TV 360 - A Step Backwards

[Libanese]

I've now had the TV 360 for a week and a half and, although there are a couple of good things, such as voice control, too many things are just a step backwards from Tivo 6 -

1. No quick TV guide available, just the full guide or single channel display at the bottom of the screen
2. Features that used to be one or two button presses away now need 4 or 5 presses. Accessing recordings being a case in point
3. Not being able to specify new recordings only. After 10 days, my hard drive (single, see next point) is 23% full, mainly with repeats I didn't want after setting up series links
4. On that note, my storage space has been reduced by half, thanks to there being no drive in the mini box
5. Not being able to pause live TV on the mini box for more than 2 minutes. Then, once it starts playing, you can't pause again until you've caught up to Live TV. I mean, what is the point of that?
6. No quick access to programme info. Even when you do access it, you get a full screen promo image which completely covers what it is you're watching
7. With Tivo 6, after rewinding it was easy to go straight back to Live TV by pressing the Stop button. With 360, you have to fast forward until it tells you you're watching Live TV
8. Speaking of the remote, the shapes and textures for main buttons are nowhere near pronounced enough. It's almost impossible to use without looking directly at it

Before answering, assuming you are so inclined, please consider this. I do not accept "it's early days" as an excuse. The software is v4.26, which implies it's been through 3 major revisions and dozens of sub-versions. Basically, it should be much better than it is. I don't see Virgin reducing my monthly cost if they are considering me a beta tester. I also don't see them reducing the cost after giving me a botch job of a second box when I had 2 fully functioning Tivo 6 boxes up to last week.

I suppose I should expect Virgin to have made a pig's ear of it, just like they always do, but I thought that, maybe this time, they had it right. I should have known better

[Libanese]

It's not the decision that was bad, it's the product

[John_Cranmer]

An engineer called and swapped the old V6 boxes for a 360 and a mini.  The good news is that the search function now works.  The bad news not much else does.

The new boxes are showing the programs that were recorded on the V6 boxes ??!!!!!.  Of course I cannot watch them but I also cannot delete them and their presence seems to be stopping me recording more in the same series.  If I try to record a new program that was not on the old box it works. 

A factory reset on the 360 did not change anything.  I am puzzled where the old recorded program information is being stored.

What a [REMOVED] mess !!

 [MOD EDIT: Inappropriate language removed, please review the Forum Guidelines]

[jonathanpye]

I dont even understand how your new equipment can show old equipment recordings  as they are not stored in the cloud but in the hard drive. Even if  you convert existing v6 to tv360 you are warned you will lose your existing recordings. It sounds like your old v6 was upgraded but the recording index was retained yet the actual recordings lost yet you say it's a new box?

[JitteryPinger]

I was forced to take 360 over V6.

Virgin have now said they're happy to end contract but that's beyond the point really.

I'll see how it matures but my guessing is this will be the experiance the kills pay tv services for me.

[paul_the_pie]

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@John_Cranmer wrote:

What a disaster.  We had 2 perfectly working V6 boxes but were forced to "upgrade" these to 360 .  Stacks of errors the worst of which as a non functioning search on either box plus we cannot see the saved programs across the boxes.

After 6 weeks of phone calls we are now due to have the two boxes replaced with 360 boxes what have half the storage capacity between them.

The so called tech support was useless no difference between the Indian staff and those in England.  They are all reading from the same script "Turn off the box, turn it back on.  It should work now.  No what is the error code shown CS 8400 Oh I do not have that one I will have to refer it.  We will ring you back.

Of course they never did. 

We will see what happens today with the new install but will probably look at Sky.

John

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We weren't so much forced as duped into taking the 360 boxes, we were offered an "upgrade" and a slightly reduced contract. As I've pointed out to everyone at VM that I've spoken to, these are not by any stretch of the imagination an upgrade for me. They have made the easiest tasks difficult or impossible, the hardware has problems with sound drop outs, sync issues. The software has less functions than V6 and the biggest issue is a 50% loss of storage if you had 2 V6 boxes. After 5 weeks of to-ing and fro-ing 3 failed attempts at a resolution we finally have 2  V6 boxes back with the tivo software. I appreciate that sooner or later we'll have to go over to TV360 but hopefully by then they'll have run a steamroller over the massive kinks in it and have a working system that is fit for purpose

[Libanese]

I'm adding another downgrade to the list

With V6, if a series link was created part way through a season, V6 would automatically get available episodes from catch up.

With 360, you have to actively go and find them. Awful system

[Ernie_C]

Use a Watchlist, instead of recording.

[tafrock]

Alternatively click the ... Button whilst watching the episode you are currently watching. Move down to all episodes and it lists all episodes either due for broadcast or previously broadcast and available on catch up. It even lists all episodes you have recorded. This is pretty much what v6 did when you had show all including streaming chosen as an option. It's not an inferior product it's just different. Sadly some people don't like change 

[G4DDS]

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@paul_the_pie wrote:The software has less functions than V6 and the biggest issue is a 50% loss of storage if you had 2 V6 boxes.

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We have 3 V6 boxes and quite often are utilising more than 7 tuners across all 3 boxes so a single 360 and two mini's would be a serious cut in flexibility.  I hope by the time we are forced to upgrade you can opt in to have 3 360 boxes permanently (and have them all linked so they can see each others recordings like the V6's) with no mini's.

[John_Cranmer]

My problems still continue and I will get to that in a next message but let me clear up one point about saying we were forced to the 360 system as some seem to have not understood what I said.

We were offered the voice activated handsets in an email.  This sounded a good idea and we asked for the when they arrived they worked with the V6 system. So far no "force" involved.  Two days later both TV showed a screen requiring the upgrade.  We knew that this would loose our recordings.  Speaking with the 150 system we were told that there was no way out of this but to change to 360.  In the end that proved correct and hence the forced statement in my original post.

No we were not forced to use the new handsets

Yes we were forced onto the 360 system

John.

.