UPC DVR Firmware update - WHEN?

belmulletman

OK,
This is really to anyone out there from UPC or who actually know's what's going on...
When are we actually going to get a Firmware/Software update for the DVR.
I mean, the bug that was noted by UPC when the unit came out is still present!!!
There are so many little issues, and no new features... some sort of time frame of when we should expect something or other... and not Q1 '08... At least a month, and preferrably within a 2 week frame of time!!

Please and thank you,
B.

patrickmooney

I agree, there are just too many bugs with the software. An update is well over due, especially if they are investing 10million euro in giving away boxes this year.

murpho999

Gotta add my voice to this too.
Problems have been there from the start.

No Series Link
'My TV Agenda' link does not work.
Mini Browse sometimes stays on screen.

This is just 3 small examples. There are many more.

Also still no sign of HD or Interactive services.

Their own deadlines just come and go with no action or explaination.
Website is useless and contains no information.

Why are UPC/NTL always behind on these things and always offering less then the competition. They never seem to be innovating or cutting edge at all.

I'm sure that by the time they introduce HD & other services that there may be other technologies/ideas around and they will be behind again. It's just not good enough.:mad:

paulm17781

murpho999 wrote: »

Why are UPC/NTL always behind on these things and always offering less then the competition. They not seem to be innovating or cutting edge at all.

I'd also agree. I really like the DVR but there are issues with it. I can't understand why UPC bought the two companies and spent all that money yet have done very little from a customer perspective.

belmulletman

I'm glad it's not just me that feels something should be done about this! it's getting crazy!
Normally, my friends would come to me for recommendations about technology and stuff like the UPC DVR, but to date, i've not been able to recommend it to any of them, purely because there are issues, and UPC seems to not want to deal with them or give anyone a time frame (a realistic one that may actually happen - remember, Series link was meant to be initially the end of last year and now it's "sometime this year"... a year is a very long time in fairness not to be able to tie down these features to a specific month, or period of time!)

Anywho, come on UPC, sort it out... even add a Forums section to your own site so people can post questions / comments there and have them answered officially!!! surely it's not that hard!

paulm17781

Has anyone reported these to NTL? I haven't but perhaps we should...

BuffyBot

paulm17781 wrote: »

I'd also agree. I really like the DVR but there are issues with it. I can't understand why UPC bought the two companies and spent all that money yet have done very little from a customer perspective.

In fairness, while they are far from perfect, they've come on leaps and bounds from where it was pre-merger. They've still got a long way to go, to be sure but from this customers perspective, it's come a long way from where they started!

paulm17781

BuffyBot wrote: »

In fairness, while they are far from perfect, they've come on leaps and bounds from where it was pre-merger. They've still got a long way to go, to be sure but from this customers perspective, it's come a long way from where they started!

I'm not so sure I agree.

The customer care centre is still woeful and full of badly trained staff who do little other than organise engineer callouts which are mostly unnecessary, I was even lied to by one CC agent.

They choked the BB by blocking sites and no new products in the last two years.

Prices have risen and the non-DD charge was brought in.

While the DVR is a great improvement, they had 6 years to make it as good as Sky+ and it isn't.

Perhaps Chorus has improved but the only change to NTL customers is the DVR and price rises, that's not a lot really.

Solair

I've found the DVR box quite a major improvement over the previous NTL box I had. There are a few bugs and it could do with a software update, on the plus side, this DVR box is used in multiple territories and has a huge number of users across Europe. The software is more than likely common, certainly for the interface etc.

I suspect there's a software update due soon, they've been blabbing on about series linking and various other features.

To be fair to them, they've only recently rolled the service out and it's pretty decent for version 1.0 !! Sky+ was very buggy (and still is in many ways) and they've had a few years at this stage to work out the bugs.

HDTV will require bandwidth which is scarce in some parts of their cable network although they are working on improving that. There's a lot more fiber optic cable going in and significant improvements to the coax wires, many of the older installations simply couldn't handle the range of frequencies to cope with decent services.

Analogue services on cable are also taking up a lot of space which will undoubtedly be cleared. We're already seeing the first steps i.e. free upgrade to digital. I suspect UPC will just kick everyone over to digital whether they want to go or not. They'll want that valuable bandwidth opened up for digital services a.s.a.p.

I really can't see having to have a set top box as a being a huge concern for most customers at this stage. We're well used to it and in the short term (before 2012) we're going to see analogue terrestrial television shutting off anyway, so it'll be the norm to require some kind of decoding / reception equipment for any form of television. Also, going 100% digital would mean that UPC would be able to better control theft of service.

