Horizon TV- Awful?

SteM

daphil wrote: »

Programs available on Android for some time. I can watch programs in my garden shed, on phone or Tablet.
guess I have been lucky, UI a bit chunky, but apart from that, am very happy

That's why I said 'were'.

Wabbit Ears

beauf wrote: »

I don't get it. why do the stations have a say in it?

You'd be amazed at what details are involved in contents rights discussions.

beauf

Its a different order on analog. The order the digital service is very messy. The favourites system is quite poor also.

Paused the TV earlier this morning to take a phone call and when I started playing it again the audio was out of sync and then disappeared entirely seconds before lines appeared all across the screen and it froze. Ended up dumping me back to the live TV and when I tried rewinding it back there was nothing there. Decided to see if I could repeat the problem and on 4 separate channels the issue reoccurred. UPC's phone support suggested a factory reset as they had never heard of such an issue before. When I mentioned that I had dozens of films and TV shows saved on the box they had no other suggestions and the attitude they had was "tough luck".

SteM

Anyone else get the email from UPC today titled 'Wi-Fi hints and tips from UPC'?

1) Keep your browser up-to-date
2) Select the best Wi-Fi channel by rebooting your modem
3) Location and obstacles
Try to position your Horizon TV HD+ box in a central location within the home, ensure it is up off the floor and remove any clutter from around it as this can help to spread the signal far and wide.

#3 made me laugh. The Horizon box has to be connected to the TV so 99% of the time it will be in a sitting room, how many homes have their sitting room as the 'central location within the home'? Beside that, I had a crap wi-fi signal from the Horizon box, they replaced it with a separate router that is sitting in the exact same spot and the signal is so much stronger and more stable it's a joke.

Again, this is just UPC failing to acknowledge that their new box is a turkey.

Giruilla

SteM wrote: »

Again, this is just UPC failing to acknowledge that their new box is a turkey.

Refusing to take responsibility for product issues equates to 'unable to fix it'.

ted1

Zascar wrote: »

All the above is spot on and much of it said before. Interesting points by Giruilla which I had wondered about - based on xbmc but totally sh1t. .

this is the crowd who developed the software

http://www.intellicore.tv/case-studies/ndss-snowflake-10-11-12/

ted1

AlanS181824 wrote: »

Pretty simple solution for you all - Switch to Sky!

More channels, exclusive content, a fluid interface etc.

But seriously, I was looking at a friends Horizon box and although it's a pretty good idea, having everything in one it is terribly slow.

The WiFi range is brutal as well.

You press a button and wait 10 seconds and then it might load, meanwhile on Sky you press a button and it's instant.

nope for the package i'm on Sky is about twice the price, and that results in much lower broadband.

icdg

beauf wrote: »

..ok but at least beside each other...

Would create problems for non-HD users. Remember that HD-swapping is implemented only on the Horizon platform. Mediabox users get their HD terrestrial channels on 135-141 and their are all together there. The current solution annoys the least number of people.

Also moving BBC Two HD to 110 would require the renumbering of a number of channels in the entertainment category, 119 I think is the next blank number.

beauf

Ok. Then I guess they need to make the favourites better. As the numbers aren't useful for normal channel switching.

AlanS181824

ted1 wrote: »

nope for the package i'm on Sky is about twice the price, and that results in much lower broadband.

I have Vodafone 100/20 Fibre internet and I choose that over UPC.

Sky's TV is far far superior to UPC, more channels, better interface, growing On Demand.

But UPCs internet is better than Sky's.

ted1

AlanS181824 wrote: »

I have Vodafone 100/20 Fibre internet and I choose that over UPC.

Sky's TV is far far superior to UPC, more channels, better interface, growing On Demand.

But UPCs internet is better than Sky's.

I have 200mb with UPC and won't use copper for my broadband.

They have more channels but there all ****e. sky Atlantic is the only additional channel that I would want.

To get the bundle I have with multiroom and HD costs about 50 euro extra a month.

I also think that Sky have destroyed the astetetics of the country with they way they mount the dishes on to the easiest place possible.

who_me

Giruilla wrote: »

Refusing to take responsibility for product issues equates to 'unable to fix it'.

The thing that bugs me is - the Horizon box has no external antenna. The Cisco router it replaced had no external antenna (though my initial Cisco UPC router before that did).The new router I bought has 3 (supporting MIMO functionality), and offers exceptional Wifi performance by comparison.

Do UPC have some kind of magic Wifi that they think they can achieve adequate strength/range without antennae?

