The Virgin Media Thread

oh indeed, my friend down the road had one of the 8300s and they are horrendous. Thankfully I managed to get my V+ when they were rolling out the Samsung SMT-H3110 so I have that instead. Course the software is still clunkorama liberate stuff but at least it actually reacts in something resembling acceptable time.

I have had it in the back of my mind to upgrade the thing to a 1TB disk if the Tivo situation was unacceptable but thankfully it looks not too bad so I won't have to go to such lengths to get an acceptable service out of them.

You'll find hordes of people on Cable Forum and DS infuriated with the supposedly flawed build of the Samsung box. Certainly in terms of connectivity it's inferior to the SA.

But having a Reset button at the front of the box was a good move with the SA box, I must say.

oh indeed, connectivity wise its inferior. However you can change channel in under 5 minutes which is a nice feature imo.

Does anyone else get an hour of box sluggishness from midnight (or 1am in the summer)? It's very annoying with the PVR controls, once you get it into fast forward it can take a while to get it back out again so it speeds through the whole next part of the programme

I'd never noticed it happening at that specific time, but I'm constantly frustrated by sluggish responses to keystrokes, and the mini-guide sometimes updating the channel name and number whilst displaying the programme data from the channel before.

I'll keep an eye on it at 12 tonight, if I'm not already in bed watching How its Made on Discovery Science, as is my wont.

http://vmhd.blogspot.com/2010/11/little-more-info-on-tivo-v-box.html



This, btw, is the TIVO epg in the states
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKr5ICFbgyg

Fab. I want it.

Presuming that VM use the TiVo software, then that STB looks like it's going to be a Sky+ killer.... and I want one!

I'm a tad confused by what purpose TiVo served when it briefly appeared a few years ago and seemed to fade away. Was it an add-on or did it provide channels somehow?

It was an add on IIRC, it was a good idea for PVR, but I do believe they did charge for the EPG listings, that didn't help things, nor the fact you had to connect your STB to the box, plus I think the biggest factor was the Sky+ basically doing all that in one box with less fuss, that probably lead to it's demise within the UK.

Yep plus Sky+ had two tuners, TiVo just had the one (that you connected up to it).
Sky were initially involved in pushing TiVo, I'm not sure exactly what this relationship entailed but the top of the menu screen said "recommended by Sky Digital". This disappeared pretty promptly once Sky+ launched...

Posted this on the Tesco box thread but would fit here better I think:
I still have a 2001 TiVo working on a second set at my parents' house - we purchased a "lifetime subscription" so we haven't paid anything for nearly ten years, but it is all still updated via the phoneline. Whilst it's bulky, and connects to a seperate STB rather than having it's own tuner, and it only carries about 12 hours of video at the highest quality (40 at lowest) - it's still one of the most the most stable PVRs I've ever used. Never once crashed on me...

out of interest, is it capable of changing channel on the STB or do you have to set it to change channek? I presume if the former was true you could plug in one of those "box on a scart" things that you get in Tesco into the back of the TiVo and have your normal telly with the other digibox.