TiVo box failing randomly

[jeyoung]

My wife blames me for every tech failure in the house, and for a few weeks now, I'm being done for the TiVo service becoming crap.

First of all, when she wants to watch a show recorded from an ITV channel, the V6 box sends her to the itvx app, where she has to suffer an endless loop of logging in from her phone and pairing with the TV, the process, more often than not, eventually leading to nowhere. And she has to do this for EVERY. SINGLE. RECORDED SHOW. At this point, it's the luck of the draw when the TiVo box will play a recorded show without problem. Also, why should we care about TiVo, or even Virgin Media, if we are sent to an app to watch recorded shows?

Next, playback of recorded shows fails at random. One time, it says the program is not available and to check service status; another time, it starts playing then crashes after a few minutes; etc. In any case, the service check page shows that every thing is fine. Except that it isn't true.

I have called Virgin Media. When my call is not dropped abruptly and I am asked to click on a link sent to my mobile phone, however helpful the responder tries to be on the phone, the problem is never fixed. The last time that I called, I was told that the problem could not be resolved at that time, and that they would try the next day when they would call me back. They did call, but two days later, when I was right in the middle of having my blood taken at the clinic.

My wife just now asked me to call Virgin Media support again. She can't watch her recorded episodes of 90 Day Fiancé. I just can't deal with the call centre, hence me posting here. I am trying to convince her that we don't need Virgin Media TV after all. We'll install apps on her tablet, and she'll play them off the TV. Later, we might also get rid of Virgin Media altogether, since the service is becoming so bad.

What happened in the space of a few weeks to make a shamble of a service that I used to like and recommend to friends? (From other community posts, I gather there was an upgrade from V6 to V360, whatever that means, but I was never informed of that.)

[japitts]

Let's reinforce some basics here, recorded programmes don't use apps - they are stored on your V6's hard drive. So if you're being sent to an app to view recordings, one of two things is happening.

1: These are not actually recordings, but are bookmarks to VoD programmes - known in TiVo-software as "shortcuts". You may have a series-link that's set to include streaming videos, or you may have manually created shortcuts from the EPG.

2: You have a recording, but rather than selecting "watch now", you're scrolling down to the alternate "watch from" option (I'm quoting this from memory) and ITV-X is offered as an option.

Your other symptoms are consistent with ITV's insistence that all their OnDemand programmes are now carried over the ITV-X streaming app rather than VM's in-house VoD system - you'd have to take this up with ITV, but are unlikely to get anywhere, it's their commercial strategy.

You may well have an issue with your V6's internet connection, which is exhibiting itself by internet-based services having problems. This could have many causes, but if true I would expect other OnDemand services, including C4, C5, Sky, the whole lot, to fail. They all use the same internet connection.

You've also alluded to an "upgrade" to TV360 - VM sales will likely encourage this at every opportunity, but it's not an upgrade anymore than converting from Apple to Android, or vice versa, is an upgrade. TV360 is a totally different software platform in the same way as Apple is different to Android. Opinions on whether it is an upgrade or not, vary wildly - so make any choice to convert, on a considered basis.

[jeyoung]

Thank you for the reply and explanation.

Concerning the recordings problems, a poor Internet connection doesn't seem to be the cause. The diagnostics screen shows a Very Good wireless signal, and the service connection test passes. Besides, I don't get errors with other apps on the box (e.g., BBC iPlayer, Netflix, etc.)

Watching recordings of BGT now, I see playback starting directly in itvx without demanding the ITV login dance. Also, selecting Play no longer presents the submenu More Options -- as it did before, with "itvx" being the only available option. On the other hand, when we try to play recordings of Social Media Murders (also from ITV), some episodes play directly in the TiVo player, and others in itvx. Perhaps it is a problem with the integration of the box with ITV services...

Following yesterday's post, I performed the operation to re-tune Virgin Media channels and rebooted the box. Doing this might have fixed some things, but I still find the behaviour of the software erratic. We've had TiVo since it was launched by VM, so I can tell that it is not working as well as it was before.

Maybe I should request an upgrade to TV360, as it seems to be a complete replacement of TiVo on the box. The features look promisiing, too.

[japitts · Accepted solution]

Recordings don't use the internet, so if you're getting any streaming app - you're not viewing a recording. ITV do broadcast pretty constant adverts for ITV-X, so that may be causing some confusion. That you're not having issues with other streaming services, is alone good evidence that the internet connection is OK.

My V6 integrates with ITV-X as well as it does Netflix & iPlayer, there's no issue there - and I don't think you'll see any improvement in that by converting to TV360. I strongly suspect you have a series-link set for "recordings & streaming videos", try changing this to "recordings only" if you don't want to use ITV's branded app.

There's as many features lost with a conversion to TV360 as there are features gained - TV360 is very app-focused where the V6 is very recording-focused. Do your research, there's dozens of previous threads on this topic.

[jeyoung]

I found in Recordings settings that the default is now set to "Recordings & streaming videos". I have changed this to "Recordings" to have the old behaviour back. I think this explains what we were experiencing with ITV shows.

Thanks for your help with this.