"The PlayReady Update was incomplete"

[seangrimes]

@seangrimes: Check your timezone settings to make sure it's correct. If not, fix it and then set the time to the correct time.

Yeah, that's usually the first thing I check right after doing a fresh install of Windows. The time and date is correct on EVERY pc in my house.

This is REALLY a bummer. I've recently installed Windows 8 on a PC twice in the past 3 days and am still having the Playready issue. There have been absolutely NO hardware changes on this PC! It's a Zotac ZBOXHD-ID34BR.

About 2 weeks ago, I had Playready issues on 3 of the 5 PC's in my house that run WMC. I was able to fix the Playready on those PC's by uninstalling the Digital Cable Advisor, uninstalling Playready and then uninstalling the Ceton drivers and rebooting. I then re installed the Digital Cable Advisor, re installed the Ceton drivers and rebooted. I then went through the live TV setup and everything worked fine. Well, at least everything went fine for a week on all except for 2 PC's.

I also have another PC that is having a Playready issue. It's a beefy server PC that I built. It's sits in my basement isolated in my networking center room. It had NEVER had Playready issues prior to me disconnecting my VGA monitor and connecting it to a Vizio Tv via an HDMI cable. I'm using an onboard HDMI connection on the motherboard. Is that considered a hardware change? If so, Playready isn't very forgiving. I haven't had much time to fool around with it lately.

Is it possible that my Zotac ZBOXHD-ID34BR just isn't cut out for my TV setup? I've asked the guys at Ceton about this and told them that it's actually not within specs., but they've never given me an answer to that question.

Is is possible that Microsoft flags certain PC's for some strange reason which prevents them from updating Playready?

I'm not sure what to think anymore because everyone keeps telling me that's it's either a hardware change or an incorrect time/date setting. My times are correct on ALL of my PC's. I've only had one slight hardware change on my basement PC (monitor) and no changes on any other PC's in my house. Uninstalling and reinstalling Windows does not seem to help. Windows update also does not seem to be the culprit.

What else could be causing this?

Here is something else that I've noticed. Ceton's instructions says to install their drivers first, reboot, install the Digital Cable Advisor and then go through Live TV setup. This never works for me. When I perform the steps in this order, WMC usually only gives me access to 2-5 of my 6 tuners. What usually happens is that WMC will say that it detected 6 tuners, but I'm only allowed to use 4 in WMC. It seems as if I always have to install the Digital Cable Advisor first and then install the Ceton drivers for WMC to give me access to all 6 tuners. Could something flaky be going on with the Ceton drivers for Windows 8?

[barnabas1969]

As others have found, they thought they set the timezone when they installed Windows... but when they looked in the Control Panel, they found that it was set incorrectly. Did you check?

[Jimmersd]

The only thing she told me was an incorrect time setting would prevent the Playready update from completing....

I recently had an issue that was a little confusing. But this might be related. While trying to watch streaming video from a major TV network site, something like AMC or CBS, using an android tablet. I kept getting an error that said that the timezone set on my tablet wasn't allowed to view these videos. It said I needed to reset my timezone setting on the tablet. After checking the tablet I found that the timezone setting was indeed correct. So I couldn't resolve the issue.

A little later I discovered that the timezone setting on my managed switch had somehow reverted to the default UTC+8 somewhere in China. After resetting this I was able to stream from these sites.

I think that the switch was changing or adding a different timezone in some of the packets causing the server to throw this error back at me.

Your problem might be a network device causing the error rather than the Windows box.

[seangrimes]

Thanks guys, but my time has always been set correctly. For the sake if this thread, I did double check though.

I'm REALLY confused now. I just downgraded from Windows 8 to Windows 7 (actually, it was a clean install to Windows 7)and that didn't even fix the issue. I'm pretty much lost now because I've done 2 Windows 8 and 1 Windows 7 installations on this PC since Saturday morning. Playready is still not updating. This should not be happening on a new Windows installation.

It almost seems like my PC has been flagged or something.

A tech guy from Microsoft says he can fix the issue, but I have to buy a plan. I didn't get this setup to spend money on tech. support service plans. I've had this issue on every PC in my house at one time or another and I'm not buying a support plan for each of my PC's. I'd be better off if I just went back to digital boxes from my cable provider.

[seangrimes]

I guess I need to think of this issue in lamens terms because these fixes just aren't working for me.