I don't think it's going to be a long time before we see a complete switch over.

Perhaps what we should do as a group is collect a list of UPC DVR errors on a single thread (i.e. create a new one and lock this one).

Then once it's complete, send the report to UPC on behalf of everyone who uses this board. It would be one way of getting decent impact and getting it resolved!!

lucernarian

NTL digital looks like a mess the couple of times I've seen it in my life. One decoder box was a large, ugly brute of a box with an unresponsive remote. Another time, I saw it on an LCD screen TV, where the picture quality reminded me of youtube!


They desperately need a firmware upgrade and if there should be any removal of analogue service, the Irish and UK terrestrial channels currently provided will have to be properly encoded at decent bitrates.

Puggy

Assuming that UPC actually monitor the forum, even if it is unofficial, I'd like to say I could not do without the DVR. Now that I've had it a while there are a few issues, already mentioned, which would make it better.

I'm an MMDS customer (NTL) so my primary concern is will the update be over the air? Or will it just be in "new" boxes?

Anyone know...

deanh

So to sum up, nobody has contacted UPC to outline the problems or to seek answers?

d8player

I agree to a large degree with the sentiment expressed here that the DVR from UPC is good but could be improved. The series link and the other bugs fixes are must haves. A few other things I'd like to see

1: A USB connection for PCs so you can back up to DVD. Other DVRs come with a CD burner so I can't see why this would not be legitimate.
2: The ability to rename the recordings - if you use the advanced timer you only get the channel name
3: The ability to create folders for storing recordings - if you record a season of a particular series you should be able to file them in one location. It gets very messy when you have a large number of unsorted recordings

Anything else?

Rosser

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

NTL digital looks like a mess the couple of times I've seen it in my life.

Ah the voice of experience

Also true, the lack of a series link (as an ex Sky+ user) is cracking me up.

murpho999

In follow on to this: I am also an ex Sky user, but now have to use NTL.

Below is a copy of a previous posting I made. Sorry for it being it being a bit long, but it sums up my views and what NTL need to fix.

Think it would be a great idea to collate everyones issues and send them to NTL.

1) No series link. Series link is a brilliant and simple feature on Sky and it is not on NTL's box.
As I've stated before on other posts, I do not understand why NTL do not have this as they have had about 3 years to look at Sky's box. It is possible to schedule manual repeat recordings on a dalily or weekly basis but this is cumbersome and will not make allowances for programme schedule changes or time over runs.
NTL have told me that they will have a series link but no idea when.

2) You can only record one programme compared to two on Sky's .

3) Menu layout is much more logical and quicker on Sky. On Sky you can get to your Planner in 2 quick button presses. Menu and Green. On NTL it's Menu then DVR, and then you must choose either My Programmes which is your recorded programmes or you must choose MY TV agenda which is a list of your scheduled recordings. I prefer the way Sky's is all together. Sky's response time is quicker too.
Also, you cannot see what programs you have viewed with NTL.

4) Whilst in My Programmes you can only play a programme from the start or from your last stop point. With Sky you can choose the actual minute yourself. Can be very frustrating, for example if you have to stop a recording and leave halfway. Someone else watches the program in full. When you come back to watch your program you have to fast forward from the beginnning rather than keying in your stop time like you can with Sky.

5) If you are watching a programme and imagine you are halfway through it and you decide to start recording it. No problem just press record on either Sky or NTL. Big difference is that Sky will record the whole programme from the start whilst NTL will only record from when you press record. So if you watch a programme and decide that someone else in your household would find it interesting you will lose the start with NTL.

6) Pause and rewind TV is a great function but I have found some issues. Firstly, I find when rewinding and forwarding with NTL it's very hard to play from an exact point it often jumps about 20 seconds ahead whereas Sky doesn't. Also, if you have paused your TV programme and begin watching again and accidently press the 'UPC' button this will return you to live tv and you cannot go back to where you where. It seems to clear the memory. With Sky the program will always remain in the buffer until you change channel. This can be very frustrating and is a major issue for me.

7) Quick Guide. The search banner often gets stuck on my screen with NTL. Only way to clear it is to press 'Help' and go back again or restart the box. Either way you will lose your buffer content if you have paused TV.

8) Guide: NTL guide loads a bit slower than Sky but is still pretty good. It has less categories than Sky. It has 'All Channels'. Movies. Entertainment. Kids, News & Docs, Sports, Music and Other.
There is also no search or A-Z function like Sky has.

