Play window is shifted

My rollback to 1.8.3 seems to be stable so I think I’m going to stick with it for now. I’ll try future versions when they become available.

Hi Gaetan_BRISSARD, please excuse my delayed reply.

I have still been unable to reproduce this, I wondered if you could try setting a size and position for your player to see if this helps with the issue? You can set the player size by following the below instructions:

  • Go to the Displays menu in your CMS.
  • Click the button at the end of the entry for your payer and choose Edit from the menu.
  • When the Edit Display window opens, go to the Profile Settings tab and set the top, left width and height settings for your player.
  • Save to confirm.

Once you have set the player size, please wait for the player to connect to your CMS and receive those new settings. Once they have been received, please restart the player. Can you confirm if the same issue occurs?

Many Thanks.

This is a follow up message about your issue. I can see another community member has said the issue was resolved for them after completely removing the Xibo player and all associated files from their PC and reinstalling it again. Could you give this a try if you find setting the player window does not resolve the issue?

Many Thanks.

Hi,

I’ve since rolled back to 1.8.3 because I needed to get going with the migration, so I don’t have a R252 client anymore.

The reinstall thing I did it many time per affected display and the issue kept coming back, this was before I even opened this thread. Knowing that someone else did get this issue most likely says that it is coming from this version of the player unfortunately …

I’ll try out your first proposition though, on a clean VM, just to see if I can reproduce and fix it through the settings. But I might still wait for a futur version and stick with 1.8.3 even if it’s old.

Thanks

Thank you for your reply Gaetan_BRISSARD and for confirming you will try setting the player window size to see if this resolves the issue.

When you reinstalled the player before, did you also remove all traces of Xibo, including the previous local library and any other remaining files?

I have also been discussing this issue with my colleague, who reminded me of an issue previously seen on Windows which would cause the player window to shrink based on the display settings stored in the Windows registry. Below is a link to the guide for that issue, which explains where to find those stored entries. In case this is somehow related to the issue, I would also recommend taking a look at this guide and following the steps. Please note that the settings in the guide refer to a full HD resolution, if you are not using 1920x1080 then you will need to adjust those values to match the resolution of your display.

Many Thanks.

HI Gaetan; It seems that severals people 've got this issue.
In my case, I replied to this topic Layout is not adjusted to the screen - #8 by DanBW
See you
Fred
" Hi , same issue randomly on windows players with classic hard drive no SSD (old intel NUC min pc 4Go RAM), I thought it was because of the charging latency of the xibo client (latest 2R257-2) on old device. Juste put on start up menu a ping command ping www.google.fr -n 10, to loose time ;-), this seems working since but …esoteric solution …
Hope will help"

This is a follow up message regarding this issue. I have informed the developers about this issue, they have also asked if a User experiencing this issue can set a Top, Left, Width and Height for the player and see if the issue persists? Below are instructions how to do that:

  • Go to the Displays menu in your CMS.
  • Click the button at the end of the entry for your player and choose Edit from the menu.
  • When the Edit Display window opens, go to the Profile Settings tab and set the top, left width and height settings for your player.
  • Save to confirm.

Once you have set the player size, please wait for the player to connect to your CMS and receive those new settings. Once they have been received, please restart the player.

Many Thanks.

I hope I am allowed to chime in because I have been battling this exact issue with the symptoms down to a T to what Gaetan is seeing. I too previously was running a pre-v2.0 Xibo CMS and the matching player NEVER had that issue. Since moving to 2.3.10, it happens at random but seemingly only on those clients that have a display connected via VGA. If the display is connected via HDMI, it has not happened as of yet. I have tried the various registry hacks posted in other posts here, but they do not help as the values there were correct from the beginning. The Windows version on the client side has not changed, I simply uninstalled the old player, removed all traces of it, then installed the new player, and initially, it all looked good. I have tested to make sure the display getting turned off by someone, or not being on when the player starts, or any other such permutation made no difference. Whether I connect the display or not changes nothing as far as the Windows resolution is concerned, it stays the same (so it is not the resolution scale-down issue some folks had trouble with) and I am unable to make it go awry. I have added values in the “Display Settings” “Location” tab that match the resolution of the display, to no avail. It works some days, then goes crazy, and after a few reboots, works again.

It is downright maddening, so anything you would like me to try, I will be more than glad to assist! I do not plan to downgrade as it took me an eternity to get the CMS working without docker (docker on Windows Server… ugh!).

Thank you.

Hi SwissJay. Thank you for sharing your experiences with this issue, this is helpful information.

Can you confirm the Windows version that you are using, including the current build number? Could you also confirm the player version you have installed? So far the player versions with this issue have been R25x players, I wondered if this is also the case with yours?

If you are indeed using an R25x release of the player, could you try the R203 player? You can download it from the link below:

R203 player download link

Your note on the fact that the issue does not seem to occur when you are using a HDMI connection but does when you use VGA is very interesting. Can the other users in this post confirm the connector type they are using when this issue is occurring?

I can completely understand that this is a frustrating issue, so far I have still been unable to replicate it on my test machine. The developers are also aware of this issue and this topic is referenced in the issue report, so if you discover any new details, please do post them here.

I also wondered if you have seen any errors or warnings in Event viewer at the time the issue is occurring? Any errors or messages that are always present around the time of the issue would be particularly helpful.

Many Thanks.

