UPC DVR - Could be better - Bugs & Gripes

Archu

OK - I’ve had problems with UPC NTL Customer (dis?) Service, but who hasn’t? So, that aside ...

I have had DVR for ~6Months – and I love it

It's like a member of my own family
However, comma, like all families – there are times when your loved ones really get on your t!ts


UPC DVR is good, but it's a constant disappoint – sounds like something my Da keeps telling me ...

It could be so much better, currently it's meerley the slow cousin of the Sky+ Box

It’s missing some key features and it’s software remains buggy despite the recent automatic update 4/6 weeks ago

I can only hope UPC NTL doe indeed monitor Boards.ie and take note

I’ll post individual grips later

:mad: Bug #1
TV Planner Schedule keeps $crewing up

Gripe #1
Cannot efficiently set early start / late finish recording feature
(Although, this used to work until UPC's automatic update 4/6 weeks ago)

Ideally want recording to start 5min before scheduled start and finish 5min after scheduled end, esp. as RTE & BBC2 are notorious for starting early ending late if only by a few minutes


e.g.
Sunday
21:30 - 22:25 RTE1 - ER

Thurs
21:00 > 22:00 Sky1 - Bones
22:00 > 232:00 Living - Denny Crane for President!


Ideally want recording to start 5min before scheduled start and finish 5min after scheduled end, esp. as RTE & BBC2 are notorious for starting early ending late if only by a few minutes

Ideally what should happen

Sunday
Start -5min early, finish +5 later than EPG scheduled
21:25 – 22:30

Thurs
Start -5min early, finish +5 later than EPG scheduled

20:55 > 22:05 Sky1
21:55 > 23:05 Living

Conflict between 22:00 - 22:05 Sky1 and 22:00 – 22:05 Living


Easy to automatically resolve
If conflict, recordings always at EPG scheduled time
This could be done when Memos are being set up

This would resolve issue without having annoyance of spurious error messages or repeatedly twiddling with recording settings

:confused: Gripe #2
Programme information available if recorded through ‘Set Advanced Memo’

:confused: Gripe #3
Can not edit existing Memos

:confused: Gripe #4
When setting advanced memos, cannot scroll through channel names
Is Film 4 channel 114, 201, 118, 127, 314 …


More to follow as they annoy me

paulm17781

They had at least 5 years to implement a system as good as if not better than sky+ but gave us the poor cousin.

zilog_jones

Archu wrote: »

:confused: Gripe #2
Programme information available if recorded through ‘Set Advanced Memo’

Yeah this is annoying having it just say the channel and time. Would be nice if even we could at least enter titles for them manually (the number buttons on the remote have letters on them after all).

I agree with nearly everything else you said too, though I'm not too bothered about the overlapping issue.

Some issues I've noticed:
- Sometimes when scrolling through channels (while viewing or going left/right in the small guide) it goes completely mental, e.g. it won't stop, or it acts as if you have entered a digit and stops.
- Apparently the standby button on the remote and on the front of the box only make it go into standby - only the "UPC" button seems to turn it on, i.e. you can't turn it on from the box (haven't tried recently).
- Teletext seems to be the wrong character set (certain block graphics come out as letters with umlauts or something like that)
- No apparent signal strength/quality readings available to the user

I forget what else there is. Would be nice if there was some way of contacting the people who actually manage/program the DVRs - I'm sure talking to any "customer support" in Ireland would be useless in this regard.

d8player

zilog_jones wrote: »

- Teletext seems to be the wrong character set (certain block graphics come out as letters with umlauts or something like that)

I find the text works best when you tune to the station in question, hit the TV button whilst covering the IR emitter so it doesn't affect the TV and then hit the teletext button on the remote.

Another thing they really should add is when you click on OK you can only see the current and next programs. Previously you could scroll several programs in advance and move up and down stations.

zilog_jones

d8player wrote: »

I find the text works best when you tune to the station in question, hit the TV button whilst covering the IR emitter so it doesn't affect the TV and then hit the teletext button on the remote.

I just use my TV's teletext with the TV's remote - it has buttons that the UPC remote doesn't have like the one for choosing subpages (the TV has a big cache for storing pages and subpages - very handy). Looks a lot less crappy too as the picture's going directly to the display, not through analogue RGB and all that.

Which brings me to another point - it would have been nice to offer some digital video outputs like YCbCr or HDMI. I guess we'll have to wait for the HD version for that though...

