User Interface Comparison

[Strangerstill]

How does the V+ box user interface compare with Tivo? (should find out myself if tomorrows install goes ok) but am interested in peoples views.
Personally I find Tivos user interface to be one of the best I've ever used, simple, clear, and intuitive, although I'd like to be able to drag the fwd/rw pointer like you can on the Humax.

[pbar]

I've been a TiVo user for many years and had a V+ TVDrive installed 2 weeks ago.

Summary: apart from HD picture quality and 3 tuners, TVDrive is inferior to TiVo in almost every way.

To begin with, I spent the first week without any channels (they even broke my existing set top box!), and wasted over 8 hours on the phone to customer services. Eventually they sent another engineer out who threw away both my set top boxes and installed fresh ones. It took me 5 minutes to install my own TiVo and it worked first time.

Now that it's "working", here are just a few of the things which irritate the hell out of me:

1) Choosing programs to record - the interface is appalling! There's no way to search by title, it takes minutes to pull down the guide info (no way to cancel the operation when it's doing this.) and the record by category is essentially useless since it's almost impossible to find a program in the menu hierarchy and each guess takes the box 5 minutes to list the matching programs.

2) The 'delay TV' interface is v.poor. If you fast forward over adverts and then press play when you get to the right bit it invariably overshoots. TiVo jumps back a bit when you press play so you don't miss the start.

3) The box is always putting up little dialog boxes which you can't dismiss without reaching for the remote control. It often requires you to 'press OK to wake up'.

4) The irritating Virgin 'how to use a PVR for idiots' tutorial starts playing at almost every opportunity. If I ever meet those two goons I'll do something very bad to them. The stupid cartoon family (and whoever does the voiceover) are equally irritating.

5) The 1080i picture is a mess - the interlace is done incorrectly and all the menu text looks scrambled when viewed on a 1080 resolution screen. 720p is not too bad.

6) When recording a series, there's no way I can find to choose how many episodes to keep on disk, e.g. always record today's Channel 4 news. Even Windows Media Center has this functionality.

7) All of the page up/ page down messages seem to be the wrong way round for me.

8) The remote control often stops responding for 30 seconds at a time - usually when I'm in the middle of fast forwarding. Grrrr. Apparently this may be getting fixed in the upcoming software update.

9) The TV Guide interface is completely non-intuitive - 14 days arranged in a circular fashion which you can only navigate in one direction by pressing the blue button. You can then move up and down channels one at a time and firwards and backwards one program at a time.

10) More than one top-level menu. There's a 'Home' button, a 'TVDrive' button, a 'Guide' button. These all take you to different disjoint menus.


I really hope they improve this UI in upcoming software releases because the hardware seems fine. Please, please Virgin, go and use a TiVo for a week and learn!


Paul

[hedgie]

Originally Posted by pbar

I've been a TiVo user for many years and had a V+ TVDrive installed 2 weeks ago.

Summary: apart from HD picture quality and 3 tuners, TVDrive is inferior to TiVo in almost every way.

To begin with, I spent the first week without any channels (they even broke my existing set top box!), and wasted over 8 hours on the phone to customer services. Eventually they sent another engineer out who threw away both my set top boxes and installed fresh ones. It took me 5 minutes to install my own TiVo and it worked first time.

Now that it's "working", here are just a few of the things which irritate the hell out of me:

1) Choosing programs to record - the interface is appalling! There's no way to search by title, it takes minutes to pull down the guide info (no way to cancel the operation when it's doing this.) and the record by category is essentially useless since it's almost impossible to find a program in the menu hierarchy and each guess takes the box 5 minutes to list the matching programs.

2) The 'delay TV' interface is v.poor. If you fast forward over adverts and then press play when you get to the right bit it invariably overshoots. TiVo jumps back a bit when you press play so you don't miss the start.

3) The box is always putting up little dialog boxes which you can't dismiss without reaching for the remote control. It often requires you to 'press OK to wake up'.

4) The irritating Virgin 'how to use a PVR for idiots' tutorial starts playing at almost every opportunity. If I ever meet those two goons I'll do something very bad to them. The stupid cartoon family (and whoever does the voiceover) are equally irritating.

