Install experience:

Excellent. I had prepared the way with an ethernet-over-power device installed near the TV. The engineer actually forgot to plug the lan cable in to begin with, so we had 10 minutes of staring at a black screen (some kind of 'setting up' indicator would have been helpful) before we checked all connections and realised the Lan was disconnected! Plugged this in and setup started immediately lasting about 10 minutes.  The engineer had only been with BT four weeks, but was knowledgeable and competent. He said during the first two weeks he job-shadowed and this has been a huge help.

box stability: so far, so good with 48 hours uptime, despite a few 'scarier' moments with black screens (e.g. complete failure to load the phone book) and very long response times. This includes a period where it would not respond at all to the remote control (and yes, the remote control was in the right mode), and had to be powered down and up via the front switch. The mains did not have to be disconnected. 

General Niggles

These are not major but highlight discrepancies between BT vision and other PVR type boxes. 

• no tv/av button - cannot force the TV to switch to/from scart input from the vision remote. Such a function is useful if the TV is turned on while the Vision box is already on.
• keypad layout - delete a bit far out of the way. Probably deliberate, but creates a clumsy experience for managing recordings.
• remote control - too fat at the top end for our average hands.
• for a pvr - odd not to have a 'library' button - accessing recording management functions is cumbersome. There is an on-demand button and yet I would have thought users spend more time managing recordings than accessing on demand content.
• no subtitle button - 'shortcut' a bit of a misnomer for a function that takes upto 5 keypresses to access.
• no automatic padding of recordings to allow for start/end boradcast delays.
• no top/bottom or left/right wraparound on lists
• no slow-motion forward or reverse - fast forward and fast reverse functions seem to be just that, at least 2x normal speed, with no option for 1/2 speed or 1/5 speed. So although you scan skip back to watch that amazing sporting moment, you can only watch it again at full speed.
• fast forward and rewind are generally a bit 'glitchy'.
• cannot operate video controls (stop, play etc.) for a recording that is playing while other menus are showing
• no indication in recording list of what has been watched, or how much.
• screen estate is used very wastefully - for example the whole width of the screen is used to show the title and date of recordings - and most of the space is blank.
• no way to zoom/unzoom the size on the EPG (Electronic Programme Guide)
• output volume too low - even with the volume compensation facility on my TV turned to max - watch the BTVBox is much quieter than ordinary TV.

Lowlights

The variable lengths of time for the box to respond to some keypresses (esp. operating recording functions and traversing on-demand items and functions) creates a poor (and at times frustrating) user experience. This is a shame, because the overal design of interface is fairly intuitive and easy to learn.

the whole business of accessing recordings takes too many keypresses for my liking.

tried to DELETE a recording and got a "cannot record" message, with a helpdesk number. Both a confusing message and an unsatisfactory experience.

'Unable to record' error is a worrying problem. Had this 3 times in 48 hours. This is presumably due to an inability to contact the central server for some reason. I do not expect this of a home appliance. If my toaster replied 'uable to heat' it would encounter a rather nasty meeting with Mr. Big-Hammer. If the central server is not available the box should still record and update the server later.  

Skipping through recorded (or paused) material is painful. The skip forward function is 30 seconds, which is a reasonable compromise. The skip backward function is only 7 seconds, which in my opinion is too short - it should match the skip forward (30 seconds) so that you can easily skip forward and back to the same point if necessary.

Skipping back works very poorly. Even pressing the skip-back button several times in rapid succession, the behaviour of the box is very unpredictable and nine times out of ten it doesn't get any further back then the initial 7 seconds, but keeps jumping to that point.

Do not appear to be able to set bookmarks in a recording. This would be extremely handy for recordings started mid-programme where the box actually also pre-pends the beginning of the programme. (see below)

Highlights

good that you can record two programmes at once, although you can't watch a third if you do. (This is where the TV/AV button would be useful. The screen goes black at the point two recordings start, which means the channel you are viewing can suddenly be interrupted. A TV/AV button would allow you to quickly switch to watching the TV tuner)

if you start recording a programme part way through the box seems able to record the entire programme. Presumably the box 'caches' what you are watching, and saves the cache as well as the live broadcast. That's a neat feature, although presumably if you change channel during a programme you can only record as far back as the last channel change.

Resolution of recording conflicts is quite nice - i.e. when you attempt to record more than two programmes that overlap (the box only has two tuners, so only two recordings can be made at once). The interface for choosing which items to record is easy and intuitive, but there is one other nice feature. The programme that you elect NOT to record, WILL be recorded if you subsequently cancel one of the two recording timers you elect to keep. I.e. if you have A & B set to record at the same time, then try to choose C, you will be asked which two you want to keep. Let's say you decide to keep A & B and not bother recording C. If later (before recording begins) you choose to cancel the recording of A, then C will automatically be set to record in its place. This is nice!

other nice features

• records subtitles - so when you play a recording back, you can switch subtitles on/off.

SUMMARY: shows real promise but user-experience issues spoil the overall result. 8 out of 10.

permalink: btvision.easypeasy.com

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