TiVo : General TiVo Discussion Part 2

[zantarous]

And I believe it when DF, BM or Spiderplant post it.

[devilincarnate]

I will believe it when My Dad goes to work on Ice Skates

I have a problem where when I switch the TV back on the TiVo box does not show a picture until I unplug the HDMI and plug it back in. Also, about once a month I get a 'HDMI connection not valid' message (something similar) so I imagine they're related.

I've tried various HDMI cables and the TV doesn't have issues with other devices so I'm guessing I have a faulty TiVo box? Any help/insight appreciated.

[jb66]

Originally Posted by Jameseh

I have a problem where when I switch the TV back on the TiVo box does not show a picture until I unplug the HDMI and plug it back in. Also, about once a month I get a 'HDMI connection not valid' message (something similar) so I imagine they're related.

I've tried various HDMI cables and the TV doesn't have issues with other devices so I'm guessing I have a faulty TiVo box? Any help/insight appreciated.

Commmon compatibility issue with the Tivo, im afraid i've never managed to fix this issue with a boxswap

[muppetman11]

My friend has a 500gb TIVO and wants to replace his standard VBox with another 500gb TIVO what price is your second TIVO ?

[pythagoras]

Originally Posted by muppetman11

My friend has a 500gb TIVO and wants to replace his standard VBox with another 500gb TIVO what price is your second TIVO ?

It should be £49.95 one off cost and maybe £40 installation and no extra monthly cost, although almost everyone on CS say that the TiVo £3 is per box not account. So he may have some hassle with that part.

Regards

John.

[Gavin-D]

Originally Posted by muppetman11

My friend has a 500gb TIVO and wants to replace his standard VBox with another 500gb TIVO what price is your second TIVO ?

Same as the first, £49.95 free install before the 28th i think.

[denphone]

Originally Posted by pythagoras

It should be £49.95 one off cost and maybe £40 installation and no extra monthly cost, although almost everyone on CS say that the TiVo £3 is per box not account. So he may have some hassle with that part.

Regards

John.

Yes l am being charged £3 per Tivo box.

[muppetman11]

Cheers all , just out of interest is it per box or per account ?

[denphone]

Originally Posted by muppetman11

Cheers all , just out of interest is it per box or per account ?

Well looking at my bill its per box as there are 2 £3 Tivo charges on there.

[pythagoras]

Originally Posted by muppetman11

Cheers all , just out of interest is it per box or per account ?

And looking at my bill its per account. It really depends who you speak to and when. This should be really easy to clarify but it isn't:roll eyes:


Regards

John

[denphone]

Originally Posted by pythagoras

And looking at my bill its per account. It really depends who you speak to and when. This should be really easy to clarify but it isn't:roll eyes:


Regards

John

So why have l got 2 £3 tivo charges on my bill then.

[pythagoras]

Originally Posted by denphone

So why have l got 2 £3 tivo charges on my bill then.

I have two £3 tivo charges but they have been discounted out. Heres my contract

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/35280946-post23.html

[denphone]

Originally Posted by pythagoras

I have two £3 tivo charges but they have been discounted out. Heres my contract

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/35280946-post23.html

No its not discounted out on my bill.

[zekeisaszekedoes]

MY LONG REVIEW.

INTRODUCTION

Yesterday I received a 500GB TiVo unit from Virgin Media, after having negotiated a "no install/HD activation charge" waiver from a fine gentleman who works in the CEO's office. I was on the waiting list for a month which I was willing to accept, especially since monthly rental for the device is a mere £3.

Sadly I have not found it to be all that they promise in the admittedly very impressive ad campaigns they have been running, but despite some irritating flaws there is potential here for a Sky+ HD killer, if Virgin Media are smart enough to get it together and fix the firmware sooner rather than later of course.


A tech device beauty queen this ain't.

In my opinion it's hideously ugly, but I haven't factored that into the list of things to love and shove because I really don't care. I'm about functionality over style in my technology, especially in cases where it makes a product cheaper than the leading competitor, and I'm not going to be staring directly at it for more than a few seconds at a time. (If almost everything you own is made by Apple, it will probably make you throw up in your mouth a little bit though.)

The lack of an LCD could be a minus point for some, but personally I hate obnoxiously bright LCD info panels on set-top boxes (well, set-bottom boxes in this era of slim LCD/LED/plasma panels) that distract you from the TV screen so it's not an issue and doesn't count against the device at all.

On with the review, anyway. I've stuck to a fairly standard good/bad list format here and decided to forego any attempts at humour. Regardless, it does have my usual unwieldly length (Word clocks it in at a shade over 3,000 of them) so if going into almost excruciating levels of detail will bore you senseless, read the CNET review instead. It's a shade less technical but still covers the important points well.


