UPC DVR - Could be better - Bugs & Gripes

Archu · 21-05-2008 01:03PM #1

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 · 21-05-2008 02:53PM

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 · 21-05-2008 04:35PM

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 · 22-05-2008 03:18PM

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 · 22-05-2008 09:21PM

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 · 22-05-2008 10:15PM

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 · 23-05-2008 11:25AM

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 · 23-05-2008 01:08PM

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 · 25-05-2008 08:09PM

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 · 27-05-2008 11:41AM

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

Alun · 27-05-2008 11:44AM

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 · 27-05-2008 11:45AM

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 · 27-05-2008 11:58AM

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 · 27-05-2008 12:12PM

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 · 27-05-2008 12:20PM

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 · 27-05-2008 12:37PM

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 · 29-05-2008 08:30PM

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 · 17-06-2008 08:49AM

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 · 17-06-2008 10:26AM

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 · 17-06-2008 10:55AM

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 · 17-06-2008 11:44AM

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 · 17-06-2008 12:34PM

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 · 18-06-2008 01:00PM

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 · 04-07-2008 11:39AM

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 · 07-07-2008 01:31AM

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 · 07-07-2008 08:46AM

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 · 07-07-2008 09:08AM

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 · 07-07-2008 01:11PM

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 · 07-07-2008 02:09PM

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 · 07-07-2008 03:39PM

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

murpho999 · 07-07-2008 04:04PM

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.

UPC DVR - Could be better - Bugs & Gripes

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