UPC Horizon Launched

er1983 wrote: »

Hi received the horizon box today and set reminders for programmes but reminders never came up, anyone have any idea???

LLMMML wrote: »

When I first heard about Horizon, I thought it sounded great and ordered it. Then I read this thread. I seriously considered not installing it and giving it back as part of the cooling off period, and try to get a shared dish installed in my apartment building for Sky. In the end I decided to give Horizon a go, and I'm glad I did. It works pretty damn good for me. Its definitely not as good as the Sky box but (for me) its just a few minor niggles rather than issues that make it unusable.

1. The guide. Not being able to scroll through pages at a time is definitely irritating. Its also slower than Sky. Now this doesn't mean you press down on the remote and wait ages for it to change as some people have said. Its just fractions of a second slower than Sky, but it is noticeable. I think there are two possible issues. One is the little screen that gives a preview of what's on the channel you've highlighted (this is pointless and is a feature that probably sounded better on paper than in practice, get rid of it). The second is the logos for the channels. when you highlight that channel in the guide the logo becomes bigger. I wonder are these little animations slowing the whole thing down. Sky's guide has absolutely no frills, and if its a case of pointless frills versus speed, I'd take speed anyday. I can't decide which is better : Sky minimizing the channel you're watching and putting it in a corner while checking the guide, or Horizon making the guide transparent so you can still see the full picture in the background while checking the guide. With Horizon you can change the transparency level but it kind of interferes with being able to see the guide. You can either make it very transparent so you can follow the background program but make it hard to see the guide, or vice versa. But its not a big issue.

2. Channel info and program info. Much more intrusive than Sky's. When I change channel on Sky, the channel and programme name are in a little bar at the bottom. I press back up if it bothers me and its instantly gone. With Horizon you get another transparent bar, but its BIG, taking up a third of the bottom of the screen and a bit at the tops for some unknown reason. It also take two clicks of back up to get rid of all the info that comes up.

3. Remote control responsiveness. Definitely not as responsive as Sky's. It seems to be the box software rather than a remote control issue. With Sky if I go to a menu and then go into another menu and then another (so I'm 3 menus deep), to get back to the main screen I could press backup 3 times very quickly on the remote. With Horizon you have to press back up, wait until it actually backs up, then press again, then wait, then press again. So with Sky it doesn't matter if the box is a bit slow at a certain time, it remembers what you've pressed and will execute it eventually. Now when I say you have to wait with Horizon, you don't have to wait long, but its a little noticeable after coming from Sky.

4. Search. Since I hadn't heard anything about search in this thread I was worried there would be no search feature but there is and it works quite well. But again Sky's is just a bit better. With Sky you type in the first 10 or so letters of the show and it will find it (now there are problems if you are not precise or you include "the" at the start etc.). With Horizon you can put in one search word (as far as I can see so far). So if you're looking for "low winter sun" you can only really put in "low" or "winter" or "sun", which can be a bit vague as search terms and give a lot of irrelevant results. Maybe you can put in actor's names and it will find those (unlike Sky) so maybe it is more open-ended but I haven't tested that yet. My main problem is with the organization of results. With Sky it groups all the individual episodes showing that week by the channel they are on, and within that grouping they are in chronological order. I just can't figure out how Horizon is grouping them. For example I looked up "Bones". It lumped all the weeks episodes into two groups. One of the groups had it ias a 60 minute drama show, the other as a 50 minute crime show (the episodes on in the middle of the night with less ads. Once you go into one of these groupings the episodes seem to be in no particular order with Wednesday's episodes being listed before Monday's etc.

Anyway these are my initial observations. All the above are relatively minor and haven't impacted my overall enjoyment. I would definitely recommend the system. I would say they are in Sky's league but still Sky are Top Dog. I think if UPC listened to this feedback and made some minor changes (which they don't seem intent on doing) they could be Sky's equal.