Upgrade Tivo6 to Tivo360

[Kentrainbuff]

Have just upgraded(?) From dual Tivo6 environment to a Tivo360 with secondary box.

First impressions are this does not seem to be an upgrade for following reasons. If some of these are wrong or can be achieved on a Tivo360 then please let me know. Otherwise i feel i have been cheated and instead of an upgrade i have actually got downgraded!

• Tivo360 only gives 2 min pause/rewind of live TV. Tivo6 you could rewind back to start of programme seemingly up to an hour it felt like.
• Cannot recover deleted programmes on Tivo360.
• Cannot play at fast pace with audio like Tivo6 has.
• Cannot edit Series record settings to specifically ignore streaming/reruns or specify a particular series only
• No ability to see learnt suggestions
• When in guide can only search programme titles, cannot search channel name to find in list ( very useful on app, missing from new app)
• No STOP button just play/pause. So to stop and delete recording and return to live TV from a recorded programme have to press BACK button, delete then go to live TV in a messy series of buttons
• No easy ability to see when programme was first transmitted when looking at info in guide.
• Reduced ability to explore programme to see other details/series/episodes
• Unlike dual TIVO6 environment where each is autonomous doing own recordings, if the TIVO360 main box fails (or is say switched off for decorating) then the smaller TIVO360 box cannot record or play recordings as they are on the main box

Am I missing something or is  TIVO6 with APP a much more user friendly environment with more features. I am seriously thinking of asking for my two TIVO6 boxes back.

Regards

Ken

[DJ_Shadow1966 · Accepted solution]

Hello

At the moment the v360 box is on an extend customer trial and the software may change before it goes live to all customers, and from what I have been told once you are on the v360 there is no option to go back to the v6 box. One of the trail team will get back to you on this.

@TrialsTeamcan somebody please pick this up.

Regards Mike

[dannylau · Accepted solution]

The 360 is currently in Beta so ecpect a lot of updates and improvements

When you set a series link let's say season 5 it will record season 5,6,7 but not seasons 4.3.2,1

There are two searches on the guide page in the app one searches for a channel the other for a program

[G4DDS · Accepted solution]

When I switched to V6 boxes I thought that Virgin were finally on the right track and know have a system which is easily as good as Sky's older system and so much better and flexible than the current SkyQ setup. Off the top of my head the only advantage Sky has over the V6 boxes (and older TiVo) are the live EPG updates.

But it seems that the Horizon system being implemented in the UK will be similar to SkyQ (from what I have read and comments from those who have switched/trialling the new service) which is a vast disappointment. At least if it was the full Horizon setup with cloud storage that would at least be seen as an improvement (i.e. no more box swaps and losing recordings due to hard drive failures) and the whole idea that mini boxes only work from the main box is ludicrous (I am sure that someone also said they still need a proper coax cable connection so not even as flexible as SkyQ). If the main box fails then you have no cable TV services as the mini boxes are useless on their own. With multiple V6 boxes you can at least swap them around so it only causes minimal disruption until an engineer can be arranged. 

Definitely looks like a downgrade to me!

[BlueLou · Accepted solution]

• Tivo360 only gives 2 min pause/rewind of live TV. Tivo6 you could rewind back to start of programme seemingly up to an hour it felt like. - isnt this  only the case for the mini box.  The main box has a normal buffer doesnt it?  If you need to pause try setting up a recording then pausing it
• Cannot recover deleted programmes on Tivo360 - this is true...definitely worth feeding this back
• Cannot play at fast pace with audio like Tivo6 has - I fear that you and I are the only two people that found this TiVo function useful 🙂
• Cannot edit Series record settings to specifically ignore streaming/reruns or specify a particular series only - this is something that is being addressed in a future release.  For now it will record from the season you set the recording on onwards, if that makes sense.
• No ability to see learnt suggestions - if you set up profiles it will start to use your behaviour to suggest shows. It's not as overt as TiVo but IMO this is good.  Suggestions on TiVo was very very unpopular
• When in guide can only search programme titles, cannot search channel name to find in list ( very useful on app, missing from new app) - I dont quite understand this.  Why dont you just ask for the channel via voice control? 
• No STOP button just play/pause. So to stop and delete recording and return to live TV from a recorded programme have to press BACK button, delete then go to live TV in a messy series of buttons - why dont you press TV?  or again try saying it?  This should be in the guide...
• No easy ability to see when programme was first transmitted when looking at info in guide - try pressing the context key and bring up info that way
• Reduced ability to explore programme to see other details/series/episodes - agree, the show page has less info than before
• Unlike dual TIVO6 environment where each is autonomous doing own recordings, if the TIVO360 main box fails (or is say switched off for decorating) then the smaller TIVO360 box cannot record or play recordings as they are on the main box - this is true, but you can change power settings to be able to do this when in standby. If the TiVo was switched off that wouldnt have worked either if recording was on box turned off

[Kentrainbuff]

It was not explained that I would be a Beta tester for Virgin when accepting this "upgrade"

