About a month ago, Voice Commands would not work on our main TV, but I did get a "low battery" warning about a week before that problem started. Using the buttons on the remote worked fine. Replaced the batteries and all was well again. The original Ray-o-vac (Alkaline) batteries that had been supplied with the remote lasted about 4 months.
For the past couple of days I had intermittent voice command issues. I checked the battery level (using the buttons on the remote to navigate to the settings) and the batteries in that remote showed 59%. These were Fairman Super Heavy Duty batteries that I didn't purchase and may have come with some other remote. They still showed almost 1.5V using my multi-meter, but I guess they were not providing the required power for voice commands because when I switched in Eveready Alkalines the voice commands worked again right away (I had also tried box reboots like you).
This all happened on our main TV. Our other TV is not watched as much and the batteries (Duracell Alkaline) are still showing 96% after 5 months and that remote is working fine for voice commands.
Your issue may not be batteries, but if you haven't, try switching out the batteries in one remote for fresh alkalines. You can check the batteries by going to Rogers - Settings - Remote Settings.
Edit - I keep a spreadsheet with all our battery powered devices on it and the dates that batteries are replaced and what brand new batteries are utilized. This allows me to compare various brands and I've found very little difference between the various alkaline brands, so I purchase the least expensive, which for me is PC from No Frills or Panasonic from Dollarama. AA are $0.25 each and AAA are $0.50 each in packages of 4 or 2.
Hmm. I'll keep an eye out and advise if the issue returns for me. Have you done a Gateway restart from the WiFi app? This takes about 10 minutes.
The box that I had issues with is connected via Ethernet. My other TV box is WiFi. I'd give the Gateway Restart a try as this can fix many problems. It doesn't matter if you're hard wired or WiFi.... Pick a time when you don't need any service for 10 minutes. Good luck. As I said I'll monitor things in the coming days.
I have found that when voice commands are not working, it is either because the remote's batteries are low or due to a temporary problem with Comcast's back-end systems. If the batteries are fine and the problem does not go away on its own, a restart may help, but it is still most likely a server-side problem.
@jjjjy7 wrote:
@57 thanks. May I ask what is the difference between restarting the gateway with the app vs unplugging the modem and doing a restart that way?
Both are fine. I think reboots are faster than power-cycling but I have never timed it. I will restart from the admin menus when I just need to reset the gateway's networking stack. However, I will power-cycle the gateway when I want to completely reset the hardware. If I'm standing right next to the gateway at the time that I want to restart it, I will just pull the power plug.
@57 wrote:
@-G- may know the answer to that. Perhaps the soft restart using the app runs more diagnostics? Perhaps there is no difference. I usually prefer to do a soft restart because the shutdown is more orderly than simply unplugging a device.
If the device has disk storage (spinning platters or solid state storage) and an operating system that writes files or databases to disk, whether it is a computer, a PVR, or a router with external storage that is acting as a file server, I will always try to do the most orderly shutdown that is possible... and have battery backup power for critical devices so they do not go down hard when there is a blackout or brownout.
With the Ignite hardware, gateway or set-top boxes, there is no internal or external storage to worry about. Even with the cloud PVR, the set-top box is not writing any data. It's totally fine to pull the power plug, and resetting via menus or the admin UI is optional.
@-G- wrote:
With the Ignite hardware, gateway or set-top boxes, there is no internal or external storage to worry about. Even with the cloud PVR, the set-top box is not writing any data. It's totally fine to pull the power plug, and resetting via menus or the admin UI is optional.
Thanks for confirming most of my thoughts. I thought that the boxes have some internal memory to help with buffering, but I agree that most of my concern was with regards to HDDs crashing with power failures, which the new boxes obviously do not have.
Although my desktop Mac Mini computer (along with the display, Ignite Gateway, my security system and phone) are plugged into a UPS, my IgniteTV boxes are now plugged directly into the wall. This saves me the purchase of UPS (typically around $50 on sale) for these devices and the power to run those UPS which can be $10-20/year each depending.
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