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Wish I never signed up and unfortunately will have to pay for Sky

joebloggs
Superfast

Unfortunately I’m gonna have to retire my 360 - I’m stuck in a contract however I just can’t use the TV side - so will be paying for a service I cannot stand to use as the boxes records way too many items 

I have Catfish (current season and onwards) set to record - it’s still recording whatever it feels like and when I delete them it records AGAIN. I’m also missing shows because Virgin still hasn’t got a dynamic EPG.

Tried my mums SkyQ and it seems to work as advised - you can see the new series, you can undelete and records catfish in the right order, as well as a dynamic EPG!!

 

I absolutely adored Virgin TiVo (V6) and it did everything I wanted it to do and correctly, unfortunately 360 feels more like an alpha testing product and while I don’t have a lot of money but I’m gonna need to unplug it until my contract ends and get my tv service from Sky- it’s just missing so many features 

Heck even EastEnders can’t even record properly from going in Series 2021 to “Specials”confusing to where these episodes are and have to switch between 

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12 REPLIES 12

japitts
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

I hope @nodrogd  won't mind me paging them - they're a bit more familiar with the network architecture side of things and can probably offer some additional insight here, but for my part of having an understanding of VM's setup...

The frequency at which the STB polls the (I'll loosely call it) central server for EPG updates is indeed down to the tech & software within the box. But it's only part of the issue, alongside where the data is coming from. VM maintain more control over their EPG metadata than other platforms, but the flip-side is that the broadcasters can't update the guide directly. The legacy V+ box only used to upate the guide once a day, TiVo & V6 progressed to a (roughly) 6 hourly cycle, and the 360 seems to have improved the speed again.

As for schedule changes, I do blame the BBC for unnecessary changes. The issue crops up every year, whenever BBC1 or BBC2 has live sport scheduled, and yet other broadcasters who also have similar live sport rights (ITV) don't seem to have the same problems.

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nodrogd
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

Its the dreaded "swings & roundabouts". You can have an EPG that updates more often if you reduce the amount of tuners that can record in the box simultaniously. SkyQ has 8 to 12 tuners, but several are reserved for the mini streamers & one for live viewing, leaving less than half that have to organise your recordings around schedule changes. With VMs boxes all 6 tuners are able to record as the mini boxes remain hard wired to the coax, so wishlists, suggestions, series links, catch-up links, all must be updated every time an update is picked up.

Freeview/Youview & to some extent Freesat EPG data is, as far as the PSB channels are concerned, updated directly by the broadcasters themselves, so will always be ahead of the curve.

VM 350BB 2xV6 & Landline. Freeview/Freesat HD, ASDA/Tesco PAYG Mobile. Cable customer since 1993

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True to an extent — the Sky boxes do have 1 useful extra tuner than Virgin so you can record an extra show on Sky

However not all Freeview boxes use the OTA guide - I’ve seen a couple use Gracenote which is very rich in metadata but not updates as much as Sky which is very quick with the guide updates!

I have Sky and Virgin (recently disconnected the 360 box and put it in storage) and Sky does seem to be more polished — YES it’s older so should he - but my mother had it from launch and it was not far off what it is now!

I doubt I’ll ever use 360 again unless it has some improvements made to the whole system