Have also seen the issue when using an Displayport (PC) to HDMI (TV) adapter.
CMS version 2.3.7, client 2R254

Thank you sp_etz, I appreciate you confirming you have seen this issue on inputs other than VGA. Can you confirm if you have tried the R20x players instead of the R25x series? If possible could you try installing R203 from the link in my previous message and see if the issue persists?

Many Thanks.

Hi DanBW, thanks for your reply.

Our Xibo player clients are currently on Windows 10 1909 (10.0.18363). The Xibo player is indeed v2.257.2. I will downgrade the existing player to R203 to see if it helps.

The observation about HDMI might be misleading in that the player hardware itself is pretty much different on every display. I have 6 displays total now that were added over the years:

  • One NUC connected via HDMI to an HDTV,
  • 1 laptop connected via HDMI to and HDTV,
  • 1 tablet connected via mini-HDMI to a monitor,
  • 1 mini-PC connected via VGA to an HDTV,
  • 2 desktops connected via VGA-over-Ethernet to 3 plasma HDTVs (one player’s output is mirrored to a second screen by an Extron device).

So far, the issue has only been observed on the mini-PC and the 2 desktops, all of which use VGA connections. Thus, I do not know if the digital connection on the other displays plays a role in avoiding some sort of EDID issues or not, which is why I brought it up. However, I am not even sure EDID info from the attached display plays a role at all because Windows is properly displaying and scaled, only the Xibo player is shifted from time to time. All the above computers are typically shut off at 10PM nightly and powered on at 7AM daily, but some nights, they are powered on from 11PM to 4AM for maintenance tasks. The attached displays are shutdown from 11pm until 7am, so some nights, the computer is on without the attached display being on, which plays into the next paragraph.

I am also unable to replicate the issue because some days, everything will look fantastic, and the next, it will be shifted and might take a couple reboots before going back to full screen. Afterwards, I could reboot multiple times and it display properly each time. I have tried starting the Xibo player with the attached display off, then turning it on; turning off the display with the player already running, waiting a bit, then turning the display back on; and completely unplugging the external display, powering the player, then plugging the display into the player after a few minutes, but none of it seems to trigger the issue. My thought was that perhaps the maintenance on some nights running the PC without the attached display being powered on might be causing this, but I cannot find evidence to that. Also, the old Xibo v1.x player ran on the exact same hardware and Windows 10 version without any issues.

As far as the event viewer goes, I cannot find anything in the Applications or the System log, just the usual stuff. Except for Windows 10 Education and the Xibo Player, the only other software installed on those players is the OEM-drivers and SCCM agent with Endpoint Protection (mandated by our system office), again same setup that the v1.x player ran fine on.

I will go ahead and downgrade the player on the 3 devices that the issue has been reported on and see if that helps. Please let me know if there is anything else you would like me to look at.

Thanks!

Thank you SwissJay, that’s a lot of really helpful information. Looking at your device list I can understand why you suspected that this could be related to using a VGA. The tests you describe to try to get the player window to shift are also what I have been trying, so far without success. I really appreciate you installing R203 on a machine with this issue so we can see if the issue is only occurring on R25x players. I will wait to hear how the test went.

I also wondered if the Windows edition and build are the same across all of your Windows machines? Just in case this is in fact an issue with specific Windows versions.

Many Thanks.

So far, so good on the R203 test. What specifically tipped you off to that release?

Also, yes, all our Xibo players are running on Windows 10 1909 x64.

Thanks!

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Ok, I tested about 15 restarts with R203; all starts went fine (no shifting). Also did a couple of restarts with R254 and R257. Only with R254 I got a few times the shifting (not all reboots). I’m afraid not very conclusive; it is too sporadic to draw any conclusions.
Another observation was when connecting to a shifted screen with SCCM Remote Control Viewer, the screen updated to the correct position.

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Thank you SwissJay and sp-etz, this is very helpful. The R25x releases are very different from the R20x players so this helps to narrow down what could be causing the issue. I will inform the developers about this so they can investigate further.

Thank you also sp-etz for testing R254 alongside R257. I agree it’s not conclusive but any information you can provide that will help to replicate this is very helpful.

Many Thanks.

I concur on the SCCM Remote Control Viewer as I fell for that at first. Users would let me know it was shifted and me, being lazy, would remote in and it would look perfect, so I’d go onsite and it would look fine as well. It took a couple of pictures from reporting users before I realized I was being misled :slight_smile:

This is an update regarding the player window shifting. I wondered if some users experiencing this issue could try creating a startup delay on a Windows 10 machine to see if this helps with the issue.

Please be sure to follow these steps very carefully as they require creating a registry entry. If possible please test on a single player known to have this issue.

  • Follow the steps in the link below to locate the Serialize key under the Explorer directory. If it does not exist already, please follow the steps in the guide to create it and the StartupDelayInMSec DWORD 32 bit value.
  • Once the StartupDelayInMSec DWORD has been created, please can you double click on it and change the Hexadecimal value to EA60, which should be 60000 in decimal:

  • Restart your PC, which should now delay your startup apps from launching for 60 seconds.

Can you confirm whether this helps with the issue?

Many Thanks.

This is an update for all users who have been experiencing this issue. R258 has just been launched, which includes the fix for this issue. Below is a link to the blog post for the release:

Please can all users experiencing this issue upgrade to this version to resolve the issue.

Many Thanks.

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Hi,

Sorry for my very last response to this topic, I’ve been ultra busy …

But I can confirm that R258 solved my issue. Thank you for following it up and even forwarding it to the devs !

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