Solair

The crux of the problem is that UPC are basically migrating both Chorus and NTL over to their own platform. So they haven't quite had 5 years to implement something, they're rolling out UPC's own technology on the existing Chorus and NTL cable networks from scratch. It's not something they've been developing over the last 5+ years since NTL or Chorus Digital was rolled out.

However, I'm surprised though that there are glitches in the EPG for the DVR boxes as they're used europe-wide and are extremely widespread in NL and Belgium.

Sky+ is pretty polished though compared to most systems. It's quite tough competition!

I'd suggest that you log any faults with them by e-mail, not by phone.

Send mail to : customer(dot)support@upc(dot)ie

Replace (dot) with .

watty

YCbCr is USA. (and not digital). RGB SCART for SD is as good or better than HDMI, YCBCr, Y/C(S-video) and better than Composite. If you have suitable monitor you can even adapt from RGB SCART to VGA just with wires. And with a clever software driver, one transistor and wires from VGA graphics to RGB SCART.

HD will have HDMI.

DVI is kind of dying as it needs two connectors to do the top resolution of a VGA connector and for digital is inferior to HDMI.

zilog_jones

watty wrote: »

YCbCr is USA. (and not digital).

YCbCr (sometimes called YUV on some devices even though it's not really the same thing) is digital. YPbPr is analogue. Either can both go over 3x phono cables, though I think it may be limited to SD frequencies (I forget). My DVD player can output either that or YPbPr over the "component" output, for example.

However, "component" doesn't include any switching signals or passthrough like SCART.

RGB SCART for SD is as good or better than HDMI, YCBCr...

I don't see how it can be as good as or better than HDMI, though I'm not sure if SD resolutions over HDMI is properly supported (my TV doesn't seem to deinterlace 576i PS1 games played on the PS3 over HDMI, but that might just be the PS3's fault). Technically YCbCr/YPbPr should be a more efficeint system than RGB, but I'm not sure if there's a reduction in quality compared to RGB. In the context of MPEG2/4 it just means less conversion as the video is encoded as YCbCr (4:2:0 sampling or whatever) in the first place.

If you have suitable monitor you can even adapt from RGB SCART to VGA just with wires.

There's not a lot of said suitable monitors around these days. The large majority won't accept any horizontal frequency lower than 30kHz. Certain VGA monitors designed for some 16-bit micros (Amiga, Atari ST, Acorn Archimedes maybe) are able to take 15kHz but they're quite the rarity these days.

DVI is kind of dying as it needs two connectors to do the top resolution of a VGA connector and for digital is inferior to HDMI.

I don't think DVI is going to die any time soon. HDMI doesn't have dual link so is limited to 2560×1600 (v1.3 and higher). Dual link is through one cable BTW - you're thinking of dual dual link, which is for insane resolutions (over 3840 × 2400?!).

Analogue VGA gets pretty blurry over 1280x1024 from my experience with standard cables, and over 2-3m I'd say high resolutions would be unusable (1024x768 is awful enough at 5m).

datk

I've just got the DVR in so there may be a few things I haven't discovered yet. I previously used a DVD Hard Drive recorder - where I could name the programme - now I just see - BBC 1 and May 28th - TV3 and and maybe one other channel have shown the programme name but mostly it's just the channel and date. My DVD showed me what was unwatched. Also on my DVD I could skip forward in 30 second intervals - good for ads or by 15 minutes when jumping ahead. The "fast" forward and rewind seem very slow - even at top setting.

On my old NTL box i could flick through the channels and see current and next programme - but I could also scroll down to see what was ahead, now I just see current and next and have to go to TV Guide to see later programmes - this seems to take a few seconds to appear on the screen. Also if I'm typing in the number - the old box left you on your current channel until you put in all 3 digits - on the DVR you lose the channel the minute you start punching in the numbers.

On the plus side at least I can now tape off digital channels - before I could set my DVD to record the NTL channel but with the non existant programme planner I couldn't get the digital box to switch over.

D

paulm17781

The display on mine stopped working over the weekend. One wonders what quality parts they use in these.

Alun

paulm17781 wrote: »

The display on mine stopped working over the weekend. One wonders what quality parts they use in these.

