UPC Horizon Set Top Box trial

dkane wrote: »

My Horizon box is being delivered today.
The biggest pain for me is going to be sorting out the desktop PC and phone.
Currently the UPC modem is upstairs beside PC and I have the phone wired up to all the phone sockets around the house.

I can understand from UPC's point of view that it is nice just having a single CPE unit with the Horizon box but it means I'm going to have to get a wireless interface for my PC and will have to move the phone to beside the box as I don't have either a LAN or phone socket near the TV and it's not practical to run either.

Has anyone else here with the same issue bought an 802.11n wireless interface for a desktop PC? Any recommendations? I'm also worried that placing the cordless phone base station next to the Horizon box will effect my WiFi signal...

mollser wrote: »

Installed the box on Saturday so had a couple of days using it - main points so far:

1. Now/Next browsing is poor as has been mentioned several times above. They need to add the basic functionality of the old boxes to quickly zoom through the channels and ability to scroll through the programs for the remainder of the evening. The old boxes (and sky, freesat and Samsung TV Saorview EPG) do this, and quickly - this is the single biggest failure of this box.

It is so slow to browse the now/next EPG through the channels - used to be able to continue watching RTE1 and have browsed right through the music channels in probably less than a minute, it seems to take that long to even get to the 200's at which stage I get bored. I have found that it is now more necessary to remember channel numbers to get to the channel you want quickly.

2. Page down/up in Guide. Very frustrating to have to go down one by one, if you hold the down/up button it scrolls quickly but you've little control as to how far it will go, it can go a bit nuts when you do this!

3. HD channels often lose the picture, only a reboot fixes it.

4. Deleting programs in the recordings menu - 5 button presses as above rather than a simple press of the blue button - wtf

5. Remote control - Not a major complaint, but the way it's designed really feels like you're using the 'back' of the control the whole time - you would expect the qwerty keyboard to feel like the back of it, not the front. Its to do with how the sides are angled.

6. Has locked up once so far, the 4 year old got very upset!

7. Doesn't skip over unsubscribed channels as it used to.

8. HD channels should replace their SD variants on the EPG, as Sky do.

9. Fast-forwarding though Recordings - still can't skip through playback minute by minute quickly, you have to leave it on fast forward until you get to where you want to be. Have never seen another box that is so primitive in this regard. UPC, take a look at Sky/Samsung as to how this should be implemented.

Pros

The picture quality is superb, I was amazed at the TG4 HD picture during the leinster game, the SD channels look better too.

The apps are great, loving the Irish Times and The Journal implementation of their apps, well done UPC on this part. The Dailymotion app is super too, will be very good when youtube works properly.

Broadband hasn't switched over yet, and am not looking forward to that either as the desktop is connected by Ethernet into the modem at present, expecting the speeds to drop significantly if that needs to rely on wifi.

I can't see this box replacing my media sharing between the Samsung Tv and Serviio from the desktop which works flawlessly and so smoothly, I think UPC have acknowledged that the horizon box won't manage large libraries well.

All in all the box is fast, guide loads instantly, channel changes are instantaneous, if they can fix the now/next browsing it will be a joy to use. But at the moment very frustrating because of the EPG and the fast forward failure.

Evilbart wrote: »

Friend of mine just received the self install package,turned everything on welcome screen appears but the remote will not function at all he changed batteries still no joy,as the technician installed mine I don't now if you have to activate the remote somehow with a self install or is he just so unlucky he got a dud remote any ideas

paulkeno wrote: »

Every so often my audio and video goes blank for a second, it can vary from an hour to a couple of seconds apart. its not the signal to the box because if I rewind I can watch the blanked out part. Is anyone else having this problem. I have a Philips TV (40PFL7605h), I read somewhere back that the box might have compatibility issues with Philips TV's. Its driving me mad at this stage, would it have anything to do with the HDMI cable, I did a self install and had to get a longer HDMI cable due to the box being wider than my shelf unit, and it now sits on top (HDMI cable is BUSH, not high speed, Argos was the only place open).

Not really impressed so far, the record 4 and watch a 5th program is one of few highlights. it would be better if it just showed us now and next program instead of having to press multiple buttons, way too many menus to go through to find stuff. Also in my recordings it doesn't tell you what series the show is from, just the episode (maybe I just cant see it). Also the buttons on the remote are a little too close together for my fat fingers, and a page up/down would have been nice to have.

overall I think the nerds in UPC were trying to be too clever with fancy interfaces and functions and left out the simple tasks most normal people used in the previous box. (press blue to delete show, now its press ok on show, press down 5 times to delete, which is right above the DELETE EVERYTHING option).

Back to my original problem, anyone know how to fix the intermittent loss of signal, if I cant get this fixed the box is going back, already getting an earful off the misses for changing over.

Technoprisoner wrote: »

engineer came today and there was nothing he could do to help...when i explained about the problems in Holland with philips tv's and the hdmi connection he knew what i was talking about as they had a similar problem when sky brought out its hd box apparently

gar wrote: »

Got this last week and overall happy enough.

I have had to restart the box twice. seemed to hang at 6am this morning according to the clock.

Picture has been grand.
Guide is a pain without a page up/down
Also not jumping through unsubscribed channels.
My wifi range seems to be improved compared to my old dlink 655 router.
I can't seem to assign fixed ip addresses but I have not tried that hard.
Seems to be having issues seeing the contents of my popcorn hour... no biggie.
not tried the on demand yet.
agree with previous comments that the menu is overly complicated.
I do like the channel preview when you are scrolling through the channel.

One thing I noticed which i liked was I was watching a program from the start and about half hour in i knew I would not see the end so hit record. came back to it the next day and it had recorded the whole episode not just from where I had pressed record.

Gar

goose06 wrote: »

This guy 37PFL8404H/12

http://www.p4c.philips.com/cgi-bin/dcbint/cpindex.pl?ctn=37PFL8404H/12&slg=en&scy=GB

I should say that once I set colour to RGB instead of automatic, previously I had thought it needed to be 1080i & RGB but it seems that have it set Auto appears to be the cause of the issues.

Technoprisoner wrote: »

you may have gotten lucky. heres a list of tvs that are having the problem with horizon....have a look at how many philips models seem to have a problem

http://www.supportforum.philips.com/en/archive/index.php/t-8514.html

thing is my model isnt on that list so you can add the 42pfl7606h/12 to the list

Hootanany wrote: »

I was told by the Rep the trial is over and it just a pre release machine

cisk wrote: »

Jesus, did you have the poor lad messing about on your laptop, surely that part is for the end user to do.