MagicMarker

Can anyone tell me what the usb slot in the back of the box is for, my flatmate plugged in her external hardrive to it in the hope of watching something, but we couldn't find any 'devices' or anything?

I assume it's not possible to do this?

Wabbit Ears

it says its not used in the manual that comes with the box.

Max Headroom

After having terrible issues with the Horizon box they eventually gave in and sent a new box out on tuesday....happy days ......or so i thought..now the new box is starting to show the same issues as the old one...remote not working, freezing on "on demand",or no sound.......its a piece of crap tbh....thinkin of gettin a dodgy box again...:rolleyes:

So far today I have had to go out and plug out our Horizion box 12 times in order to get the wifi working.

bajer101

To all the people who are having problems with the Horizon box, just do what I did - send it back and ask them to give you the old HD box with separate router. Sure, you won't be able to record 4 programs at once - although that's not much of a loss. By the time you'd browse to 4 programs you want to record, they'd be finished! And you won't have the built in DLNA server - but that never worked for me anyway, and I already had three devices sitting under the TV that did that anyway. You will also lose the benefit of having everything integrated into one device which saves you some plug sockets. You will become very familiar with this plug socket as you repeatedly get up from the sofa and plug it out and back in again when the box locks up, losing your internet and TV and phone at the same time. You may also miss the fancy remote control with the keyboard on the back, which you will never use. On the plus side, the old HD box and separate router - while not the best - are state of the art compared to the horizon box.

CyCaboose

Giruilla wrote: »

I'm absolutely baffled as to how there is anyone on here actually defending the horizon box, and especially its UI and 'channel browsing'.

There are so many things wrong with the box its beyond belief that they had the chutzpah to release it.

Its like the UI actively discourages channel browsing.. slow to change channel (takes a second - this is a fact - how can anyone dispute this?), and having now and next on separate screens that are slow to change between them is fundamentally illogical.

I've worked in this industry, and my guess is the box was a rush job on a tight budget. Corners were clearly cut in regards to testing.. and processing speed for RF interface to CPU transactions is in a word - shoddy.
The whole GUI is clearly based on the open source XBMC..
which I've used on the PC, and certainly doesn't have speed issues.. so I don't understand how whoever designed the box messed it up so badly.
The fact that people have had so many problems with the box screams rush job.. but what I can't understand are the basic basic problems the box has in terms of channel browsing. Did they take any user feedback whatsoever?!

that baffles me as well, I mean the box is so slow I don't understand how someone in their production department made this thing, showed it off to managing directors and everyone said "yes, this is great, a joy to use".

heres the thing though, and this is the very scary point. Horizon is new to Ireland, but Horizon is NOT new. UPC in Netherlands have had this very same Samsung Horizon box with the same user interface for over a year, it came out in September 2012 there. So all UPC Ireland had to do was re-use the same box and build their back-end infrastructure. The issues on this box are not related to their back-end infrastructure... the issues are that the box is SLOW and the software is sloppily put together.

For a product that went live in 2012, you'd expect this to be far more optimised than it currently is... so yeh, I don't hold out for much hope that UPC are working on improving this. Again I don't know how they don't get embarrassed by this - surely when they market this and create ad's they have to get a company to make up a mock up demo interface so it looks smooth and seamless.

Oh also, the UI is not XBMC, it is NDS Snowflake, NDS is a subsidiary of Cisco.

Does anyone have a box that smoothly scrolls through the guide and is responsive without any delay? Some people said they did.. not sure if this is a case of faulty boxes people have or what? Do majority of people have slow user interface?

Wabbit Ears

Nds (cisco) snowflake is based on an earlier version of XBMC 9.11

Read this thread for example:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=144090

Anyone else encounter an issue where the box likes to broadcast programmes in 4:3 until you plug out the box. UPC suggested that I do a factory reset and when I asked what happens all my recordings they implied that I could easily download them.

