February 07, 2011

Virgin's TiVo in action


The TiVo blog has posted this video clip which shows the performance of the Virgin Media TiVo in real time. Not too bad - about on a par with the real time videos of the US TiVo Premier I've seen on YouTube. Nice graphics. Shame the video doesn't show the legendary TiVo search functionality in action.

13 comments:

Ross said...

Oh, that's really quite slow. My series 1 TiVo wasn't that slow at bringing up the menus.

Viola said...

The STB code changes regularly at the moment. This probably isn't representative of the current build.

denyo1977 said...

I have to say the whole thing doesn't exactly blow me away. Ok, nice to look at, but I don't see any added features which would benefit me. Maybe besides being able to watch YouTube videos (which to be fair happens once a week).

Erich said...

Looks much too slow and lacks a lot of polish. Many modern TVs have UIs and multimedia functions that look far more sophisticated and functional tban this.

paininthegulliver said...

if they can't even get the menus running quickly they should back out of the TV side altogether.

that looks terrible.

Mark T said...

its difficult to judge on that video as you can't see him pressing the remote, so you have no idea of the lag.

I can only assume he is mashing all the keys on the remote at one point as the screen seems to go crazy.

Wait for a decent video to come out.

Square eyes said...

Right - just to clarify

At this moment in time this is not the finished article, there is still a fair bit of testing going on.

The menu is much faster than what you can see on this video clip. Most of the menu is HD as well.

Starting with the negatives

1, It looks as if there is no page up & down function, however if you press the channel up & down button, this operates the page up & down function. Had to find this out by messing with the remote as it does not mention it on the screen.

2, When deleting a programme it is a long winded process - delete, confirm - the go to the deleted folder to delete again, but you when doing this you can only do one programme at a time, there should be the option to do a full delete of everything in the folder.

3, When scrolling through the TV guide it always defaults back to the first channel on whichever section you are on, which can be a bit of a pain.

4, There is also a bit of an issue with having to put your pin number in on the sports channels, example ODI cricket because the programme started after 2200 hours again this can be a pain but it something that VM are working on.

Now for the positives

The suggestions folder - based on your thumbs up & down, the box will start making recommendatons of programmes it thinks you will like, it will record them for you, then the choice is yours to watch or not to watch.

Search & Browse - being able to search for an actor, tv show or film.

The 28day programme guide - the guide shows up to 14 days, but in the search & browse section it will show programmes up to 28 days in advance, it does not give the date & time but you can set it to record on here as well. If you have actually missed the programme you can set it to record & it will record it the next time it is on.

Recording - as well as the normal record function and the bit mentioned above, when you do a series link you get the option of how many episodes to record from 5 to all episodes, just the first showing or all showings, set extra time before and after (but unlike the V+ it is more than just 10 minutes) - set for manual deletion or automatic when the disc is getting close to being full.

If you make a mistake and delete a programme in error, you now have the option in the deleted folder to restore the programme

These are just a few things of what the box will do, will put some more on later.

Philip said...

Not sure what Viola means, this is a real customer's TiVo box, not an engineer or anything, who posts on the TiVo Community website, and posted this video to share with other forum members. It is slow, but I think that's due to the stupid reason they went with Flash! If Square Eyes says it will be faster though, then fair dos.

TiVo_uk said...

Hi all, this is my video. I only just found out it has been posted on this blog.

@Viola etc, I'm sorry to disappoint, but I'm just a regular customer and this was only taken two days ago. The interface is slow. I'm disappointed with it to be honest.

I did mash the buttons at one point where it looked really fast.

I can take a video of a different part of the interface if anyone would find it helpful? I just took the video when I was bored on Sunday morning the day after my TiVo was installed.

paininthegulliver said...

@Big

any video would be useful to be honest.

are you in a position to compare the speed the tivo runs at to other virgin set top boxes?

You any idea why its so slow?

Toby said...

I counted 10 secs between button pushes and seeing an effect

Nialli said...

@ Toby: on the video clip? That was an early version of the software and has since been usurped by the latest release. Button press to action time is now very fast - even On Demand is at most a second or two delay. Have to say I am very impressed with the responsiveness of the box to the remote, better than either V+ box.

Toby said...

This week the best reaction time was 2secs worse was 35secs counting ....Its becoming a running gag in the office.