2 guys successfully install fresh and activated copies of Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 on 2 different new pc's.
Both guys update their hardware with the manufactures recommended drivers.
Both guys decide not to install any updates from Windows.
Both guys set the correct time/date/timezone on their machines.
Both guys want to use Ceton's Infinitv 6 ETH device with WMC so they install the ceton drivers.
Both guys go through Live TV setup.
Both guys make it to the Playready update part of the setup with no issues.
One guys' setup is complete with no issues.
The other guy can't get his Playready to update.

Why would this happen? Could the one guy with the unsuccessful setup possibly have TV signal issues? Could one of the manufacturers' drivers cause this? Could Playready be conflicting with certain hardware?

It's been said that re-installing Windows will fix this issue, but that's just not the case for me.

Lost...

[barnabas1969]

I guess it couldn't hurt to check the timezone setting on your router and switch (if your switch is a managed switch).

[seangrimes]

I guess it couldn't hurt to check the timezone setting on your router and switch (if your switch is a managed switch).

It was good and I checked it before I reboot my networking devices, but I honestly don't the time matters much. I just installed Windows 8 and had no problems with livetv setup at all. About an hour after setup, I noticed that my times in the guide didn't look right. Sure enough, I forgot to set the time and date after installing Windows 8. The time and timezone are incorrect as I type this message and I'm watching a premium channel with no issues.

I also don't have a manged switch.

I don't want to guess what the culprit was, but I'm assuming that either my router, ceton device or modem needed a reboot for a reason.

I'm still puzzled by this because 2 of my PC's were having Playready issues, but the other 2 were not having any issues.

STRANGE!!!

[kp4akb]

Just a thought, I have been having PlayReady problems on different machine and on new installs since I have had Ceton products. My suggestion is that we identify our cable provider and see if there is a link.

I am a Time Warner Digital subscriber in Columbus, OH

[EZEd]

My problem with this again spontaneously fixed itself after a few days as well. This makes the 3rd or 4th time since the early fall that it has done this. I fixed it two weeks ago by rolling back to a previous restore point after some windows updates. Turned auto updates off but the problem struck again when I had to physically shut my system down to move it to another cabinet (same location and no difference in network connection or parameters). When the system powered back on it immediatedly popped up with Cannot Update Playready. Rolling back to a restore point didn't help this time. So I proceeded with all the known fixes and once again none worked (just like back in the fall and in January 2014). I went through even doing windows reinstalls back in fall and winter and that didn't work either. This time I was not going to reinstall windows, but none of the fixes work either. Sure enough, left it alone for a couple of days and last night it had spontaneously fixed itself. I just don't know what it could be that causes it and/or fixes it because nothing overt seems to work. Just time. The restore to previous configuration seemed to have been a one time good deal.

To help out with kp4akb's request above, I am on TWC-Dallas using a Ceton ITV-ETH6. I would previously have random Update Playready issues when I had the Ceton ITV4PCIe but it would always go through without problems then. Only now that I have the ETH that it will crap out like this for a few days and not allow you to update. Definitely the problem is related to the ehrecvr service because if you turn it off and then click update the procedure finishes eventhough upon next start it will only show that it is not complete and require you to do it again. It does this no matter whether you delete the cache folder and the mps file or not. The other behavior is that if you net stop ehrecvr and finish update playready then immediately try to tune a channel it always reports no tuners available for me. This is why I always have to exit WMC and re-enter. Upon re-entry you can see that playready has not updated (eventhough the process claims that it finished successfully) because if you go back to Task-> TV Setup it still lists Update Playready as one of the steps needed. If you then try to choose a channel it will attempt, give you the spinning circle for a couple minutes then ask you to update playready, where you repeat process for several more days.

Then just like last night ... magic - it has fixed itself and playready will update. In fact, last night I didn't even have to run it. It was already fixed when I got back home. I tried earlier yesterday morning to update playready. No change in behavior. Stayed out most of the day no different than any normal workday for all of last week. Came in last night to see if anything had changed. Went to Task -> TV Setup and noticed that Update Playready was not listed this time. Checked one of the encrypted channels and sure enough it came on without a hitch.

