
> I really don't know why this would happen, does this happen with any
> other computers you own? I'm not sure I'll be able to reproduce this,
> as I haven't seen anything like it in any of my, rather extensive,
> testing.
>
> ** Changed in: netflix-desktop
> Importance: Undecided => Low
>
> ** Changed in: netflix-desktop
> Status: New => Triaged
>
> ** Changed in: netflix-desktop
> Assignee: (unassigned) => Erich Hoover (ehoover)
>
Well, I haven't tried it on my other one as it is an AMD... I remember
hearing that the 64 bit didn't work too well for people so I just have
been using this one. Does the 64 bit work better now? Otherwise I will
see if I can get another computer to test it on.... but if you haven't
heard any bug reports about it or come across it, it must be something
in my hardware config (or as you may suppose the network). However I
doubt it is the network as streaming YouTube and Amazon videos in the
pre-Netflix era worked as well as watching a physical DVD. Has this
been tested/ported to Power PC arch, I might be able to get a hold of
one of those if you think that would be worth trying.
Thanks for all your work on this program (or program wrapper?) And
thanks for taking time to try to fix this bug.

--
Regards

Revision history for this message
Erich E. Hoover (ehoover) wrote :

The program/script does work on x86-64, but it's not currently compatible with PowerPC or ARM. Making a compatible version for non-x86 will require tweaking QEMU (not something that I'm ready to do). I hope that we can figure out what's going wrong for you, I just don't know how I would begin to approach your issue.

Revision history for this message
Israel Dahl (israeldahl) wrote :

On 12/19/2012 10:06 PM, Erich Hoover wrote:
> The program/script does work on x86-64, but it's not currently
> compatible with PowerPC or ARM. Making a compatible version for non-x86
> will require tweaking QEMU (not something that I'm ready to do). I hope
> that we can figure out what's going wrong for you, I just don't know how
> I would begin to approach your issue.
>
Ok, I will try it on my AMD then. It hasn't happened (that I can
remember) since this most recent update. So you may have inadvertently
fixed it (which would be nice). But of course it has been such a
strange bug. most that I run across I can reproduce with a certain set
of circumstances pretty regularly. I don't even quite know what causes
it. Thanks again!

--
Regards

Revision history for this message
Israel Dahl (israeldahl) wrote :

Ok to be clear the version that I was talking about is
Installed version: 0.4.0~precise
There is an update today for 0.5.0~precise

--
Regards

Revision history for this message
Erich E. Hoover (ehoover) wrote :

Thanks Israel, the new version (0.5.0) fixes the "choppy video" issue. It's possible that it was something else in Wine that got fixed with the last Wine update.

Revision history for this message
Israel Dahl (israeldahl) wrote :

Ok... it is not fixed completely... It may be that I have changed my
habits to avoid the bug as much as possible... but I reproduced it, and
played with the bug a bit until it disappeared.

It seems to get bogged down somehow. I began watching an episode of the
classic Dr. who, after watching an episode of the modern Dr. Who.. the
video didn't work (black screen) but the sound did. Then when I tried
to watch it again(right click --> back and resume), the screen turned
totally white, so I (right clicked --> back) went to the home screen
(which looked normal) then I chose a category (all that I tried had the
same effect) the mysterious white screen.

So here's what I think... It gets bogged down somehow (seeming like a
bogged down internet connection) but the cache stores this odd bogged
down state. But, if I exit out (at least if I don't try the exact same
thing) then I can navigate again. Seems like some odd sort of hiccup
somewhere. If it happens again I will exit and try the exact same thing.

Oh... one thing I forgot. I started to watch a certain classic Dr. Who
episode by mistake (clicking the logo) instead of the one I wanted to
watch (clicking the episode name), and I clicked the Arrow in the top
left corner ('back to browse' tooltip) immediately before the mistake
that began the white screen.

But exiting out and resuming works (unlike in some previous versions)

--
Regards

Revision history for this message
Israel Dahl (israeldahl) wrote :

On 12/20/2012 08:41 AM, Erich Hoover wrote:
> Thanks Israel, the new version (0.5.0) fixes the "choppy video" issue.
> It's possible that it was something else in Wine that got fixed with the
> last Wine update.
>
Hey Erich, I am having trouble logging into Launchpad tonight... so I am
sending this through e-mail to this bug report. I can open a new bug if
you like when launchpad wants to play nice. On my 64 bit system I get
to the home screen, but trying to watch a video crashes it because
plugin-container.exe.
I am not sure what that means, but I did save the crash report and I am
attaching it here to my e-mail. If this doesn't go through right I will
try launchpad tomorrow....
Thanks again for all the hard work you do!

To post a comment you must log in.
This report contains Public information  
Everyone can see this information.

Other bug subscribers

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.