PROS

Most of this is standard TiVo stuff that’s been there since the beginning, but as I’ve never really used one (until the last few years, I’d guess they were too nerdy or esoteric even for those who didn’t mind the expense) I suppose I’m more impressed than someone who has had them before.

• Pause, rewind, fast forward live TV. Yeah, let’s start with the most basic and obvious feature, the backbone of the TiVo device. Still pretty neat though. I like recording a show on a channel that has adverts then starting to watch it fifteen minutes later. Then I can fast forward through the breaks and catch up with the live broadcast at the end, more or less, which solves one of my complaints with almost any non-BBC show: annoying, over-produced LOUD adverts. I love this idea of having a “channel cacheâ€� as soon as you switch over: if you start watching something that you aren’t sure on and suddenly really like it, the TiVo will take the “channel cacheâ€� you already have and add to it, then store when the program has finished. And when you have one of those “what the **** did he just say?â€� moments you can use the BACK button to go back about five seconds – more than once – to decipher it. People with noisy kids must LOVE this feature.
• Record three things at once while watching an on-demand/pre-recorded feature. On the first day I got it I decided to pick up some shows and movies I like, but not enough to stick on my NAS/HTPC (4.5TB at the time of writing, with only 300GB left). So I had it record two TV shows (one with the lovely Summer Glau, The World’s Most Popular Nerd Crushâ„¢) and a movie while watching a documentary recorded earlier. Not something I’d do all the time, but useful. Oh, and MASSIVE bonus points for being able to change the end time while on each recording without stopping or causing errors… sometimes programs start late, or sporting events run long – good to be covered in those cases.
• Great handling of SD upscaling and HD in general. Let’s be honest: even 720p is a massive improvement over the old 576i PAL standard. Having content upscaled to 1080i or already in that format (deinterlaced so well on my particular LCD TV that it looks like 1080p) really helps the immersion, and looks sharp because I’m running in my panel’s native resolution. For my money, the VM TiVo does a slightly better job of handling it than the previous V HD and V+ HD boxes: could well be my imagination though.
• The “finishedâ€� OSD HD parts. Yes, this same praised feature will turn up in the “I don’t like thisâ€� column, but although those gripes centre around the interface the parts that appear complete are slick. Let’s be fair – some might not like the very red colour scheme (I’d prefer blue, or perhaps a more muted dark grey) but overall I think the layout and typography makes up for it. A little less of the VM logo in the foreground would be nice – for example, the use of it on the Info OSD on the left while watching something is unnecessary and could be used for the channel’s logo rather than it being smaller on the right – but this is a big step up from the clunky, poorly anti-aliased presentations seen on VM’s previous STBs.
• Fast EPG. Apparently this has been a source of weakness in the past, but it’s also a massive strength. Daily, the EPG is downloaded and cached on the TiVo itself, so rather than downloading the schedules each time you access the EPG - which is slow and puts a strain on VM’s network no doubt – it’s ready to go and is practically instantaneous. A “mini EPGâ€�, accessed by pressing OK while in full-screen TV mode, is a nice touch too.
• Better organisation of recorded content. Normally being able to sort by name or date wouldn’t be seen as a big deal, but as the earlier versions of the VM TiVo firmware lacked this feature I’m happy to say it’s here now and makes organisation so much easier. Even things still recording appear at their proper position on the list in alphabetised mode.
• “I like this guy/girl. I want EVERYTHING they’re in recorded as it airs.â€� Explore a show; see an actor/actress you like. Now click on their thumbnail and observe all the things they’ve been in recently, organised by date and type (show/movie). Why not record all of it or at least put it on the WishList for when it’s next on the broadcast schedule? This feature is a standout, but isn’t at the top of the list because it’s probably only a stand out to me. I regularly discover new shows or movies by keeping track of performers or directors whose work I’ve enjoyed in the past (for example, I got into Suits because it features Gina Torres from Firefly and the music is composed by Christopher Tyng who also scored Futurama. Stop reading now and go watch the pilot for Suits because it’s a great comedy/drama) so to have this achievable with a few clicks is lovely, if not instantaneous… yet.
• Basic control of other devices. My main audio output for anything connected to the TV is an old LG 5.1 surround system which I lost the remote for five years ago. Even my newer universal remote used for controlling TV, Xbox and HiFi doesn't have the codes to control the volume, yet the newer VM TiVo remote does. I had to search through the database to find it, but it's in there. Not bad considering most universal remotes short of the Logitech Harmony don't even have listings for LG receivers.
• Near-silent running. I'm nuts about having as little background noise as possible from various devices, so it's a pleasure to report you can't even hear the TiVo running until you're a foot or so away from it. It appears they've used a heatsink and laptop HDD, rather than a small fan and 3.5" HDD. Good move.