Mine stopped working months ago ... thankfully I was hoping for a setup option to turn the damn annoying scrolling thing off, but now I don't have to

paulm17781

Alun wrote: »

Mine stopped working months ago ... thankfully I was hoping for a setup option to turn the damn annoying scrolling thing off, but now I don't have to

I liked the clock on it. It was handy and pretty accurate. It shows another thing wrong with the box.

zilog_jones

I would have prefered if it just showed the time and channel number instead of a truncated name of the channel and the current programme. Also, showing the running time when playing/recording something would be nice too. Basically I want it to be a direct replacement of the display on my VCR

Alun

zilog_jones wrote: »

I would have prefered if it just showed the time and channel number instead of a truncated name of the channel and the current programme. Also, showing the running time when playing/recording something would be nice too. Basically I want it to be a direct replacement of the display on my VCR

Yeah, I was being a bit facetious actually .. it'd be great if it just showed the time and didn't do that annoying scrolling / truncating thing, but given that it just packed up of it's own accord I just can't be arsed hanging on the phone for eons only to get some halfwit asking me if I've switched it off and on again, and then have to wait in during the day waiting for the mysterious UPC man who never arrives three days in a row. If the box dies completely that's another matter, but I don't miss the display that much to go through the hell of getting a replacement.

paulm17781

Alun wrote: »

I don't miss the display that much to go through the hell of getting a replacement.

I'm the same. I also don't want to lose my programs or get a new box and have the display die a few months later.

zilog_jones

Has anyone tried plugging the hard disk into a PC and seeing if there's anything readable on it? The videos are probably encrypted or some crazy format though...

bricks

There's one for recorded stuff and 1 for stuff to be recorded.
The sillest thing I've ever seen.
I've canceled mine and am switching to Sky+.
Had a whole series of programs with the ends missing off them recently
Also the BBC Rome Genesis concert had around 15 mins missing off the end of it.
There's no serieslink, no autodelete and its dog slow deleting stuff.

ButtermilkJack

Has anyone figured out a way to delete existing memos yet? Can this even be done?

I had a daily record memo set-up and for some reason it just stopped recording. So I re-entered it and then a few days later the original one appeared back on the planner. Now I can't delete either (they just keep reappearing if I press delete) and I'm stuck with the annoying overlap error every day. I just can't get rid of it at all. :mad:

abraxas01

This seems to be becoming a field of expertise for me. Go into the My TV Planner section and highlight the one you want to delete. Press the Blue button as instructed. When the pop-up appears, it will tell you to press the stop button if you want to delete all occurences of the recording/reminder. Press the stop button (bottom left hand corner of the remote) and it should permanently delete this.

MAJJ

Only using the DVR a short time now and my comparison point is with Vista MCE.

When I am watching a program and press guide to check what is on, the guide slowly launches and there is no picture or sound for about 10 seconds.

Is there a way to filter the guide (other than setting up favourites) to only show programs within my package?

abraxas01

Not sure if this will reduce the loading time, but worth a shot. Add all the channels in your subscription to My Favourites. When you use the zapper banner, you can filter it to just My Favourites by pressing the blue button. Equally, in the TV Guide, there's a button over the far left for My Favourites.
However, as I understand it, the loading time for the guide application will be the same irrespective of what set up you have.

ButtermilkJack

abraxas01 wrote: »

This seems to be becoming a field of expertise for me. Go into the My TV Planner section and highlight the one you want to delete. Press the Blue button as instructed. When the pop-up appears, it will tell you to press the stop button if you want to delete all occurences of the recording/reminder. Press the stop button (bottom left hand corner of the remote) and it should permanently delete this.

Ah, I see, so I should really just read the instructions on screen first

Thanks abraxas01

datk

ButtermilkJack wrote: »

I had a daily record memo set-up and for some reason it just stopped recording. So I re-entered it and then a few days later the original one appeared back on the planner.

This has been happening me quite a bit. Also on Monday night it didn't record a programme - so on Tuesday I went in to see if it had gone off the list but it's there for next Monday, but I don't know if, come next Monday, it'll record.

Also when I look at the programmes I have recorded I only see the date, time and channel. Even if it gave the day - I'd be quicker to remember what I recorded at 9pm on a Tuesday rather than 9pm on the 17th June. It is the very rare occassion that it will name the programme, last weeks Casualty it named but hasn't been in previous weeks.

I'm gathering all my issues up and going to get onto NTL, if they can't be fixed the box is going back.

