Potential New TV Drive User Needs Advice

[rfctabs]

Hi All,

I currently have Sky+ multiroom and am thinking of moving to the TV Drive. I already have TW phone and Broadband.

Although Sky+ has had it's moments over the years, it's basically been running OK for the last few months with only one lockup. I could get a larger HDD (mine's a vintage Pace V1 model and has the standard original drive) for the Sky+ in the lounge and a second Sky+ to replace the standard digibox in the conservatory, or I could move to TV Drives in each room.

Aside from the recent national outage for TV Drive users, I need to know how reliable the TW TV Drive service is. When one looks at the Blueyonder status page, there often seem to be TV service outages in various parts of the country. Do they last long? How frequent to they tend to be?

I'm also a little concerned about the boxes themselves. From what I can see on various forums, they seem prone to hanging/crashing/obscure behaviours not programmed by the users - just like Sky+ when I first had it three years ago! I know that forums can give a skewed picture because people tend to post about gripes and issues more than good things. I seem to remember that for every Sky+ customer who had problems, there was another who's Sky+ worked fine - is it the same with TV Drives, or does everyone get caught by a lost recording or some such eventually?

Another concern I have is over picture quality. I don't have any HD TV's yet so am not too bothered about that (although I may be in a couple of years), but I'm keen to learn about Standard Def picture quality on cable. I knew someone in Reading (come on you Royals!) years ago who had cable TV in the analogue days and the picture always seemed poor compared to Sky or terrestrial. I'm sure things have moved on from then, but is it as good as satellite? Better? Worse? If it makes any difference to the answer, I'm in Solihull, West Midlands.

If you made the switch from Sky to Cable, are you pleased or disappointed with the result? I'd hate to take the plunge and then regret it as I waited for the 12 month contract to expire...

I've been with Sky for 13 years and just need that bit of reassurance that a move to TV Drive is not a backward step.

[David F]

to the forum. My advice is to wait for the firmwares to catch up. I had TV drive installed this week and the software is dire but this will be updated. I find it slow and clunky. The recordings ive tried have worked fine. Last night the EPG didnt work at all and I couldnt even change channel. So as I said wait till the softwares working keep your eyes peeled here I have friends in the Telewest area that have no problem with this box

Gonn put an edit in.. you appear to be telewest in which case you should be ok

[cuggle]

I have had TW tvdrive since may last year with little or no probs, from my understanding from the forums here i think most of the problems are from the ex ntl drives,

[rfctabs]

Thanks for the replies.

I didn't make it very clear in my post (sorry ) but yes, I am with Telewest Blueyonder. Phone and internet have been very reliable, if you're interested, and I'm quite happy with them. I'm on the 10Mb Elite connection and am hoping the rumours of a doubling in speed soon at no additional cost are true .

So, if I understand this correctly, now that NTL "own" the TV Drive technology, they are introducing it to customers who were with NTL before the merger? But they're doing it differently to Telewest?

Strange that they have done their own version rather than use the Telewest one, but I guess their networks may use different technology.

[JG3870]

Originally Posted by rfctabs

Thanks for the replies.

I didn't make it very clear in my post (sorry ) but yes, I am with Telewest Blueyonder. Phone and internet have been very reliable, if you're interested, and I'm quite happy with them. I'm on the 10Mb Elite connection and am hoping the rumours of a doubling in speed soon at no additional cost are true .

So, if I understand this correctly, now that NTL "own" the TV Drive technology, they are introducing it to customers who were with NTL before the merger? But they're doing it differently to Telewest?

Strange that they have done their own version rather than use the Telewest one, but I guess their networks may use different technology.

Telewest started to roll out the TV Drive in March this year, NTL were going to roll out there own version of the TV Drive but with the merger they decided to roll out the same version same box.
NTL only launched the TV Drive in a couple of areas in December and a full roll out is expected in first quarter of this year.
From what i can gather from forum postings NTL are using the same release of software that's on the Telewest TV Drive with only slight cosmetic differences.
Telewest's technology seems to be better and more stable than NTL's and that includes the billing systems where NTL have adopted Telewest's.

I've had the TV Drive nearly 3 months and have had very few problems with it and i couldn't be without it now and the picture quality on SD is very good on my SD LCD TV.

[swissle]

At the current time you can only have 1 TV drive per property. I guess this may change in the future. So you would have 1 TV Drive and 2 standard TV boxes without PVR/HDMI.

I have had my TV Drive since Friday and have not experienced any of the issues that are noted in the forum. I have a stable box, useable remote and great picture quality from the HDMI output. There are some people bringing up the picture quality from the SCART output, which I cannot comment on.

Saying that I am used to using products in the initial/testing stages, and was fully willing to put up with any issue just for the HDMI/PVR capability. If you have a well tested and established product from Sky perhaps it would be worth waiting for the issues to be ironed out first including the integration of TW/ntl and rebranding to Virgin Media.

[rfctabs]

Thanks all for your responses. They're much appreciated.

I think, all in all, based on your responses and on searches in this and other forums (fora?), the balance of probabilities is that, on average, overall, I'm probably better to stay with Sky+ for now. It sounds like TV Drive still has a number of issues with the technology and I really don't want the hassle (plus the present Mrs rfctabs would not be impressed with engineer visits every few weeks).

I'm going to drop Movies and Sport on Sky and take the 4 bundles for £18 deal. As I'll no longer be on the full package, however, the £10 Sky+ fee will become payable, and the £10 multiroom will still be there, so my subs will be £38 - a £15.50 saving. I've also just dropped the phone from Unlimited to Evenings and Weekends, a further £9 saving. Total reduction £25.50 per month, or £306 per year. Should pay for a few curries (or a new pair of earrings for the present Mrs rfctabs )

PS swissle - when I called TW on Friday, the helpful operator gave me a monthly price including two TV Drives @ £10 each per month. I was quite clear that that's what I wanted. Maybe there's still some confusion on the ground about what can and cannot be done. Still, I won't be finding out for sure just yet.