CONS

I’m sure a great deal of these wouldn’t bother a standard user, but I do like to nitpick. Always bear in mind though, some of these mostly minor gripes pale in comparison to the fewer but more powerful positive points I’ve touched on.

• Key confusion. Various different parts of the UI use different keymaps: there’s often little to no continuity between them. For example, some menus or OSDs don’t respond to the BACK key, which should always take you back one level when pushed and all levels when held for a second. Likewise, you can use SMS-style alphabet entry for searches on the iPlayer app, but not on the VM frontend of iPlayer which has a different UI. Using the navigation keys to enter letters is VERY tedious. There needs be a uniform keymap to streamline the process and prevent annoying slip-ups – so many times I’ve flicked from playing a recording back to live TV on a different channel because of the inconsistency.
• EPG bugs. If you see a special © style icon beside certain shows, it means it is available as a “catchupâ€� show from BBC iPlayer, itv Player, 4oD or Virgin’s proprietary streaming service. Sadly, there’s no “press GREEN to watch this on catchup immediatelyâ€� (or similar) option… you have to manually go to the Catchup menu and find that show all over again, which combined with the lack of SMS-style text entry and the overall sluggishness is irritating. It’d be better not to have the © style icon if this is the case. Also, whenever you open the EPG it starts at the top of the channel list. Much more useful it if centred on the channel currently playing. Annoyingly there is no basic option to hide ghosted (i.e. not in your package) channels by default. This can be mitigated by making a favourites list which doesn’t include the channels not in your package: the TiVo helps you out here by not allowing you to add ghosted channels to the list, so it’s not all bad, but overall the partially broken functionality of the EPG detracts from the presentation.
• OSD performance issues. Menus are sometimes lightning speed, sometimes sluggish. For a device with three tuners this is disappointing… surely there’s enough power to keep the UI nice and quick? Yeah, I know architecturally it probably doesn’t work that way, but if you can record three shows and watch a forth there must be enough CPU grunt to manage slick performance. Also, going from Home to Guide or vice versa results in not a smooth transition, but a messy toggle back to full screen, then the other one loads. Recording just ONE HD channel can make the UI even slower. Some parts of the UI look more polished than others… for example the EPG/Home screen look HD, but the Recordings Scheduled menu looks blurry and is clearly presented in a poorly upscaled standard definition format with wrong aspect ratio when using a widescreen TV. It looks like some bits are finished, full HD and some are earlier SD menus they didn’t have time to make HD versions of. Maybe VM ran out of money to pay their developers?
• Twitter app (and presumably others) require a separate Web Apps account, and are useless anyway. Load the Twitter app, watch the small top-right picture disappear. No point using it if you can’t PiP, to be fair. YouTube app is sluggish and annoying… it’s better on my Xbox running XBMC, and that thing has 64MB of RAM and 733mhz single core processor! (No SMS-style text entry on YouTube too, really?!) A laptop or tablet replacement this is not, especially since you can't add apps to your TiVo via some kind of store like you can on almost anything else that has apps these days.
• The “Peanutâ€� Remote. The up/down/left/right navigation buttons are above the play controls. In my experience, this is plain wrong: play controls (less used) should be at the top above navigation, volume and channel controls (often used). The back button is in the wrong place too: should be where the navigation is. It’s unfortunate that the UI sometimes requires use of the thumbs up/down buttons and is programmed for separate play/pause, otherwise I’d use the one for the regular V HD Box (all Virgin STBs from past eight years or so use same remote codes). The peanut shape is nice and ergonomic, but overall the remote is cluttered, partly because the play/pause/rewind/forward are disproportionately sized compared to the rest.
• Banner bar “RECOMMENDED BECAUSE…â€�. If you select TV show/movie items in the banner bar and see this sign under the description, you’ll probably also see “We love it, we hope you do too!â€� under every single one. By all means keep the banner, but let the viewer decide for themselves why it has been recommended. The point of TiVo is choice, so too much handholding looks conspicuous. Bin it and instead make the plot description longer than two VERY short lines: don’t bring “VM’s professional opinionâ€� into viewing selection.
• On Demand/Catchup can be inconsistent. On VM’s banner bar there was a show called The Prisoner. It has Ian McKellan, aka Gandalf from LOTR. “He’s a fine actor and VM are pushing this show, so why not watch the first episode?â€� I thought. Except I couldn’t. I clicked through several menus and the only option I got was BACK; no way to play it whatsoever. This happened on a show VM were making highly visible, for goodness sake. It occurs more regularly than it should, it’s not just “settling inâ€� jitters as I first thought. Also, it’s not always clear that some On Demand content has a price. I don’t like clicking through half a dozen menus to watch an SD movie from 2006 (in this case X-Men United) which appears to have no charge to then be told it’s £2.50 to rent for 2 days just before I click play. Especially when it’s showing FREE in HD the next day on one of my pre-existing package channels. Things like this really let the device down and make it frustrating.
