UPC Horizon Set Top Box trial

Del2005

starviewadams wrote: »

€110 up front is a bit steep,especially as you will never actually own the box.

€110 may be high, but it's first adapter prices and they always pay a premium. Not owning the box is an advantage, as if anything goes wrong they have to replace/repair it not you.

dermotp

Del2005, I have a son in Holland and he has a horizon box,he did not have to pay this once off charge as far as I am aware but I will check this with him and post back,and he did a self install, so why should we in Ireland have to pay these charges?

Babaloo

It's not clear from email I had insight if the subscriber can opt for self installation to avoid €20 surcharge-just an indication that might lower the cost and increase competitiveness against newly introduced Sky Broadband offer. Looks to me as a real possibility given the ease of connection and straight forward initial set up of the Horizon box. Will be keeping you abreast with further developments on the matter as it progresses.

who_me

Just noticed this bit on the manual. A liiitle bit worrying.

Horizon’s DLNA functionality is currently limited. If you possess a large number of photos, videos or audio content, the box may freeze or respond very slowly. We recommend you use a LAN cable to connect Horizon to your home network or else use fewer than 1,000 files.
If your box exhibits problems despite that, we recom- mend restoring Horizon’s factory settings and forgoing use of the media playback function from the home network for the time being.
We are working with our technology partners to extend the number of compatible formats and improve the cataloguing of media content from the home network.

PeteK*

Box: €45
Self-Installation / Engineer: €0 / €45
Monthly: €5

Those are the details I got! Not sure if they're official.

Babaloo wrote: »

Hi folks,
Just got an email from UPC marketing dept. Roll out of Horizon starts inJune this year, pricing is as follows:
Installation fee: €20
Set top box: €90 one off payment
Monthly subscription: €2.5

Cheers

belmulletman

Well.. it's on the way - https://www.horizon.tv/en_ie.html

you can see TV3 / 3E in there etc... also note that links back to UPC.ie!

Babaloo

I know that one it's been in place for some time now - just a dummy page that guide you to on demand content for the UPC existing customers. No details on pricing, roll out dates neither...

zg3409

Babaloo wrote: »

Hi folks,
Just got an email from UPC marketing dept

Can u copy/paste email?

Solair

There's always going to be teething problems with a product that complex.

On the plus side, it just means we get the Dutch and the Swiss to beta test it for us

I would suspect UPC may be strategically avoiding launching it in Ireland until the software's been through a few revisions on the continent.

Television's viewed more here (in hours) than most European countries. Irish viewing habits are similar to the UK which is more similar to North America than it is to the continent in how TV's consumed. Then you've got the fact that BSkyB is probably the most successful pay tv platform on earth. That's pretty serious competition to be up against and it's something you do not want to do something like launch a weak product against.

This product's actually been developed by a division of NDS for UPC. It's a product called Snowflake.
I think UPC could potentially get this very right, as it's a bit like getting an Android phone right. All UPC's doing is producing a branded-up, tweaked version of the Snowflake UI.

Samsung will have done the hardware to UPC's specs in conjunction with NDS (Now Cisco)

http://nds-snowflake.com/

http://nds-snowflake.com/category/upc/

It adds some odd features in Snowflake 13 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECZYbE4B03s

You can see why some viewers might find it a bit overly complicated.

dermotp

The charges in Holland were as follows;
Activation;E45
Installation/Engineer; 0/E45
Monthly;E2.50
Existing customers were given an introductory offer if they wanted to change to Horizon box; zero activation and zero engineer installation and E2.50 monthly.

grindle

dermotp wrote: »

Existing customers were given an introductory offer if they wanted to change to Horizon box; zero activation and zero engineer installation and E2.50 monthly.

Much more palatable.

PeteK*

Also the box has a huge harddrive and can record four programs at once!

iDann

PeteK* wrote: »

Also the box has a huge harddrive and can record four programs at once!

Thought it was 6? :P

grindle

Not sure with that smiley tongue there, but just in case... Six tuners, four with ability to record, the extra two to enable quick channel flicking (one tuner displayed on TV, the other pre-loaded with the next channel - not sure how that works when going up or down, maybe it defaults to whatever direction you're headed in, so if you make a switcharound it has a bit of lag... unless one of the four other tuners is free, in which case, fast in both directions... Which it should - who constantly needs to constantly record four channels?).

caelum

box is getting slated in holland.. too slow, freezes, unreliable wifi etc... however the interface looks fantastic! Also ive been told April 16th release by UPC

deadimmortal

caelum wrote: »

box is getting slated in holland.. too slow, freezes, unreliable wifi etc... however the interface looks fantastic! Also ive been told April 16th release by UPC

***Deleted by user***

PeteK*

deadimmortal wrote: »

Yes that is correct, its really bad, constant wifi issues, wifi modem is built in and always dropping connection, takes about 10 seconds for the channel to update when you change the channel, might say 19:00 "news" when actually the time is 22:00 and something else is on, interface is very very bad and busy, takes you about five presses of the back button to get back to the channel you were watching from the tv guide. Its not user friendly at all.

My normal box does that now!
Can take longer than ten seconds to adjust itself too.

I only have UPC because sky wouldn't put a dish on the roof of my apartment. They won't go above the second floor apparently.

But now, it was worth having the UPC over sky because it gives me the Internet too.

Sky now have broadband but I see a lot of people complaining on their forums.

Plus I like that UPC has all of the ITV and BBC channels on their normal listings instead of having to manually add them on sky.

