Re: Tivo / Sky+

["Paul Gordon" <paul@xxxxxxx>]

Hmm... As an owner of both Sky+ amd Tivo, I think I might take issue
with the assertion about Tivo having a superior user interface...

Tivo's user interface (or one particular part of it), is just about
the *only* thing about Tivo that I dislike... - specifically its on-
screen EPG is virtually unusable (as opposed to Sky's which is
fantastically useable...)

I find that because Tivo's EPG pops up as an overlay over the video
image, and because it has a transparent background, and because the
text is white (and not particularly large), I struggle to actually
read the text. It is heavily dependent on what is in the video image
at the time - if you're watching the winter olympics or "Ski
Sunday"
or "Ice Station Zebra" then forget it... white text against a
white
background is not exactly outstanding.... Whoever thought of that
little design trait should have his/her thumbs amputated as
punishment...

This leads inevitably to certain other behaviours which also cause
further annoyance...
- because Tivo's EPG is useless, I have to use the vastly superior
sky EPG instead. However, the delay that is evident when in "Live
TV"
mode makes it awkward, so I always tend to go into "Aux" mode to
get
the instant response required... This means that (inevitably) Aux
mode tends to get used a lot for live TV viewing, with the obvious
consequence that there is then no live pause/rewind etc. etc. and all
those other very good things about a Tivo..
- Furthermore, because Aux mode gets used a lot by default for sky
viewing, I also never get to see the prompt that comes onscreen if
Tivo wants to change the TV channel to record something else... and
because the default answer to the prompt is yes, I quite occasionally
find myself watching something, only to have is suddenly change
channel in the middle (very annoying!) - this hapenned the other
evening when SWMBO & I were watching a movie on Box Office, and it
had just got to the big scene near the end of the movie when the
hero  turns up at the church just in time to stop the heroine
marrying the wrong bloke... Just as the hero was about to give
his "Don't do it, - I love you" speech, the ***king channel
changed!
(SWMBO was NOT happy!)
So one annoyance is that it is then incumbent on me to try to
remember to go into Aux mode when using Sky's EPG (for the real-time
response), and then to try to remember to switch back to Live-TV mode
when a programme has been selected... I don't like it when technology
forces me to adapt MY behaviour to IT...

One other thing about Tivo's EPG... There seems to be no way to have
channels that ARE included in the "Channels I receive" list but
which
will NOT be recorded from... The only way (AFAIK) to exclude a
channel from being recorded is to not include it in the "Channels I
receive" list... But, - this has the consequence of not including it
in Tivo's EPG, so once again, it is not possible to select that
channel using Tivo's EPG, and again I have to go into Sky's EPG to
select it... Why is this important? - well, what about Box Office? -
theres absolutely no point in allowing Tivo to try to record B.O.
programmes, - I have to be there to enter the PIN into the digibox to
authorise the payment... Therefore I don't include any B.O. channels
in the "Channels I Receive" list.

If anyone knows a better way of managing this, then I'm all ears!...

Paul G.


--- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, "Simon Coates" <ecolume@g...> wrote:
> Rob,
>> Tivo does have a vastly superior user interface to the basic Sky+
interface.
> The main problem with Sky+ was that the user interface had to match
the
> existing Sky interface, which looks very dated now.  However, the
Sky+
> interface is very easy to use and functional - and getting better
all the
> time!
>