Archu

The DVR is getting on my T!ts

I set it up, it records, but then some recorded programs are unwatchable

Sunday - BBC2 Top Gear
Monday - Ch4 Dispatches
Displays message "No longer subscribed to this channel, pls delete"


Wednesday - Living TV Criminal Minds
Nothing but a black screen, no audio, DVR resets itself after watching 15/30 seconds of program

patrickmooney

The LED display on the front of my mediabox no longer displays channel and programme info. It's always off. Checked the settings to see if they've moved this to a user controlled option, can not find it. Anyone elses gone black too?

paulm17781

patrickmooney wrote: »

The LED display on the front of my mediabox no longer displays channel and programme info. It's always off. Checked the settings to see if they've moved this to a user controlled option, can not find it. Anyone elses gone black too?

Mine died too. First it went faint, then after a few weeks it died.

Dennis the Stone

Is it possible, if you are behind the live feed, to record, i.e. to rewind before a program that you forgot to record (assuming that the DVR has been switched to that channel) and then record, or can you only view it? Don't know if that's explained well.

abraxas01

I know what you're trying to say, and in short you can't. The tuner for recording is seperate to the tuner for buffering. If you're watching a programme, it will only record from the point in real time that you start recording. Pressing record shouldn't affect what you're watching e.g. it won't jump you up to real time. Hope this answers the question for you.

paulm17781

Tago Mago wrote: »

Is it possible, if you are behind the live feed, to record, i.e. to rewind before a program that you forgot to record (assuming that the DVR has been switched to that channel) and then record, or can you only view it? Don't know if that's explained well.

I thought this did work, I'm not sure though. I thought if you rewind to the beginning, it would allow you record the full thing.

abraxas01

nope, just gave it a test there to be sure to sure.

murpho999

paulm17781 wrote: »

I thought this did work, I'm not sure though. I thought if you rewind to the beginning, it would allow you record the full thing.

No, you can do that with the Sky+ box alright,but not with the UPC DVR. It really is one of the many handy features that Sky have that UPC don't. Very annoying.

Dennis the Stone

Archu wrote: »

The DVR is getting on my T!ts

I set it up, it records, but then some recorded programs are unwatchable

Sunday - BBC2 Top Gear
Monday - Ch4 Dispatches
Displays message "No longer subscribed to this channel, pls delete"

Yeah, wtf is this bull****? It happened to me last night. I had taped Paramount. No longer subscribed my ass!

Alun

Tago Mago wrote: »

Yeah, wtf is this bull****? It happened to me last night. I had taped Paramount. No longer subscribed my ass!

It seems to be happening a lot recently. I wonder if it has to do with the code-rolling they're doing to try and defeat the illegal cable boxes ... would that cause it?

rockal

Alun wrote: »

It seems to be happening a lot recently. I wonder if it has to do with the code-rolling they're doing to try and defeat the illegal cable boxes ... would that cause it?

I sent an E-mail to UPC about this way back in MAY. This is the response i received back.

"Please be advised I have passed your query to our technical support desk. One of the agents should contact you as soon as possible."

Needless to say thats the last I heard!!!!

zzzzzzzz

Just got one of these a couple of hours ago. Couple of questions have been answered by this thread and I've a couple more:

1) Anyone tried to hook a hard drive up to the USB port at the back? Or what is it for?

2) How can I copy stuff from the box to the computer? What do I need?

3) Is there any sort of comprehensive user manual online anywhere? Did a bit of googling and couldn't find much

barnicles

2 dont have upc but a tv turner and some recording software shud work

Alun

aidan.offbeat wrote: »

1) Anyone tried to hook a hard drive up to the USB port at the back? Or what is it for?

It's for the built-in cable modem only, as is the ethernet port.

2) How can I copy stuff from the box to the computer? What do I need?

You can't, not directly anyway. You'd have to use some kind of video capture device to capture the analogue video via the SCART connector.

3) Is there any sort of comprehensive user manual online anywhere? Did a bit of googling and couldn't find much

It's on the upc website .. I'll leave that up to you to find (it's not difficult). Or do a search of this forum, it's been mentioned several times before.

zzzzzzzz

Alun wrote: »

It's for the built-in cable modem only, as is the ethernet port.

You can't, not directly anyway. You'd have to use some kind of video capture device to capture the analogue video via the SCART connector.

It's on the upc website .. I'll leave that up to you to find (it's not difficult). Or do a search of this forum, it's been mentioned several times before.

Cheers.

KenH

Yeah, I'm having awful problems with the UPC recorder too. It doesn't record sometimes and it's always switching back to station 100 (RTE!) when browsing. Also, I can't get rid of a couple of scheduled recordings I made a few months back. That is to say, I can delete them, but after a few days they've magically re-appeared. PITA.

