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Virgin Media TV powered by tivo JULY 2011
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n www.virginmedia.com n 0845 840 7777 n £149/£199, XL subscribers only (£40 installation/12-month contract)
The Opposition Sky+HD n Now with Anytime+ instant VoD, a recent EPG overhaul hasn’t limited Sky+ HD’s inherent simple accessibility. Two tuners, seven-day EPG and few in-box smart features, however
Virgin’s next-gen cable 1TB PVR can record three channels at once and learn what you like. Is it more than you need? It’s easy for the casual TV subscriber to feel a little intimidated by the dozens of channels and on-demand services available. Indeed, ease of use is (or should be) essential in box development, keeping the interface as simple as possible. The TiVo system goes a bit deeper than most by picking through what’s available and recommending shows you might also enjoy aided by a unique ability to give thumbs-up or thumbs-down to what you record. This is the second time a TiVo box has appeared on these shores. Over a decade ago a Thomson-made PVR sporting an analogue terrestrial tuner that could also record from an external receiver was promoted by Sky before being sidelined in favour of Sky+. Now it’s a cable exclusive, being used to power Virgin Media’s triple-tuner PVR and corral its ever-expanding, broadcast and VoD
services (and YouTube too) into a potentially more user-friendly experience. Has it succeeded?
Appearance and connectivity Verbose official monicker aside, this is actually a Ciscomade CT8685 receiver. Eschewing any kind of readout in favour of LEDs, it looks its best looming out of the semidarkness on a shelf under the TV like a piece of Cylon technology from the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. Green LEDs indicate power and network connectivity and red lights on the right show when each tuner is being used to record. A row of rectangular operating buttons blends in nicely along the top. The rear panel has an HDMI, a single VCR Scart, and an optical S/PDIF for audio. There are also two USB ports, an Ethernet connection (none of which is used at the
Interface
Talk Talk TV n Broadband PVR has 14-day EPG and three tuners but two Freeview SD only. Extensive VoD but no HD and no smart features
Virgin Media TV powered by tivo
The main Home menu is one you’ll use a lot. The Discovery bar (top) appears in many other menus and is constantly updated with suggestions
EPG info is only limited by what’s available and can also be viewed as a mini-EPG. You can go backwards and jump to catch-up shows
Keep track of what you’re recording/buffering using the info banner, skipping between each channel and fast-forwarding/rewinding on the fly
Test cable ‘The three tuners mean you can record or timeshift (up to 1 hour) HD or SD shows using all three simultaneously’ for eight channels at a time, with the current live channel or recording displayed in the top-right and synopses topleft. You can also view all channels or sort by genre or view HD or those in your favourites list only and skip day by day. The amount of data available is broadcasterdependent (most offer around 14 days’ worth) and, neatly, you can go backwards as well as forwards to view shows tagged with a ‘C’ as being available to view on catch-up from the past seven days. Pressing ‘OK’ when watching a channel or recording brings up a mini-EPG displaying three channels at a time, also sortable. Elsewhere, you can search for broadcast or on-demand shows or actors using an onscreen keyboard, search by genre or browse types of show ordered into ‘collections’. moment), the requisite cable input and smart card slot and an on/off switch for the 12V power supply. The curvy remote control is better arranged than that included with Virgin’s V+ HD with TiVo-specific thumbs up and down keys being relatively small. A top-centred oft-used Home button returns you to the main menu, a circular arrangement of navigation buttons are used mainly to skip around menus and towards the lower end sit PVR buttons also in a circular arrangement.
Setup Although still usable, TiVo takes at least a day or two to get up to speed post-installation as it downloads data and ‘absorbs’ your viewing and recording habits. The core glossy flash-based HD interface is very slick-looking (again a vast improvement on the V+ HD in terms of speed and visuals) still using Virgin’s red-and-black livery but adding further eye candy through the use of illustrative cover art, not least the side-scrolling ‘Discovery bar’ that appears at the top of the screen. However, as the software has been reworked from the TiVo Premier US offering there is currently noticeable evidence that a degree of repurposing has occurred. A fair few menus (those dealing with settings mainly) are Java-based with a comparatively low-res NTSC quality about them and the odd Americanism crops up (reference is made to reruns rather than ‘repeats’ and a delete message refers to ‘program’).
