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

[jonathanpye]

One of the posts from Blulou , a VM forum representative from VM, stated the 360 had to be  a compromise for the UK although it is based on the liberty global system it is not supported by the cloud, hence the main box still needing the hard drive and that the diskless mini box is a downgrade on the previous multi room solution of 2 V6 boxes both with hard drives. I am not sure the reason behind the compromise but again I assume licensing / permissions on content.

[JitteryPinger]

So in reality, what people thought was an attempt to copy Sky is in theory not, its a cost cutting exercise the really in my eyes encourages move to Sky.

I'll be quite honest when I say I'm not a person that sits down in front daily or even more then once or twice a week, but was a nice idea that I could set a DVR to catch my week and then binge on it, however currently I'm getting no more than two or three days recording becuase it keeps re-recording old shows, even ones I've deleted.

I'm now left thinking I should of taken the deal with Sky for TV or not bothered at all.

I would argue that my contract does state V6 and that was primarily what I wanted sighting issues with 360 but install tech stated that there was no V6 boxes left in stock.

and then the harder reality hits when even if I was to get a V6 now, how long before the firmware is updated and TiVo is a something only the old CISCO/Samsung slabs will have.

and this comes at a time where all my Virgin accounts are now awaiting a randomly allocated over the odds price increase, which will lead to me being on the phone correcting for hours or days.

I actually want to know now what can one do about the getting this thing rid of, I feel that the contract is surely void as the ordered service was not delivered.

[V1lad]

So far my experience of 360 has been terrible, definitely a downgrade from TV6.

I have had numerous problems with recordings freezing and jumping, no thumbnails loading on saved and catch-up, catch-up only working about 10% of the time.  These are all known faults with the upgraded software on my box but no one appears to be doing anything about it, I can not get it rolled back and every time I phone support after an hour or so’s wait I get told someone will ring me back which they never do.  This is also not to mention the lack of a proper series link facility that just records episodes all over the place.  I am now in the process of trying to void my contract and move to sky.

my advice is avoid 360 for now.

[jonathanpye]

It looks modern though like sky q, that's were the similarities end!

I'm really not using VM box much anymore to be honest. Veiwing habits have changed in the last 12 months to mainly netflix and Disney plus through the tv apps and then ps4 pro. I however recorded doctor who and football over the holiday and went to the recordings whilst the shows were still on. I got the options of watch live or start at beginning, I selected start at beginning to low behold find and it started at the live point regardless of my selection  and I had to rewind to the start. So quite buggy still. Fearful of trying to record a series if reruns are included.

As I type, my wife complaining if a common VM BB issue,  latency and lag in on line gaming, via ethernet cable not wifi, and thatson gig1 !!

So a price rise for poor tv and internet.

[roy247]

Hi,

"As I type, my wife complaining if a common VM BB issue,  latency and lag in on line gaming, via ethernet cable not wifi, and thatson gig1 !!"

Not trying to defend Virgin (also I don't do gaming), but is it possible that it is the host website, also the 1gb can't be guaranteed back to any website, this is also the download speed so what's your upload speed. Have you done a speedtest which will give you a result between your fastest 2 points, only having 600Mb I usually get 600+ download but only 30+ upload usually on my PC, as I type this on my tablet it's 48/16. What you need to do if possible is do a test to your gaming website, as you will you know the speeds at the end of the day are limited by the website and it's  activity you are accessing.

[jonathanpye]

Thanks for the tip Roy. The game is fortnite on ps4 pro and we have ping monitoring on to view the latency. It happens at peak times. I use samknows real speed on my hub4 to measure bb speed before wifi via laptop. The speed can fluctuate as can latency, so much so the speed result once showed wifi faster than speed to hub which shows  how much it can vary in a short time frame.  I understand gig1 is to the hub and after this the speed is distributed to the connected devices so no one device gets 1 gig. I have 4 devices hard wired and about 10 devices on 

It could be fortnite servers but I'm certain its VM as issues appear on other devices at same time.

[paul_the_pie]

So to give you all an update. My V6 boxes that were due on the 29th of December didn't arrive. A call to customer services promised delivery on 31st of December and still they didn't arrive. After a lot of messing about I was finally promised they would be here yesterday. Sure enough they arrived but when I swapped them over they have the TV360 software on them. V6 box, V6 remote but TV360 software. Another call to customer services and apparently they will reset them to the old software remotely within the next 12 hours. Well that was 13 hours ago!! and guess what. Nothing. I guess that VM as a company have no accurate concept of time though as I'm still waiting for a managers call from December the 12th that was only supposed to be within 2 hours. I honestly though VM customer service couldn't get any worse, but here they are killing it. 5 weeks and counting for a managers call to a very unhappy very long time customer, 2 missing deliveries and 1 incorrect delivery. They are though very good at saying sorry, 5 times in 13 mins this morning is a record. Shame they as a company are not sorry enough to actually correct the problems myself and it seems a great many customers face day in day out. Sky here we come

[DJ_Shadow1966]

Hello

If you look on the bottom of the Box are these Arris boxes if they are not Arris boxes then I am afraid that the Tivo software will not run on them, the other boxes will only run the Horizon 4 software.

Regards Mike

[paul_the_pie]

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@DJ_Shadow1966 wrote:

Hello

If you look on the bottom of the Box are these Arris boxes if they are not Arris boxes then I am afraid that the Tivo software will not run on them, the other boxes will only run the Horizon 4 software.

Regards Mike

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They're both Arris boxes so I guess no reason why they shouldnt run Tivo

[Libanese]

Another "feature" that really gets up my nose is that you can't start watching a recording on one box and then continue on the other. Continue is only available on the box you start to watch the recording on. It is necessary to know exactly where you left off, and fast forward to that point.

This is basic stuff that is clearly too complicated for the Virgin developers to get right. Were allegedly on V4+ of the software but it's clear that is actually still in beta. They should be embarrassed at how bad 360 is.