• Correct the main box does seem to go back more than 2 mins but only if you are watching the channel all the time. On Tivo6, if you were watching a recording and perhaps over ran the start time of a live programme, as long as the TV tuner was on the correct channel on finishing the recording you could drop back to the TV tuner in the middle perhaps of the live programme and rewind to the beginning of the programme and watch it in a delayed fashion (true time shift fashion). Only time this would not work was when TV tuner was on different channel. In this case the Tivo6 will only record from point you switched over. The TIVO360 behaves in this fashion even if it is on right channel. The buffer only works when TV tuner is live and not when in background whilst you watch a recording. BIG LOSS!
• My point about ending watching a recording using stop button is TIVO6 asks if you want to keep or delete recording at that point. With TIVO360 you Pause then have to hit Back and then roll right to delete recording. A more painful navigation process.
• Cloud recording of your programmes would surely be the way forward. The mini box is surely a retrograde step, especially as it offers no record or playback in the event of failure or loss of the main box. Either there should be identical Main Box and no Mini box and to reduce complexity do the recordings in the cloud.
• I have found no power setting that affectk recordability.. there is one to adjust lead-in and tail-out of a recording and fast start of the box.

How do I get all these gripes fed back to Virgin. I have been a relatively satisfied customer single Cable Corporation days pre 2000 but this has left me smarting because i seem to have lost more thN i have gained.

Ken

[BlueLou]

Hey Ken

It's not a Beta test, or a trial, it's being rolled out slowly to different customer groups first. 

• Re your buffer point, thats an interesting one, I'm sure many people wouldnt notice (how did you notice so quickly?!) but I'll have a look at that. 
• You dont need to press pause if you want to go back and delete a recording.  Have you tried saying "Stop"? 
• Cloud recording of your programmes would surely be the way forward.  - you're right, now let's convince Sky, the BBC and ITV! 🙂  Also the British public love their recordings, they'll say if the network goes down you cant watch cloud based ones!  Obviously the network never goes down though 🙂
• I have found no power setting that affectk recordability.. there is one to adjust lead-in and tail-out of a recording and fast start of the box. - If you're in fast start it can stream recordings from the box in standby.  

Ken all I can say is give it a little bit of time, and if in doubt please use the voice control and it might surprise you.  There is definitely room for improvement for this service when it comes to management of recordings, in that it's up against TiVo which is the best recordings management tool in the world, but it will get better with every software release.   Keep giving feedback on here, it's very useful. 

[Kentrainbuff]

The reason i found the buffer problem so quickly is it was a very valuable feature on the old V6 and is sorely missed on the new V360.

I have not used voice control for either TV or V6 and now V360 but will give it a try.

The V360 box has a lot of updates needed to begin to compare to flexibilty of V6.

Why did they not replace a dual V6 installation with a dual V360 main box one? I can live without the mini box as long as two V360 main boxes can stream recordings between them for viewing like the old V6 did. Brilliant feature.

if the main V360 box is down for whatever reason (box failure, delibrrate power down for DIY work) but not Virgin network failure, would the mini V360 still be able to show live TV channels ( appreciate it cannot show recordings as they are on the failed main box. What about the LAN connection between them. Would loss of the LAN connection on the mini box affect it even if main box is still connected to Virgin, powered up but maybe also lost LAN connection ( perhaps through Superhub failure)?

Happy to air my grumps 🙂 on here if i think they may improve things.

Look forward to your feedback

Ken

[BlueLou]

They will definitely improve things! Use the voice control as much as you can over the weekend and let me know how you get on.

I think you're confusing the 360 solution with Sky Q. The minibox has it's own network and data connection so will be able to do everything except stream recordings in the event of the main box going down. There isnt a LAN connection between them, both are connected to the Hub. In that sense there isnt a difference to V6.

Cheers

[Kentrainbuff]

Well the voice control does appear to make things easier if you know the command syntax.

Good things are

• Stop and Delete Recording
• Find xyz channel
• Goto xyz channel
• Guide
• Fast Forward x minutes (to jump adverts in recording)

A Problem we hit with Find and Goto is knowing full title of channel and pronounciation. Eg, QUEST failed to work because it is QUEST HD or QUEST RED but also because it kept getting QUEST as QWEST. We found spelling out Q U E S T HD worked as well.

it is really annoying not being able to edit a series link to avoid recording Reruns of same episode. Eg, Neighbours on series link set up for Lunchtime seems to invatiable also record same episode at teatime. Now this might be because the recorded episode has been watched and deleted before the repeat but with the V6 option of New Only it never happened. Will have to investigate if the recording is still there at repeat time if it records again.

If you wake up minor V360 to play a recording and the Master V360 is asleep does it have to wake up the Master before it can do so?

When using App and connecting to either box while they are asleep you need to remotely wake them up via the App. This can seemingly take forever (to even feeling like never) but if you exit the App having started the process and then Restart the App it appears to open connected much quicker than simply waiting for the connection to take.

Still investigating more so will feedback more user experiences tomorrow

Ken