Positive Horizon Experiences

hursty1886

Is there any? Moving house and looking at all options, looks great on paper but obviously there seems to be problems. Has anybody had any hassle free good experiences with it?

Cheers in advance

coylemj

In the interests of balance I'd have to say there are good things about the Horizon box of which the ability to record four programs at the same time is one of them and the players are useful if you don't have a Smart TV or if like me you do but they (Phillips) haven't updated the s/w in 4 years. I have had no problems at all with the Wi-Fi coverage around the house.

The menus could certainly be a bit faster and I would really like to be able to set a lower timeout on the text menu that comes up in the lower part of the screen when you change channel - five seconds is waaaaaay too long for my liking. The lack of ability to delete all episodes of a series recording is currently the biggest negative but they have promised to fix this.

My laptop is upstairs connected via Wi-Fi, the Horizon box is downstairs under the TV. Here's the numbers from 17:51 today......

hursty1886

Really appreciate yourself taking the time to post that reply, really leaning towards giving it a go, is the HD genuine HD?

coylemj

hursty1886 wrote: »

is the HD genuine HD?

Yes, when I'm watching a HD channel my Onkyo AV receiver says it's getting 1920 x 1080p video and Dolby Digital audio.

mackersdublin

coylemj wrote: »

Yes, when I'm watching a HD channel my Onkyo AV receiver says it's getting 1920 x 1080p video and Dolby Digital audio.

Unfortunately no Dolby Digital on the Irish HD channels, just the UK ones

coylemj

mackersdublin wrote: »

Unfortunately no Dolby Digital on the Irish HD channels, just the UK ones

+1 I meant to say that I was watching BBC1 at the time, I was aware that certain channels only have basic stereo so the Dolby sign doesn't light up on the AV receiver.

Just checked UTV there and it's also in DD, the picture quality is also infinitely better than in the pre-Horizon days when it was the worst picture of any channel.

former legend

hursty1886 wrote: »

Is there any? Moving house and looking at all options, looks great on paper but obviously there seems to be problems. Has anybody had any hassle free good experiences with it?

Cheers in advance

I was on the trial before the official launch, so have it well over a year now and very happy with it.

Picture quality in HD is very good, never any issues with BB speed. Don't use the home phone aspect of it.

Edit: and the sound quality from the digital radio stations is lovely.

Heisenberg1

former legend wrote: »

I was on the trial before the official launch, so have it well over a year now and very happy with it.

Picture quality in HD is very good, never any issues with BB speed. Don't use the home phone aspect of it.

Ditto I second this I haven't had any issues and the HD is excellent no issues with the wifi. As others have said the menus could be a little faster. Overall I am very happy with Horizon

daphil

Have to agree. I've had Horizon for quite a few months now. Out of box it worked fine from day one. No problems with wi-fi. There would be three laptops on the internet most evenings in my house and none are hard wired, as there is no need. Once or twice have had to turn off and on again, but I've even had to do that with my Humax box, which is probably the best Freesat box around..
I can watch programs on my phone or Tablet anywhere in the house, (and indeed outside the house).
I switched my phone to UPC at the same time and now have three extensions working perfectly.
Maybe I was just lucky and perhaps the Interface is a bit slower that Sky, but I would not lose any sleep over the remote/interface being half a second slower.

Jerzual

I've also been very happy with horizon, no issues with wifi coverage etc. Picture quality is great too. Menus could be faster but overall I find it to be an improvement over the previous boxes. The slowness of the menus could be fixed with a software update, it's not a problem with the hardware itself per se. I suppose it's worth remembering that most people post up here when they're having a problem, you seldom see the opposite!

Wabbit Ears

Ive had one since the very first beta code release and Theres been huge improvement made since then, Many of the neighsayers say that nothings ever been fixed really haven't been following it from the beginning! I also have never had any issues with wifi and the wired gigabit connections are nothing short of amazing. Picture quality is top notch.

Its not perfect, but once you get used to it, Its very differet to their old boxes and sky boxes, its pretty good.

Still really needs page up/page down, skip forward, skip backward and skip day in the guide..

catfax

How fast does the box take to turn on ?

We have one of the older Cisco PVR's from UPC and the thing takes freaking forever, it's faster to start Netflix then it is to watch regular old TV.

coylemj

catfax wrote: »

How fast does the box take to turn on ?

We have one of the older Cisco PVR's from UPC and the thing takes freaking forever, it's faster to start Netflix then it is to watch regular old TV.

The big factor there is the power setting on standby, the less juice it uses in standby mode, the longer it takes to boot up, same with my Sony Blu-Ray player. It's your choice but if the power-up sequence is taking too long, set it to a higher power (on standby) setting.