Some one at Microsoft is going to have to decypher this puzzle. I tried using them back in the fall and in January with their paid support. They couldn't fix it so they refunded my money (problem spontaneously fixed itself then too). The person trying to help me was not native english speaking and didn't really know a lot about WMC7 so I doubt that was actually going to help anyway. All that he was able to do was try the same things that I had already tried through the methods listed here (of which none work).

I suppose it could be a TWC issue, because they do encrypt all cable channels. The locals are open here and for some reason so is Discovery Channel. I could still get both SD & HD Discovery but nothing else and I only have the standard digital package not even the high level digital package.

Just don't know what black magic is happening between playready and the TWC signal.

[seangrimes]

Hey Ezed. Sounds like you have this problem just as much as I do. If you have it again, try to shut down your Ceton device, router, modem, and switches for a while and see what happens. I think that fixed it for me.

Also, I'm using Charter Cable in Missouri.

Like you, I thought Windows was the problem, but after shutting everything down, I really feel the problem is coming from something outside of Windows.

[seangrimes]

Ok guys. It just happened to me again, but I was able to fix it quickly and here is what I did.

I got the Playready needs to update message on 1 pc and it would not update so I shut all of my PC's that are connected to the Ceton device down. That may have been overkill, but I did it anyway. I then unplugged my CEton device and my TA and removed my cablecard for about 1 minute, reinserted the cablecard and powered them back up. I then booted up all of my PC's. I went to Livetv on the PC that had the issue and I got a message that there was a tuner conflict. I then stopped the media center service. I then got the idea to go into the time settings and update the internet clock, but I got an error on the first try. I updated it again and it was successful. I restarted the media center service, went to livetv and WMC had to search for available tuners. After finding the tuners, the Playready issue was resolved.

The next time this happens, I'm going to try to weed out unnecessary task to fix this issue. I'm just glad that I can fix it now because in the past, this issue has been a huge headache for me.

[mike_ekim]

Is this a Ceton-only problem? That's the impression I get from reading this thread.

[mdavej]

Is this a Ceton-only problem? That's the impression I get from reading this thread.

I don't think so. Back when I had this problem for about 3 months straight, I went through several tuners trying to solve it, Ceton and Silicon Dust, with no change. In my case, every recording of mine stopped after about 20 minutes due to a "weak signal" error. It ultimately turned out to be caused by play ready, erroneously reported as caused by a weak signal. It was literally no signal because play ready blocked it completely. Anyway, I eventually fixed it by running the DRM update I posted earlier. Nothing else would permanently fix it, not even a full reformat and reinstall of windows. The initial cause was a new motherboard I installed. It really had nothing to do with any of my tuners, my provider, my cable card or my tuning adapter.

[seangrimes]

Is this a Ceton-only problem? That's the impression I get from reading this thread.

In all honesty, I think this issue may have something to do with the cable signal and the Ceton device's temperatures. In this case, the Ceton Infinitv 6 eth. When my system is working good, a channel change may take 3-5 seconds; 10 seconds seems to be ok too. At times, a channel change may take anywhere from 15-30 seconds. It seems that I'll get the "Playready update can't complete" message after having these problems pretty much in this same order:
1. First, I'll notice that channel changes are taking longer than usual. Sometimes up to 30 seconds or more.
2. I'll then start getting "service unavailable" messages and then the channel will tune in about 5-10 seconds later for a total of about 30 seconds or more for the channel to change.
3. I'll then start getting "weak signal" messages followed by "service unavailable" messages and then the channel may tune in.
4. Finally, I'll get the dreaded "Playready update can't complete" message.

It's very well possible that I could have a good signal going to my device, but an increase in temperature may be causing things to go haywire inside of my device. As far as I know, my device hasn't gotten hotter than 54 degrees Celsius though. My SNR is always anywhere from 37-39 which is good. My signal is usually between 4 and 8 on the plus side for the most part. I may try the fan trick to see if that helps any.

[EZEd]

The 4 times that this has happened to me since Oct 2013 have had nothing in common. There was no pixelation, slow tuning or weak signal/subscription required messages observed prior to the outage. In two cases it was totally spontaneous. One day I'm watching TV the next day playready cannot complete. In those two cases I noted that Windows updates had automatically applied the night before. Because I wasn't there to observe it I assume my system did an automatic restart. So in at least one of the two cases, a system restore to a previous time fixed it. In the other two cases, it happened after I completely shut the system down (hard power off). I run the WMC7 machine 24/7 (mainly for reasons to avoid EDID issues with my TV) and it seems to stay more stable that way in other things too. But I have completely shut the system down before and since then and didn't have the playready fail issue. It was only on those two times. So it cannot be specifically attributed to that either.


