Category Archives: Television

It still can’t multi-task properly. I’ve just re-arranged my season passesseries links, and now get to stare at a static screen for five minutes whilst it sits there and thinks about things for a bit.

Two months on, and there’s still a lot of work needed before the Virgin Media Tivo is ready for a proper release. Unfortunately for the customers, that release took place a week ago.

Things that still need fixing:

• Excessive seemingly random reboots. This is a massive problem which Virgin Media are totally incapable of fixing at the moment. For this reason alone you shouldn’t order a Tivo for the foreseeable future. What use is a PVR if it will lose recordings because of a reboot, or reboot whilst you are in the middle of watching something?
• Forced upscaling of SD material, which means you can’t output everything at it’s native format. The Tivo itself is not particularly good at upscaling which makes this even more annoying.
• No way of disabling PIN requests for post-watershed recordings. There are no children in my house, why should I be forced to enter a PIN before watching something recorded after 9pm?
• An inconsistent mix of HD and SD menus.
• You can’t set recordings via the web on an iPhone 3GS (amongst others), the website just tells you that you don’t have a Tivo (I do, I’m sat looking at it).
• Setting multiple series links for the same program on different channels is a bit convoluted. It tells you that you already have a series link for that program, but not that it’s on a different channel, you have to explicitly add an additional series link.
• You can’t FFWD through recordings from Radio properly.
• Those bloody reboots.

Basically you should stay well away from the Tivo until they actually work properly. If I hadn’t already cancelled my Sky subscription I’d have sent mine back for a refund as its clearly unsuitable for it’s purpose at the moment.

Well the Tivo is still rebooting, albeit not quite as often. However the lack of support from Virgin Media is somewhat disappointing. The last advice from the engineer was that I’d have to wait for the next software release due on Thursday. No explanation of what the problem is that will be fixed, and certainly no offer of the loan of a V+ box whilst the Tivo is untrustworthy, that also has to wait until after the next software release.

It’s not been a good week for Virgin Media, we had a major outage of a 60M data line at work last week, and it looks like there was an outage of our VM supplied internet connection over the weekend as well.

The Tivo just rebooted again :(

The Tivo didn’t reboot whilst I was watching Italy beat France 22-21. Will it last all of the way through Wales-Ireland as well?

Another day, another visit from an engineer, and as expected there’s no change at all. The box still reboots all the time.

My Virgin Media Tivo box was replaced yesterday, however the replacement box is even worse. So far I’ve had three reboots, followed by two complete lockups, then five more reboots, all of which leave me pondering a move back to Sky and cancelling my entire Virgin Media contract in the process. I’ve not managed a completely successful recording since Saturday, most 1 hour programs involve at least two reboots, and that’s if it manages to record anything at all.

I rang the engineer who came yesterday who was very helpful despite having finished his shift, but the best they can do is another engineer on Thursday at some point. I’m not holding out much hope of a resolution any time soon.

Current recommendation: avoid like the plague.

That’s my impression of my Virgin Media Tivo box this afternoon. It’s lasted just 15 days, and the engineer is due tomorrow to replace it. Will the second be any better?

Update: Fifth reboot of the day just cut off the end of Wonders of the Solar System.