Bring back TIVO!

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jonandmarkuk wrote:

As the V6 boxes age they will be replaced by TV360

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Faulty equipment will be replaced like-for-like.

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jonandmarkuk wrote:

Unfortunately I agree. The TV360 is missing so many of the TiVo features. As the V6 boxes age they will be replaced by TV360 so virgin can save licencing fees for the TiVo platform. I had hoped that the TV360 would be much better and I've yet to see any revolutionary new features being added. I don't see the point of the posts about updates when all that they have done is added an extra icon or changed the colour of something.

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As has been said on many occasions, the Horizon TV platform is developed & run by VMs parent company, who use it in numerous other cable operations in the rest of Europe. It is a streaming centric platform that is built around cloud recording & is now in its 5th generation. Because of current broadcaster restrictions in the UK which necessitates local hard disk use, many customers are not aware it has a server driven system at its core. This causes lots of problems with modifications, as the boxes play far less of a role in the recordings side than they used too. Also there are several features that are TiVO patented & are not transferable to Horizon.

As time moves on & VM moves away from traditional broadcast cable services to IPTV, one of two things will happen. Either VM will move to a cloud recording format (which obviously means new broadcaster agreements), or the ability to record will be lost, meaning a reliance on catch-up services as the only option on Pay TV services.

Using mobile site to reply so I can't use quotes, but....

On "neither of the BBC1 channels gives the correct local content" has nothing to do with V6 vs TV360 - the channel provision is network-driven not software-driven (excepting the HD-swap).

The BBC1 regions are fed from the regional head-ends to all TiVo, V6 & TV360 boxes without discrimination.

docmac21 

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docmac21 wrote:

The BBC1 Breakfast programme gave me Hampshire local news and weather up until the change from V6 to TV360 - now I get a choice of London or Wales!

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Where in the country are you? And what do you mean by "get a choice"? - are you choosing 101 vs an alternative region under the 85x positions? Fellow VIP nodrogd might have a theory on this - I don't follow BBC Breakfast but suspect there may be a quirk with the opt-outs here

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docmac21 wrote:

I am in Hampshire. I have been trying BBC1 on channel 101 with London local news and on channel 864 (I now see this is for Wales). I see now that there are 4 'extra' BBC1 channels 861, 862, 863 and 864 but none of them give me Hampshire. It must be that they used to stream a non-HD BBC1 channel that gave me local news but the HD ones do not do this. So the  channels have not  changed, it's just that I cannot get non-HD BBC1. It is still a loss.

V6 also used to let me do 'manual recordings (I could set the exact start and end times) so that I could pick out the local weather at 8:45 in the morning.

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If the channel banner at the bottom of the screen differs from the region you are getting then it is a BBC problem & is temporary. Northern parts of Hampshire are fed from the Guildford headend, so get London programmes on 101 & 103. In the overlap area you should get alternate regions on 858 for BBC & 870 or 871 for ITV. The national regions in the 861-865 range are seen by all customers.

V360 Horizon does not have a manual record option, mainly due to it being developed for cloud recording where you cannot overlap programmes.

Have you looked at channel 858?

Liberty Global has had a team developing Horizon 4 for several years, and TiVo licence-paying will come to an end. It would be madness to do otherwise. Futhermore TiVo is not being developed but we do get Horizon releases. Some people grumble about Horizon but the 360 performs all the key functions of a STB perfectly well, and has voice control which I find a substantial benefit.

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Red_Wimp wrote:

I wish we could hear something from the VM hierarchy that they are listening and that they are looking to develop the software to answer some of the criticisms (or should I phrase suggestions for improvement).  I accept that not everything could come at once but if customers could see some path forward it might stave off a lot off dissatisfied customers. 

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The scope for "development" is limited as the core firmware is not VM property but that if it's parent company. Horizon has been going for 10 years now across the rest of Europe as a cloud recording medium. It has had to be heavily modified to plicate the broadcasting agreements in the UK & Ireland, which restrict recordings to being stored at the address the account is held. Furthermore, the traditional cable services used by V360 are being abandoned by VM over the coming years where V360 will be replaced by diskless Flex/Stream boxes across the entire network. I am now hearing the first hints that cloud recording may be on the way, but it will be broadcaster dependent & some will still force you onto catch-up services to impose advertising on you whether you like it or not.