In all previous cases I did restart the tuner (unplugged from AC, unplugged from TA, unplugged from switch). In all cases I have used Ceton diag sw to reset tuners and rediscover tuners. None of that has ever helped. Other than the case where I rolled back a system restore I have tried multiple times to run all instances of the known listed DRM/playready fixes (including the DRM reset/fix it tool). None helped.

Could it be the Ceton tuner? Possibly, I've never had an HDHRPrime to compare. But in each instance, Ceton diag tool says tuners are okay and TA is okay (no blinky lights). Ceton diag tool says it can tune channels that are manually put in. I do wish Ceton had the video preview window so that you could verify this but they don't so you have to take it for granted that what it is reporting is true.

The culprit just appears to me to be Microsoft because I can trick it into finishing the Playready Update process, it's just that it doesn't really update it, it just finishes the process and shows a playready update success message. You can do this by net stop ehrecvr while it is asking if you want to try again and whether you delete the files and cache folder or not it finishes and says success but when you either go back to tune a channel or just to the Setup menu it still says update playready required.

So again, I have no evidence it is a Ceton unique issue. I have not evidence that resetting network devices works because other PCs connected to the same network do not have the issue. I thought I had narrowed it to Microsoft updates but this latest iteration proved that not consistent. There is no hardware issue that brings it on because I have run the same hardware for close to 3 years, no changes. The only common thread so far possibly could be system restarts or shutdowns but I can't verify that in all cases the system did in fact shutdown or restart. I can only verify 2 of 4 where I physically shut the system down. I have forcefully restarted and performed other system shutdowns within the time span of the issue and did not have this problem so you can't guarantee consistency with that observation either.

I do know, things would be a lot better if we didn't have the TAs and/or CCI flags because the tuner worked just fine with unencrypted cable channels. I only wish TWC here didn't CCI flag the normal channels, it would help me to maybe narrow down what is effected. But when this happens I can only get my OTA channels through Avermedia Duet, local channels through Ceton card and Discovery Channel through Ceton card because it is unencrypted/unprotected.

Then suddenly and just as spontaneously as it started a few days after having pulled all hair out trying different fixes, it clears itself through no overt action and TV resumes as normal. Everything so far is placeabo. No true root cause or repeatable and consistent fix. I really do want a true Microsoft engineer to come to my house when it happens so I can do two things...1) let him observe for himself and see if he can fix it so he can feel the pain and anguish involved with trying to figure it out. 2) So I can kick his azz when nothing works and he says he doesn't know what is wrong.

Just my observation.

[seangrimes]

Well, from my end, I'm going to say that my Infinitv is DEFINITELY causing my Playready issues. It's happened to me 5 times now and I've been able to fix this issue 5 times by unplugging my Infinitv and going through Livetv setup again.

I've done a lot of playing around with my device and have learned a lot about my setup. My setup will work FLAWLESSLY if I only setup one PC (connected to 3 extenders) to access the 6 tuners. Channel changes only take about 3-5 seconds. If I setup 2 PC's to access all 6 tuners, things seem to work ok. A channel change can take anywhere from 5-15 seconds in that scenario. I don't start having issues util I have 3 or more PC's setup to access all 6 tuners. It doesn't even matter if only one or 2 tuners are in use, I'll start receiving "weak signal", "service unavailable" and "no subscription" messages. A channel change may or may not happen at all. Under this scenario, a channel channel can take up to about 5 minutes.

From what I'm seeing, it appears that I may need another Infintv 6 eth if I want things to work correctly. Sharing out 6 tuners among 4 PC's and 3 Xbox extenders just isn't cutting it for me.

Again, the device seems to work pretty much flawlessly with 2 of the 4 PC's in my house, but from what I'm seeing, it doesn't like when I start setting up too many PC's to access it. Is it possible my device is defective or is it possible that it just can't handle too many PC's? I mean, I'm pretty sure than it can't work properly if I try to set it up to work with 20 PC's. Is there a cut off as to how many PC's work well with this device?

Any thoughts?