CyCaboose

Wabbit Ears wrote: »

Nds (cisco) snowflake is based on an earlier version of XBMC 9.11

Read this thread for example:

wow really? didn't think it could be sold like that to UPC since its open source, anyway.

might explain why its so slow then, I seem to recall XBMC had a lot of inefficiencies in its code.. old code from the old Xbox 1 days that still existed... one was the whole 'Dirty Regions' thing, where menus would consume all of the GPU rendering every single frame which made everything slow. Horizon doesn't have a beefy processor so if thats an issue no wonder its slow. Although this is not so much an issue now as there is that option in XBMC to enable dirty regions that stops the rendering of every frame, but I wouldn't be surprised if UPC don't have that feature or don't have it enabled - because the menus are awfully slow. The video playback is fine, its just the menus for me

You mentioned it was based off XBMC v9.11.... Dirty Regions option to prevent this 'lag' was only introduced in XBMC v11

Pity we can't load a custom version of XBMC on the box

CyCaboose

Deleted User wrote: »

Anyone else encounter an issue where the box likes to broadcast programmes in 4:3 until you plug out the box. UPC suggested that I do a factory reset and when I asked what happens all my recordings they implied that I could easily download them.

it would sometimes switch to 4:3 for me on certain programs/channels but I think I changed a setting in Settings for the Aspect Ratio to stay in letterbox or 16:9, whatever it was - haven't noticed it doing it lately

CyCaboose

CyCaboose wrote: »

it would sometimes switch to 4:3 for me on certain programs/channels but I think I changed a setting in Settings for the Aspect Ratio to stay in letterbox or 16:9, whatever it was - haven't noticed it doing it lately

I've it set to keep everything in its native aspect ratio but the box has a habit of turning 16:9 broadcasts into 4:3. Can happen in the middle of a show, during an ad break or while accessing the menu.

paulboland

Deleted User wrote: »

Anyone else encounter an issue where the box likes to broadcast programmes in 4:3 until you plug out the box. UPC suggested that I do a factory reset and when I asked what happens all my recordings they implied that I could easily download them.

Audio/Video Settings
Video Settings
Format Conversion

Fullscreen (Stretch)

This will fill out your TV Screen

Note some broadcasts are fixed to 4:3 or can have mixed content of 16:9 and 4:3 and cant be changed by Horizon but if your TV has Zoom Function you can use this if needed

Horizon Video Settings
Fullscreen (Stretch) Works best I find instead of using Pillarbox or Fullscreen (Zoom)

paulboland

paulboland wrote: »

Audio/Video Settings
Video Settings
Format Conversion

Fullscreen (Stretch)

This will fill out your TV Screen

Note some broadcasts are fixed to 4:3 or can have mixed content of 16:9 and 4:3 and cant be changed by Horizon but if your TV has Zoom Function you can use this if needed

Horizon Video Settings
Fullscreen (Stretch) Works best I find instead of using Pillarbox or Fullscreen (Zoom)

I know how to set the box up and keep native aspect ratio. My problem is that recordings which were in a 16:9 or such aspect ratio are playing back in 4:3. I don't want to have to zoom in or stretch a picture and run the aesthetic.

Queen-Mise

Is there a series link on this Horizon box? Will it record all the episode of Coronation Street for me, for example?

* I do not watch Corrie. Honest.

Press record and then select record series instead of record once.

Press record and then select record series instead of record once.

Giruilla

CyCaboose wrote: »

that baffles me as well, I mean the box is so slow I don't understand how someone in their production department made this thing, showed it off to managing directors and everyone said "yes, this is great, a joy to use".

heres the thing though, and this is the very scary point. Horizon is new to Ireland, but Horizon is NOT new. UPC in Netherlands have had this very same Samsung Horizon box with the same user interface for over a year, it came out in September 2012 there. So all UPC Ireland had to do was re-use the same box and build their back-end infrastructure. The issues on this box are not related to their back-end infrastructure... the issues are that the box is SLOW and the software is sloppily put together.

For a product that went live in 2012, you'd expect this to be far more optimised than it currently is... so yeh, I don't hold out for much hope that UPC are working on improving this. Again I don't know how they don't get embarrassed by this - surely when they market this and create ad's they have to get a company to make up a mock up demo interface so it looks smooth and seamless.

I can't believe any product/usability manager was happy with it. They must have reluctantly shipped it out under the promise that OTA upgrades would be forthcoming and they needed to get production started straight away. And since then theres been either no drive to upgrade the box, or my guess.. no money.
As you said, its been out since 2012.. and they're basically refusing to acknowledge problems with the box.. so if an upgrade hasn't come out by now, when IS it going to come?

CyCaboose wrote: »

Does anyone have a box that smoothly scrolls through the guide and is responsive without any delay? Some people said they did.. not sure if this is a case of faulty boxes people have or what? Do majority of people have slow user interface?

I don't believe for a second anyone has a smooth scrolling, responsive guide. Presume some people just have lower expectations.
Theres fundamental problems with the horizon RF signal receiver to transaction speed.