• PiP fail. I don’t know what’s going on, but some channels won’t display in the top-right when you’re in menus etc. Other menus, VM put up an annoying TiVo promo. Hey VM, I already have the TiVo; I don’t need to be told about it over again. Also, when moving quickly between parts of the OSD, sometimes there are stutters (i.e. sound/picture pause for a second) for no good reason, even on SD channels. I often think “you can make a device that records three shows at once, but it can’t display one thumbnail sized window consistently between menus even when nothing is recording?!â€� Maybe it’s a case of giving the PiP window a higher priority and not using it for promos on certain menus.
• No true 1080p mode usable at all times. Now I can forgive my ten year old games consoles - the Xbox 1 and PS2 – for not managing better than 1080i. It’s amazing they can run at that resolution at all. A newish device like this not giving 1080p at all times though? Very disappointing. Additionally the auto-detect thought my TV wasn’t capable of 720x576i. No of course, my British bought Samsung LCD TV made in 2010 can’t display a PAL format that’s been a broadcast standard for more than fifty years and is still used on the integrated Freeview DVB tuner. That must be it.
• Recording problems. Click on a show you already have scheduled to record within the EPG and which options do you get? “Record as plannedâ€� and “Series Link & other optionsâ€�. WHERE THE HELL IS THE “DO NOT RECORDâ€� SELECTION? There isn’t one. You have to go into Home then My Recordings then another two menus to delete the thing, which is often cumbersome. There is a specific recording problem that is severe enough to require it's own point, which is...
• “This channel is not authorised. Contact Virgin Media for more information.â€� While recording a HD channel movie (The Departed on 4HD) there was a problem: I decided to watch some of the start of the movie just for test purposes, and as it turns out the tuner handling the channel had got stuck, throwing up the aforementioned error. So the recording was b0rked, and tuner remained completely stuck even after stopping it. Yet when consulting the recording submenu of the Info OSD on a different channel it had registered as recording correctly (channel/time info), but when on the channel it was recording from it registered as something completely different and random. Playing back the incomplete file led to some MPEG-2 glitching and a hang of the file. Now this could undermine the whole point of having a PVR: if you’re not sure your selected content is going to be correctly stored, why not just download it instead? Or don’t miss it at broadcast time. Clearly this needs to be fixed, and soon.
• Seek functions aren't precise enough. On XBMC you have many options when skipping or seeking through a streamed file: locally stored (i.e. internal HDD), on the LAN or across the WAN. One of the nicest features is being able to skip up/down by ten minutes and to use the keyboard numpad (or numbers on the remote) to input a precise time to jump to. Having three levels of rew/ff on the TiVo is not enough: even going from minute one to minute fifty of a one hour show is slow as it seeks through rather than jumping to a set point. Jumping to a set point in a media file is much easier on a harddrive than having it constantly access data at faster-than-playback speeds, too. The BBC iPlayer app can do it, but not the standard TiVo interface.
• Lack of a programme reminder feature. Just because TiVo can record a trio of things at once, that doesn’t mean I don’t want reminders to watch things live rather than silently recording them (other than the “channel cacheâ€� feature I already discussed, of course). In fact, being reminded something is going to broadcast live might stop me wasting HDD space recording it because I’m not being told it’s starting. Perhaps have a reminder with options – “yes, switch tv channel and watchâ€�, “both record and watchâ€� and “don’t watch, just recordâ€� – obviously with the option to toggle this on an overall or show-by-show basis. Seems pretty logical and clear cut to me, especially when you bear in mind that every other VM cable TV box currently in use - even the gray Samsung one from a decade ago – has a basic programme reminder. (Note to device/game developers: NEVER remove old features because you assume users don’t need them. Leave them in – no exceptions.)
• No UPnP support for streaming TiVo content to LAN devices or vice versa. This is really a minor thing overall, due to copyright issues and such, but being able to stream from the TiVo HDD to other devices via UPnP, SMB or even FTP would be a great feature, as would using the 1080p-capable TiVo hardware to stream your own HD collection - assuming it has MPEG-4 H.264 support of course. More realistically and uncopyright-violatingy, being able to stream from the TiVo to regular V HD or V+ HD boxes (or indeed other TiVos) would be an excellent feature which is apparently in the pipeline. When streaming from the TiVo I mean completed programs of course: it’s unreasonable to expect to stream unfinished recordings.