Eamo71

deadimmortal wrote: »

Yes that is correct, its really bad, constant wifi issues, wifi modem is built in and always dropping connection, takes about 10 seconds for the channel to update when you change the channel, might say 19:00 "news" when actually the time is 22:00 and something else is on, interface is very very bad and busy, takes you about five presses of the back button to get back to the channel you were watching from the tv guide. Its not user friendly at all.

Is that from personal experience? One of the posters here Undutchable who's using it seems to think it's the bees knees. Different strokes etc... though from one of the recent videos posted it looks a bit over specced to me in some ways. Could cause confusion among less tech savvy users.
One of the posters who deleted his posts after talking about Horizon here sent me a PM and said the Irish user groups reaction was v positive but the main issues were:

"Some of the problems so far are:

3 hour provisioning
Some devices can't pick up the wifi
Wifi signal is poor in some rooms.
Problems with menu selection e.g video on demand and sharing from other devices."

Anyone know what three hour provisioning is?

Babaloo

Eamo71 wrote: »

Anyone know what three hour provisioning is?

That's typical problem report from customers when the provisioning time of service exceeds acceptable norm of 30 minutes.

deadimmortal

Eamo71 wrote: »

Is that from personal experience? One of the posters here Undutchable who's using it seems to think it's the bees knees. Different strokes etc... though from one of the recent videos posted it looks a bit over specced to me in some ways. Could cause confusion among less tech savvy users.
One of the posters who deleted his posts after talking about Horizon here sent me a PM and said the Irish user groups reaction was v positive but the main issues were:

"Some of the problems so far are:

3 hour provisioning
Some devices can't pick up the wifi
Wifi signal is poor in some rooms.
Problems with menu selection e.g video on demand and sharing from other devices."

Anyone know what three hour provisioning is?

***Deleted by user***

zg3409

grindle wrote: »

Not sure with that smiley tongue there, but just in case... Six tuners, four with ability to record,... who constantly needs to constantly record four channels?).

One of the reasons for 6 tuners is that this device also needs one tuner per second TV/laptop in the house. If you are watching TV in another room, on a multiroom box or laptop all the tuners are actually in the main horizon box. Take into account say a typical family with 3 teenage kids. Parents watching TV in sitting room, and kids each watching TV in 3 different bedrooms, that's 4 tuners used up. Then add one or two simultanous recordings and you could quite quickly reach more than 4 up to 6. I also assume live pause/rewind would use up one of the 4 recordings possible.

Regarding the wifi issues, it would be best to use computer ethernet cables when constant streaming. I don't use UPC's provided Wifi unit, but my own, right beside it, as it works better. If you have coverage issues you could run a computer cable and put a second wifi access point somewhere else in the house.

Another option is what I chose. My modem and wifi is mounted in the middle of the house, I ran a coax cable from the UPC wall point to the centre of the house. Thus one access point, equal distance to each room. I also have computer cables for faster downloading in each room.

I gave up on UPC for TV long ago, but might be tempted back if this box lives up to it's claims.

iDann

UPC on twitter are confirming that Horizon is coming to Ireland but they don't have a timeline for a release.
Where did people get the April and June dates?

Eamo71

Check out this video - recent interview with Balan Nair. mentions Horizon in Ireland and also future UPC plans. interestingly they're rolling out a mobile service in netherlands and switzerland.
http://lnkd.in/ftAHqC

StaticNoise

iDann wrote: »

UPC on twitter are confirming that Horizon is coming to Ireland but they don't have a timeline for a release.
Where did people get the April and June dates?

Firstly, UPC keep things secret, and they also have beta testers. For example, I was using the On Demand for quite some time before it was mentioned. There are testers of the Horizon box here who know more. UPC won't announce anything before it is launched. You'll hear it here first.

Eamo71 wrote: »

....interestingly they're rolling out a mobile service in netherlands and switzerland.

UPC mentioned before that mobile services interested them in Ireland. They'd be piggybacking if that comes to be.

Eamo71

StaticNoise wrote: »

Firstly, UPC keep things secret, and they also have beta testers. For example, I was using the On Demand for quite some time before it was mentioned. There are testers of the Horizon box here who know more. UPC won't announce anything before it is launched. You'll hear it here first.




UPC mentioned before that mobile services interested them in Ireland. They'd be piggybacking if that comes to be.

Indeed it has and t'was discussed here http://touch.boards.ie/thread/2056363401?page=1#post_73935859

patrickmooney

Eamo71 wrote: »

Check out this video - recent interview with Balan Nair. mentions Horizon in Ireland and also future UPC plans. interestingly they're rolling out a mobile service in netherlands and switzerland.
http://lnkd.in/ftAHqC

Rather excited by their Wifi for/4 all. With so many UPC SSIDs out there, enabling a second SSID may be a rather interesting offering.

PeteK*

iDann wrote: »

UPC on twitter are confirming that Horizon is coming to Ireland but they don't have a timeline for a release.
Where did people get the April and June dates?

I was chatting to UPC a few days ago, they told me April 18th.

Morf

Will the horizon box replace the broadband router too?

StaticNoise

PeteK* wrote: »

I was chatting to UPC a few days ago, they told me April 18th.

And my loyalty contract ends on the week following. I hope the loyalty department, and the guy I talk to EVERY year is there.

iDann

Morf wrote: »

Will the horizon box replace the broadband router too?

From what I read, it should