Stone the crows, Bouncer! BT defends TV recorder upgrade DELETION snafu BT has dismissed gripes about a recent upgrade to its television recorder box, after the telco giant's update deleted programmes and came loaded with glitches. A reader told The Register that he only got a two-day warning that everything on his BT Vision kit would be wiped when the software was upgraded. Exactly that happened …
rare? I can't remember a single instance! The only upgrade that removes content is when you get a new box or self-swap out the hard drive for a bigger one (and even then there are ways of migrating the content, which is pre-encrypted if it needs to be).
Business practices aside, one thing Sky do (nearly completely) right is the hardware.
Sky has just totally overhauled the EPG and front screen - the whole shebang...not a single bit out of place.
Not quite true, we had the Sky box upgrade pushed recently (about 2 weeks ago?), and since then we have lost access to certain channels that we always had access to. Strangely enough, those channels that have a +1 equivalent we can still watch, just not the source channels (for example, Comedy Central HD/SD we can now only watch on +1). Not that I'm blaming the upgrade (correlation/causation etc), but we noticed the channel loss happened the day after the upgrade.
As someone who does Data Protection for a day job I've seen some pretty shonky uses of DP as an excuse but I have to say BT have taken the prize here.
I cannot possibly conceive that this information is personal data unless the owner of the box is in some of the programmes stored on the HDD. Even then it would only be the programmes they are in that would be affected and in reality how many people would that cover? Probably Jake Humphrey and Clare 'National Treasure' Balding plus one or 2 others!!
Totally baffling!
Yes - "no instances, ever" - I've just had the new UI on HD, and apart from being surprised it's so different, I've got all the 2TB of recordings (or whatever it is you're actually allowed to use of the storage these days) I had before the upgrade.
Same goes for every time in the past decade...
Only BT could still be considered "leading" by the majority and still get the lion's share of the business in so many areas and still be so utterly shoddy.
rare? I can't remember a single instance!
I think I had one back when the new EPG first appeared. A few of us started finding bits of programs mixed together I think. Given it was relatively few people I suspect a Planner rebuild fell foul of corruption. I know that historically their file system indexing/offset calculation has been a bit weird because the utility that copies Sky hard disks has to deal with it.
I can't find anything to confirm that but I did find this (R008.063.49.09P) when Sky withdrew an upgrade
But aside from their sometimes irritating changes to the GUI (I still wish I could hide the mini TV viewer when using the EPG, and I'm currently getting existing series recordings stacked with future recordings for some shows) it's been a reliable service.
Yes, but I warrant that it isn't in the area of technical expertise. They're experienced enough to know how to do it right, and I suspect that they simply decided that they couldn't be arsed to expend the effort to come up with a proper technical solution.
They need to brush up their customer-oriented skills a bit. If it wasn't for their apparent privileged position in the UK, I doubt that they'd survive real competition.
Is this the original Vision + box or the BT Branded Youview box (The black gloos model) or the new BT Youview box (Same design as the Home Hub 5)? I am still in the trial for the Youview, black gloss box and it does decide to occasionally record Channel 5 shows, not Neighbours, but usually NCIS on an alternative night, as well as the regular recording. I was about to sign up to BT's Infinity with the new box, but maybe I'll hang back and wait a little while.
> to occasionally record Channel 5 shows
I suspect the C5 EPG data is at fault. I see most series jumping to C5+1 from time to time.
This seems to have always been the case with C5 on every FreeView PVR I've used. Other channels do not have the same problem.
Therefore I think this might, for once, not be BT but the data source: Channel 5.
This is exactly why I don't use the subscription services, the hardware they provide simply isn't up to scratch.
I paid about £300 for one of the earliest dual-tuner PVR boxes available on Freeview which finally gave up the ghost last year. I'd been shopping around for over a year at that point trying to find something with even half as good a UI and was unsuccessful, but the least impressive in my opinion were Sky/BT. The Sky hardware itself is perfectly good, but the UI is horrific, especially the EPG which gives very little choice in view. I'm now using a Humax box which, while lacking in the premium channels some of the subscription services provide, WORKS.
Sadly all of these services have the trump card of "If you want these channels you need to use our hardware" combined with a need to provide it at little or no cost. You will always end up with a lesser product than one which has only it's functions to sell itself.
As options like Chromecast etc get more providers building dedicated apps the idea of the set top box may (hopefully) become redundant allowing providers to concentrate on content.
Used phone and internet to record a program remotely on my Sky- it automatically set it up for the HD channels, which I don't subscribe to but I did get an hour to read the message giving me information on the upgrade required.
Speaking of SKY does anyone know why fast speed play is unwatchable, is it as I suspect just down to bad programming or is it inherent in the digital switch.
