Re: Bootscreen

Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk
2003-01-28T14:06:01Z

> And I question the approach of automatically deciding to hide startup
> output from the user, in any case. I can imagine a set-top box user on the
> phone to the support department saying "it gets to the Starting - Please
> Wait screen, then just hangs", which would then require an engineer visit,
> as opposed to, for example, "it says Obtaining IP Address... then hangs"
> which would give the support techie the opportunity to tell the user to
> check the ethernet cable is plugged in correctly, etc, before resorting to
> sending out an engineer.

You'll never send an engineer out to replace a set-top-box. You'll just wait
for the customer to return the box and send out a new one. Software doesn't
fail on those - it's some 99.9% hardware failure. If you get a hang or panic
or something, the boxes usually have watchdogs to take care of that (and then
reboot automatically). The average computer-frightened user getting an STB
from the VoD/IPTV company (or her ISP) don't want to see any kernel
gibberish. They just want a nice splash screen telling them "everything's
gonna be alright in 45 seconds" or something. Trouble shooting is done in the
lab after the box is returned

roy

--
Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk, Datavaktmester
ProntoTV AS - http://www.pronto.tv/
Tel: +47 9801 3356

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