Life in the Bus Lane » Television

Another Tivo annoyance

rich — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 20:20:23 +0000

It still can’t multi-task properly. I’ve just re-arranged my ~~season passes~~series 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 with a Virgin Media Tivo and why you shouldn’t buy one.

rich — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 11:10:10 +0000

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.

Bye bye Virgin Media?

rich — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 23:14:51 +0000

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.

It wasn’t a miracle

rich — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 18:20:18 +0000

The Tivo just rebooted again :(

It’s a miracle

rich — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 17:04:22 +0000

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?

Virgin Media are useless

rich — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:39:14 +0000

So far I’ve had:

No Wireless adaptor supplied as expected
No HDMI cable supplied for the Tivo, they pinched the one I’d bought to move the PS3 and used that.
No “half-price for six months” discount applied as promised. Therefore the first bill is looking to be 50% more than expected.
After complaining about the lack of discount a second contract was received which increased the price by £25 per month.
No port of my existing landline number at installation as I ordered. That had to be re-ordered and was completed a few weeks later.
A Tivo that hasn’t worked properly for nearly a week.

If it wasn’t for the hassle of migrating the phone and broadband back out to a BT line I’d have cancelled already. However the pain of going without broadband for a few weeks whilst I move somewhere more competent is looking more and more tempting.

Virgin Media Tivo – Still Shit

rich — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 22:09:39 +0000

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

More Tivo reboots

rich — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 22:42:10 +0000

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.

Reboot frenzy

rich — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 12:06:50 +0000

My Virgin Media Tivo box has rebooted at least another 10 times since 10pm last night. I hope the engineer turns up this afternoon or the box may not last the night in one piece.

Update: Make that 11.

Reboot, reboot, reboot, reboot

rich — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 20:28:43 +0000

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 … Continue reading →