Has anyone got any joy in getting this stuff sorted out?

d8player

What I find annoying is when you click OK whilst watching you can only see the programs on now and next. On the old boxes you could scroll forward to the end of the day which was a really handy way of browsing and setting reminders as the tv guide is too slow to load.

gerryo

Archu wrote: »

The DVR is getting on my T!ts

I set it up, it records, but then some recorded programs are unwatchable

Sunday - BBC2 Top Gear
Monday - Ch4 Dispatches
Displays message "No longer subscribed to this channel, pls delete"


Wednesday - Living TV Criminal Minds
Nothing but a black screen, no audio, DVR resets itself after watching 15/30 seconds of program

Seen something similar when a scheduled recording was interrupted by an "upgrade". Box appeared to record the upgrade instead of the scheduled show, with the bizarre result that attempting to play back the upgrade caused the box to reboot:mad:

This seems like a bad bug & an easy one to fix , unless boxes have to take upgrades when offered, which is very inconvient if upgrades happen during prime time TV.

KenH

I wrote them an email a few weeks back outlining the issues I'm having with the box. No reply of course.

These bugs are so crap. But there's one bug that allows me to see blocked programs. I'm not telling though in case they fix it.
The way I see it is they're blocking a program on a channel I normally get (greedy) and I didn't put the bug there (unprofessional).

James Forde

is it worth getting???

BendiBus

I got the "No Longer Subscribed" message instead of a programme recording last night. It was part 4 of a series :mad:

Thankfully the programme will be repeated on Saturday but no thanks to UPC.

This is a really serious flaw.

dunworth1

bryanjf wrote: »

is it worth getting???

yes it is

dinkydee

A couple of things bothering me, the main one is I cannot get subtitles on RTE 1 or RTE 2 either using the preference settings or using the text button and pressing the usual 888. I can get them on UTV, C4, BBC 1 and BBC 2 using preference settings they automatically appear. Any techno heads out there that could resolve this for me?

2nd thing, but I think I've it figured out. Was keying in programmes to record say corrie 19:30 to 20:00 but the time on the tv planner was coming in at 18:30 to 19:00 for next Monday. I think this could be because the clock goes back on Sunday. Anyone else noticed this??

patrickmooney

I have had my box since launch, a long time back at this stage. Mine is due for replacement as it's broke. It's appentently common for the LED in front to die.

Anyhow I wouldn't know where to begin with the many 100's of bugs in the software. I am programmer and know whats it's like raising, regressing and fixing faults for release periods, but we simply haven't been seeing releases. It would be encouraging if we had at least 1 minor release a month fixing 5 or 10 bugs. Very annoying.

And series link, well, everyone else has it. Sky have it on there Sky+ box, Virgin have it on their Cable VBox and BT have it on their Vision Freeview/based box. If three seperate companies, using three different broadcast mediums can do this, why can't UPC. Beyond me.

patrickmooney

Forgot about this very annoying problem. I've alot of repeat recordings set up. Unfortunitely they have been set up as BST, now we are back at GMT, all my recordings are an hour early. Just arrived home to find all my recordings since Sunday did not record. Fun!

Solair

I wonder if this programme being blocked message has something to do with their efforts to kick off the dodgybox i.e. if they change keys, does it somehow impact the DVR recordings?

IrlJidel

patrickmooney wrote: »

And series link, well, everyone else has it. Sky have it on there Sky+ box, Virgin have it on their Cable VBox and BT have it on their Vision Freeview/based box. If three seperate companies, using three different broadcast mediums can do this, why can't UPC. Beyond me.

I just got my UPC bill today which included a 'Fusion' newsletter about upc products. Interesting part is that it stated:

1) Series linking will be coming soon, allowing you to record 40 hours of a whole series of your favourite programme with a touch of a button
2) Dual recording is also coming soon, allowing you to record two programmes at the same time


Also, the screen shot of the EPG looks different to mine. It shows sections called 'Catch-up TV', 'My Progammes', and 'Add Channels' and 'Message Centre' buttons at bottom of screen.

patrickmooney

Interesting it states 40 hours. Could they be doing a sky+ and only allowing us have access to half the drive. Currently we have 80 hours and I stuggle to have 10% free! Catch-UP TV would then record this weeks must see TV in the background on the other half of the drive. Any chance of a screenshot/scan of the EPG?