9) Remote: I find changing channels a bit fiddly on the NTL remote when trying to key in the channel number. If you do not key in the 3 digits quick enough then the box will switch to 101-RTE 1. Very strange and annoying.

10) Another Major Issue. NTL has NO interactive services. They have told me that they are coming, but hey, so is Christmas!

11) Channel line up! Lots more on Sky. and more +1 channels too but on NTL you get ITV and BBC3 and 4.

12) Customer Service: Pro's and cons here. NTL's have a brought poor customer service to a new level, they miss appointments, break down, and it's so hard to get through to them.However, they are based in Ireland, so so after 2 hours of being on hold, they will give you prices in Euros and will not struggle to pronounce your name or spell your address. Sky will answer the phone pretty quickly but I don't find them geared up for Ireland at all. No idea about place names etc. Try get them to arrange an engineer to go to an O'Shaughnessy in Dun Laoghaire or Tallaght!

13) Signal. I regularly have signal breakdowns with NTL whereas I NEVER EVER had that with Sky. Often had no signal for a whole weekend with NTL

14) Sometimes whilst browsing using left and right buttons, I get Channel 5 appearing and then it jumps to RTE 1

decies

Personally i wonder why ye all bought those dvr boxes anyway ntl digital tv without interactive services is a bloody joke.
By going out and getting these dvr boxes which are by all accounts not half as good as sky your only encouraging these people and they will NEVER get their act together.
Let them add a lot more channels on the epg,give us interactive now not next decade........
I have two ntl boxes in the house with sky and setanta sports,so i do my bit but since half of waterford seems to be getting there digital packages for free i expect a lot better service from them.!!!!!!
So give back your dvr boxes and wait till hell freezes over till there digital tv is the way digital tv is supossed to be.

murpho999

decies wrote: »

Personally i wonder why ye all bought those dvr boxes anyway ntl digital tv without interactive services is a bloody joke.
By going out and getting these dvr boxes which are by all accounts not half as good as sky your only encouraging these people and they will NEVER get their act together.
Let them add a lot more channels on the epg,give us interactive now not next decade........
I have two ntl boxes in the house with sky and setanta sports,so i do my bit but since half of waterford seems to be getting there digital packages for free i expect a lot better service from them.!!!!!!
So give back your dvr boxes and wait till hell freezes over till there digital tv is the way digital tv is supossed to be.

Understand your point but for me it was a no brainer.
Had been a Sky+ user for a number of years and really liked it.
Then moved to a new apartment where satelite dishes are not permitted.

Had no choice but to switch to NTL.

Found the old Pace box to be absolutely horrendous. Unresponsive, constantly freezing. 3 day guide was awful and never loaded.

So when DVR came out, I snapped it up. As I pointed out in above posting it is by no means perfect and not as good as Sky's offering. But it does work, and at least now I can record programmes and pause and rewind live TV.

Believe me once you get used to that function like I had with Sky then you just can't live without it.

lucernarian

Rosser wrote: »

Ah the voice of experience

Also true, the lack of a series link (as an ex Sky+ user) is cracking me up.

well the many times that I've seen analogue NTL is more than enough reason not to waste money on them. I've seen Sky+ and it has tended to impress me in comparison. Sky Sports are still a bit blocky on it too.

But sure if it's blocky on one LCD, it will look damn-all better on any other LCD. Excessive compression won't change.

Talisman

murpho999 wrote: »

2) You can only record one programme compared to two on Sky's .

Wouldn't such a feature require a second tuner in the box?

paulm17781

Talisman wrote: »

Wouldn't such a feature require a second tuner in the box?

It has two. Sky lets you record two (you have to watch one) where as UPC lets you record one and watch another - you can't record two (even if watching one) at the same time.

gerryo

paulm17781 wrote: »

It has two. Sky lets you record two (you have to watch one) where as UPC lets you record one and watch another - you can't record two (even if watching one) at the same time.

Yes, but does'nt the DVR have a large-ish buffer, something like 2 hours?
You can record one channel, then set Live TV to another, go away for a while, then come back & wind the buffer back to the beginning & start watching.

Not as good as a real $ky+ box, but still useful.
Guess you will need a Hard Disk recorder if you want to record 2 shows simultaneously.
A FW upgrade could allow you to record 2 channels at the same time, & disable the TV out if the DVR was'nt up to the processing.

Maybe a future FW upgrade might enable 2 channel recording & playback of a pre-recorded show..

d8player

Its very unlikely that the firmware for the box is developed by the Irish side of the company. When it was being installed it had a multi-lingual setup option which suggests that its developed by the head company so I would say NTL are limited by what UPC provide overall.