Basic use The fast-moving EPG is a grid-style affair showing data
Cable input
Scart
HDMI
Optical S/PDIF
Test port (not used)
PVR and multimedia A 1TB hard drive gives ample room for storage (enough for 125 hours of HD recordings), which is just as well for the TV hungry are spoilt for choice. Not only are there three tuners on board but you can also record or timeshift (up to an hour) HD or SD programmes using all three simultaneously, which is ‘one up’ on the V+ HD. You can zap from one to the other, retroactively press record to commit cached material to the hard drive or watch a recording at the same time. Recordings are navigated using a green progress bar divided into segments and can be fast-forwarded or rewound at three levels of speed represented by onscreen arrows or played in ‘slow’ mode. Recordings including series links can be scheduled via the EPG, on the multilayer info banner manually or remotely using a mobile or Virgin’s online TV guide. You can also assign low or high priority to shows to overcome incidences of overlapping and opt to be prompted to extend recordings of live events if needed. The info banner also shows what channels occupy the other tuners, letting you skip between them, together with broadcast flag data. Recordings, Suggestions and ‘Wishlist’ recordings are accessed in the My Shows menu, where you can view all as a list (ordered A-Z or by date) or partially sorted into more manageable folders (multiple recordings of a programme and HD recordings are grouped together). User-made folders are apparently not on Virgin’s to-do list, but user profiles are. Smartcard reader
2x USB ports
12V power supply
Ethernet port
Features Cost: XL TV subscribers £33.50/ month without a Virgin Media landline or £27.50 (including £3 TiVo monthly fee) only. Box: £149 for existing customers/£199 new subscribers. Standard installation £40, 12-month minimum contract Tuners: 3x DVB-C Hard disc size: 1TB Card reader: Yes MHEG-5: Yes EPG support: 14-day+ On-demand channels: Yes Teletext: Yes Software upgrade: via network HD outputs: HDMI SD outputs: 1x Scart (RGB composite) Audio out: Optical S/PDIF Data ports: 2x USB 2.0, Ethernet
Test cable
The remote is superior to that included with the V+ HD. Note the TiVo ’thumb’ buttons
Ratings PLUS
n Record/timeshift three
channels at once n TiVo learning function works well n Slick-looking main menu and fast interface
Minus
n May be more involved than you need n Some menus appear lo-res n Variable YouTube quality
can be jarring Build Setup Searching Performance Features Value
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The biggest VoD addition, however, is the integration of YouTube, which appears as an option in many menus allowing you to hop over, and view clips related to the show you’re watching. You can also search for clips by keyword entry to see the most popular. All very impressive, but if you’re an HD lover skipping over to often low-res YouTube content can be a bit jarring. IPlayer and YouTube also show up in an ‘Apps & Games’ section alongside Twitter, Weather (with postcode searching), celebrity news with video, eBay and a pub-style Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? game with very pub-like muffled audio. More is promised including photo browsing using Flickr, Picasa and Facebook.
Performance While the menus could do with some finesse, the interface is generally much faster in operation than the ageing V+ HD family of boxes and we can only imagine a great deal of technological magic must have been employed to ‘enable the play one record three’ arrangement. We experienced very occasional hiccups such as once dropping out of the EPG back to a recording and losing control of the receiver altogether, but 98 per cent of the time it was smooth sailing. It is capable of ramping video up to 1080i (or passing through a 1080p signal) and picture quality is very good for both SD and HD sources (BBC HD looks better here than on our Sky+ HD) and audio performance is clean and clear n Grant Rennell
Verdict The big question here is how involved do you want your TV watching to be? If you just want to cue up your favourite shows safe in the knowledge they’ll always be recorded and aren’t fussy about learning more about them or what you could be watching also, then this box is maybe too smart for you. However, if you like the idea of a web-like TV experience where finding what you want doesn’t have to mean hunting through copious menus and everything is at your fingertips, then this is the connected receiver you’ve probably been looking for. As someone who knows what they like, this reviewer falls somewhere in between the two and (in the limited time spent using it) finds being bombarded with choice a little intimidating compared with the comparative simplicity of Sky’s interface. But its functionality is exceptional and unrivalled and with the promise of more to come such as inter-device TV streaming, DLNA media playback, and iPad control can only get better.
Interface
83%
You can set buffers, specify ‘new’ or ‘reruns’ (though it has a habit of recording first runs on all channels including HD and SD unless manually configured otherwise), how many episodes to record and how long to keep them. Deletions are initially stored in a ‘recently deleted’ folder and ‘recording hiccups’ logs failures/ clashes. PVR capabilities aside, TiVo’s selling point is its ability to learn what you like to watch and pushing more of it your way. This is done by monitoring what you record, though getting what you want also requires a degree of manual input. If you like or dislike a show pressing the thumbs up or down button up to three times will tell the box whether to recommend or record similar shows or on-demand content. The receiver will auto record shows it thinks you might like using free space (this can be turned off) as ‘Suggestions’. Related upcoming broadcasts or VoD are primarily flagged up in the aforementioned Discovery bar, where selecting them brings up a menu explaining why they’ve been chosen and giving you the option to jump to browsing them. As an example, after recording Heroes on SyFy, the Discovery bar quickly displayed Being Human, Doctor Who and Torchwood, giving the reason ‘People who enjoy Heroes enjoy this’. The box will occasionally suggest shows featuring related actors too – in this instance Greg Grunberg and Robert Knepper. Not all suggestions are specifically tailored – you’ll often get recommendations tagged with the speculative ‘we love it, we hope you will too’ and ‘it is similar to other shows you enjoy’ but after cueing up Fringe for recording, being recommended geeky sitcom The Big Bang Theory didn’t seem too wide of the mark. Another TiVo trait is ‘Wishlists’, where you can enter keywords to search for a show or actor you want to keep track of. The box will search for related content present and future. As well as the ability to view synopses, browse upcoming episodes and jump to related VoD, meta-functionality comes via the ‘Explore This Show’ option, where you can view cast info and episode guides. Such info also be used to create Wishlists. Virgin Media’s existing on-demand services are retained, though iPlayer appears in a new improved big-screen beta form. At the time of writing, HD streams were not yet available (you can still get them via the catch-up menu) but the remote’s navigation pad can be used to quickly skip through video.
The sortable ‘My Shows’ menu is where you’ll find recordings including suggestions and those made based on your Wishlists (marked with a star) 84 What Satellite & Digital TV May 2011
You can resume watching a recording where you left off before. If you like what you see, giving the ‘thumbs up’ will generate more recommendations
‘Metadata’ is available for most shows including cast info and episode guides. You can use this to create Wishlists or jump to relevant shows