5) The 1080i picture is a mess - the interlace is done incorrectly and all the menu text looks scrambled when viewed on a 1080 resolution screen. 720p is not too bad.

6) When recording a series, there's no way I can find to choose how many episodes to keep on disk, e.g. always record today's Channel 4 news. Even Windows Media Center has this functionality.

7) All of the page up/ page down messages seem to be the wrong way round for me.

8) The remote control often stops responding for 30 seconds at a time - usually when I'm in the middle of fast forwarding. Grrrr. Apparently this may be getting fixed in the upcoming software update.

9) The TV Guide interface is completely non-intuitive - 14 days arranged in a circular fashion which you can only navigate in one direction by pressing the blue button. You can then move up and down channels one at a time and firwards and backwards one program at a time.

10) More than one top-level menu. There's a 'Home' button, a 'TVDrive' button, a 'Guide' button. These all take you to different disjoint menus.


I really hope they improve this UI in upcoming software releases because the hardware seems fine. Please, please Virgin, go and use a TiVo for a week and learn!


Paul

This is REALLY sad, its not learning its called design. Taking your time and undertaking a proper user centred design process, employ a Human Cumputer Interface specialist and do it properly. !!

[Strangerstill]

Originally Posted by pbar

I've been a TiVo user for many years and had a V+ TVDrive installed 2 weeks ago.

Summary: apart from HD picture quality and 3 tuners, TVDrive is inferior to TiVo in almost every way.

To begin with, I spent the first week without any channels (they even broke my existing set top box!), and wasted over 8 hours on the phone to customer services. Eventually they sent another engineer out who threw away both my set top boxes and installed fresh ones. It took me 5 minutes to install my own TiVo and it worked first time.

Now that it's "working", here are just a few of the things which irritate the hell out of me:

1) Choosing programs to record - the interface is appalling! There's no way to search by title, it takes minutes to pull down the guide info (no way to cancel the operation when it's doing this.) and the record by category is essentially useless since it's almost impossible to find a program in the menu hierarchy and each guess takes the box 5 minutes to list the matching programs.

2) The 'delay TV' interface is v.poor. If you fast forward over adverts and then press play when you get to the right bit it invariably overshoots. TiVo jumps back a bit when you press play so you don't miss the start.

3) The box is always putting up little dialog boxes which you can't dismiss without reaching for the remote control. It often requires you to 'press OK to wake up'.

4) The irritating Virgin 'how to use a PVR for idiots' tutorial starts playing at almost every opportunity. If I ever meet those two goons I'll do something very bad to them. The stupid cartoon family (and whoever does the voiceover) are equally irritating.

5) The 1080i picture is a mess - the interlace is done incorrectly and all the menu text looks scrambled when viewed on a 1080 resolution screen. 720p is not too bad.

6) When recording a series, there's no way I can find to choose how many episodes to keep on disk, e.g. always record today's Channel 4 news. Even Windows Media Center has this functionality.

7) All of the page up/ page down messages seem to be the wrong way round for me.

8) The remote control often stops responding for 30 seconds at a time - usually when I'm in the middle of fast forwarding. Grrrr. Apparently this may be getting fixed in the upcoming software update.

9) The TV Guide interface is completely non-intuitive - 14 days arranged in a circular fashion which you can only navigate in one direction by pressing the blue button. You can then move up and down channels one at a time and firwards and backwards one program at a time.

10) More than one top-level menu. There's a 'Home' button, a 'TVDrive' button, a 'Guide' button. These all take you to different disjoint menus.


I really hope they improve this UI in upcoming software releases because the hardware seems fine. Please, please Virgin, go and use a TiVo for a week and learn!


Paul

I too have had Tivo for years but luckily I don't have the problems you have, yes the ui can be improved but imho the V+ ui is not as bad as you portray it, it took me two or three goes to get used to ad skipping as the speeds have been quite well chosen.
As soon as I 've watched my stored stuff from Tivo I will be removing it from my rack, I'm happy with V+ and confident that impovements will be made as the snags are in software.