[TeddyR]

@seangrimes: This may not be relevant, but I am trying to diagnose an issue that I am wondering has wider ramifications than previously considered. What Cablecard version, FW and TA FW do you have? Is it a Cisco region by any chance?

Please see my other post http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... =68&t=7357 on the issue. The relevance to your case might be that the CC firmware stops processing DRM channels and the TA issue when there are more than 4 tuners is leading to "black screen" and WMC symptoms of ""weak signal", "service unavailable" and "no subscription"... The DRM not processing "MAY" be affecting playready/WMDRM validation in a "new" way that was not previously attributed to this issue. If this is happening with 6 tuner (or 4+ tuner) devices, it would explain why SD devices are not affected and since many of the "playready" solutions on this thread essentially are resetting the CC and TA and having the TV setup recheck and revalidate the WMDRM keys until the CC/TA stops processing items......

[seangrimes]

@seangrimes: This may not be relevant, but I am trying to diagnose an issue that I am wondering has wider ramifications than previously considered. What Cablecard version, FW and TA FW do you have? Is it a Cisco region by any chance?

I'm not home right now, but my tuning adapter is a Motorola.

You mentioned something about having problems when 4 tuners are in use. Well, I don't start having issues until I setup more than 3 PC's to access tuners from the Infinitv 6 eth. It doesn't matter if only one tuner is in use at that point either. The only way for me to have a pleasant experience is to perform these steps:

1. uninstall ceton drivers from all PC's setup to access tuners.
2. unplug TA and Infinitv
3. reinstall drivers ONLY on 2 PC's
4. plug in Infinitv, plug in TA
5. wait about 3 minutes and then go through Live Tv setup only on 2 PC's

If I setup LiveTv on a third PC, I'll start to experience slow channel changes on ALL PC's and extenders! If I add a 4th PC, things become unbearable and it will get to a point where no Live Tv is streamed at all!

I'll try to do some recordings when I get home to access all of the tuners and see what happens.

[Sancho]

I've just set up Network Tuners using a couple of TP-Link AV500 powerline adapters. That was the easy part, bridging the unused Ethernet port on the host PC, creating a separate LAN (10.0.0.0/24 vs. the Internet-connected 192.168.1.0/24 LAN), and setting the client's NIC to the 10... LAN. I can watch copy free channels no problem (I get the HDCP error, but changing the window size fixes that easily enough), but I cannot watch copy-protected channels (HBO, et al.). Everytime I tune to one, I'm prompted to update PlayReady, but it fails every time. I've gone through so many cockamamie procedures (from various forums, including one at Microsoft), and finally reinstalled Win7 (from scratch), and did Ceton's less-than-accurate version of the ones I'd tried before. No dice.

The host PC has no problems with premium channels. The one weird thing I discovered on the client PC was that by running Update PlayReady from within WMC, leaving that screen open (where it asks if you want to retry it after it's failed countless times), disabling the NIC used for network tuners, and finally retrying the update actually gets an "Update succeeded" message in WMC. If I reenable the NIC and try to tune to a premium channel (having never closed WMC), I get the "No tuners available/all tuners busy" message. Restarting WMC just gets me back to the, YOU MUST UPDATE PLAYREADY, SILLY PEASANT! message.

When I have time, I'm going to try to redo the network tuners bridge using the wifi NICs on the host and client PCs. I doubt that will help, but it's just a matter of finding a couple hours to waste in the attempt. I'd even be willing to pull the InfiniTV 4 from the host, install it in the client, and see if PlayReady is ready to play nice.

At least network tuners work, and the host PC (far more important) was not affected. If anyone has any better options, I'm game. For the record, I've tried all these:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... cb1d39afb0

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... f=6&t=3760

and all the alternatives mentioned in those threads.

I also just tried mdavej's suggestion in this post:
http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 394#p74394

No dice.

[seangrimes]

Everytime I tune to one, I'm prompted to update PlayReady, but it fails every time. I've gone through so many cockamamie procedures (from various forums, including one at Microsoft), and finally reinstalled Win7 (from scratch), and did Ceton's less-than-accurate version of the ones I'd tried before. No dice.

No dice.

I know how frustrating that can be. I tried every trick in the book, but nothing worked for me. The only think that worked for me was restarting my Infinitv 6 eth. After doing that, Playready would update on its own or would always complete.