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Major failure on Viacom services

MTV, Paramount affected. (February 2006)

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HA
harshy Founding member
Antz posted:
harshy posted:
all european services back here, that's the end of the drama!

Almost, www.mtv.co.uk is down aswell as VH1 (I think).


Servers are probably rebooting now as we write!
IS
Inspector Sands
They're all still off on Telewest - there's a caption on all the channels, some have music

Edit, 5 minutes later - they're back except VH! and both Paramounts are showing Friaser
IS
Inspector Sands
harshy posted:
I didn't realise how centralised these services are, so it looks like all MTV european services are uplinked from London and distributed via satellite!


Don't know about where they're uplinked from, but most (maybe all) of all MTVs european services originate in London.

Incidently a similar thing happened a few years ago when there was a big fire at MTV in Camden
AN
Ant
I'm now getting an Internet Explorer error message (on Firefox) so it looks like things are booting up.
HA
harshy Founding member
Inspector Sands posted:
harshy posted:
I didn't realise how centralised these services are, so it looks like all MTV european services are uplinked from London and distributed via satellite!


Don't know about where they're uplinked from, but most (maybe all) of all MTVs european services originate in London.

Incidently a similar thing happened a few years ago when there was a big fire at MTV in Camden


I think Italy and Poland are done elsewhere, their site's are still up, the others all on Viacom's transponders on 19.2E were down.
BC
Blake Connolly Founding member
bbcsport posted:
Para2 is now taking the Para1 feed, showing Frasier.


Running off the old analouge playout, I hear..
HA
harshy Founding member
See these server based channels can work brillliantly, but can go horribly wrong as exhibited by Viacom tonight.
IS
Inspector Sands
Blake Connolly posted:
bbcsport posted:
Para2 is now taking the Para1 feed, showing Frasier.


Running off the old analouge playout, I hear..


Ahhh, looks like some sort of generic 'Emergency tape' type deal - a stock episodes of Fraiser and other shows with generic trails.
HA
harshy Founding member
There have got their core services up and running pretty quick under the circumstances, presumably someone has to turn on the Windows Server they are operating their sites on!
IS
Inspector Sands
harshy posted:
See these server based channels can work brillliantly, but can go horribly wrong as exhibited by Viacom tonight.


Yes, but it's not usually the servers themselves. More often it's the computers and other electronic devices that control the servers and do everything else. If all of them fail due to a power outage then some might come back up better than others so they won't talk to each other or they come back up with old configuration settings. I know of one broadcaster that had a power problem and a vital PC came back up with a password prompt - but no-one knew what it was.... or even that it required one in the first place
TW
Time Warp
mtv.co.uk is back in business.
HA
harshy Founding member
Inspector Sands posted:
harshy posted:
See these server based channels can work brillliantly, but can go horribly wrong as exhibited by Viacom tonight.


Yes, but it's not usually the servers themselves. More often it's the computers and other electronic devices that control the servers and do everything else. If all of them fail due to a power outage then some might come back up better than others so they won't talk to each other or they come back up with old configuration settings. I know of one broadcaster that had a power problem and a vital PC (that sat on the outgoing line to the uplink) came back up with a password prompt - but no-one knew what it was!


Oh dear, it has happened to me in the past, not knowing my colleague's password..

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