Before HD I used to watch programs at 6* speed, sometimes faster if a race had turned into a procession. Now any multiple speed just causes jumps - no smooth progression, even though I still watch the SD channels.
The best set-up I've found for my own needs is to use a TVHeadEnd server with Freeview (it also works with FreeSAT, and I believe that if you use a tuner card that accepts a CAM it can also work with Sky).
TVHeadEnd is running on an old Atom netbook I had spare with a couple of USB tuners connected. Playback on my TV is handled by a Raspberry Pi running RaspBMC. It gives me all the functionality that I would need from a commerical vendor with the flexibility of being able to customise the system as I see fit. If I want to record more channels simultaneously I can just add more tuners. Any recordings I make can be copied from TVHeadEnd and saved to my main file server. I can access the recordings from multiple devices, and I can stream the live TV it pumps out to multiple devices.
Yes, it did require a bit of effort in my part to get everything up and running, but other than not having all the channels I could get on a pay service the end result is far superior than any paid offerings out there.
I might have to give this another go (tried to get it going on my old Mint box, but the tuner card wouldn't play nice with Linux), as I've been using RaspMC to watch ripped DVDs and it really is a very nice piece of software. Every Freeview box/PVR that I've used has sufficient faults to put me off ever purchasing another one (I really want to like the TVonics box that I bought a couple of years ago, but it's depressingly prone to freezing up).
to these expensive picture frames that seem to be so popular is this..
Minix Neo X7 which comes pre-installed with Xbmc and once its setup properly you can watch anything, anywhere in the world with a wifi connection and an hdmi port to a screen and it's very portable. The browser also gets you access to youtube or facebook or whatever your poison is.
So it's a smart telly in your pocket if you like.
I recommend xfinity and fusion, download the addons like Filmon for Uk telly and Icefilms et voila!!
Costs about 100 quid or so, plus your usb sticks for recordings of course.
IPTV is the way forward
I find now that TV programs do not start and finish at the time stated. This screws up all timed recordings. It used to be that the adverts on commercial TV occurred at the start and finish of the program, so that you had time to make a cup of coffee. The new pattern seems to be to put the adverts into the middle of the program time and to run from the end of one program directly into the start of the next, but with the end of the first program delayed, so you don't see the ending. I have found this to be a problem with both Tivo in the US and PVRs in the UK. I guess the broadcasters are trying to stop people skipping the adverts! The BBC also appears to suffer from time slip on occasions.
I seem to remember that happening with my BT Vision box a year or so ago. The reason the recordings got deleted was that they changed from a linux-based system to a WinCE based system. The new interface was ghastly, and unreliable. I shouted at BT until they gave me a Humax Youview box. The UI is slow and clunky and the BT part of it is ghastly and unreliable. Seriously, this box is far too slow at EVERYTHING!
"I seem to remember that happening with my BT Vision box a year or so ago. The reason the recordings got deleted was that they changed from a linux-based system to a WinCE based system. "
From what I've read on Wikipedia, BT's forum and an article on The Reg, the change was actually from WinCE to Linux. Presumably going either way would zap the recordings, as I'm sure you're aware - I doubt they'd bother with a separate partition for them that would be untouched during an update.
Can't comment on the BT Vision experience, but our TIVO S1 (not VM version) is still going strong after 13 years. Great UI and 100% reliable (except for replacement drives every 3-4 years). Switched over to Sky+ as the main recorder, due to their 25th birthday, £25 for 25 months deal, for the full package and most of us really don't like the UI / behaviour of the box.
TIVO never skipped a beat over the upgrades (many years ago), and aside from the one 'pushed' program from the Beeb, never had any problems with content being deleted unexpectedly.
Sky+ really offers lots of advantages, dual recording, online content, HD, remote record, over the TIVO (standard build) but it really doesn't have a great remote layout (like the TIVO peanut) or intuitive UI.
Get zero notice when BT downgrade your hub with a new firmware release or their cable mangling branch, Open Breach, buggers what used to be a functional line to the exchange. In the later case the signal/noise ratio went from +7dB to 3dB (on a good day) and often fades to less than 1 when it grinds to a halt. Not to mention the remote resets of the hub when busy. Who would take TV from them? Roll on the end of the contract period.
Watching BT Vision, we used to use the 30 second jump or -10 second jump button all the time. Now for much of the time it just displays the +30sec logo and does nothing, then, all of a sudden will shoot forward many jumps. Going backward is worse; by the time the -10 seconds kick in it has gone 30 seconds forward already!
The standard turn off at the wall sorts it out for a few hours so it is software orientated.
There's no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaints and its far too late to start making a fuss about it now.
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