User Reviews on Virgin Media Powered By TiVo

Virgin Tivo Box/UI

1/10

Doug Gordon

18th October 2011

I have to say I am amazed at your review. I have been a Virgin media customer since before

their takeover of Telewest.

The original Virgin V/V+ box UI (user interface)

was far superior to the new Tivo box UI. Why?

[1] The original menu deign and navigation was

simple, easy to remember and required few steps.

[2] You could set multiple channel/time reminders (one of best and most useful features of the box/IU).

[3] recording was simple and easy to cancel.

In-fact it's only miss giving was that the box was old and the UI a bit slow. Apart from that it was extremely easy and clear to use.

The new Tivo box UI is almost the exact opposite.

[1] The menu design and navigation is clearly the implementation of a power point presentation and have never been used by its designers (else they would not have released the product with such a painful UI).

[2] The channel/time reminders feature has vanished! How mind numbing annoying is that. I mean to say you would think that that would be a prime requirement of such a *wonderful*

box UI? and in software its a such a no-brainer to implement. In-fact if you hit the 'ok' button on the remote, it will mark the program to record. If you hit the 'ok' button again it will not cancel the recording. The only way to cancel the recording is to leave the TY guide menu completely, navigate to 'your planed recordings' menu, find the planed recording, hit the 'ok' button there, hit the 'ok' button again to 'confirm' and the go all the way back through the menu system to the TV guide. How rubbish is that!

I could go on and on about the Virgin Tivo UI

and it's horrible design and navigation. Best you try one out for 'real' before you upgrade.

I am moving to Sky..........

Regards,

Doug

Not at all user friendly

1/10

ECS Sanchez

3rd September 2011

We have been Virgin Media customer for years, as have other households in our extended family and friends, on all four mediums (Telephone, TV, Broadband, Mobile), and wanted to upgrade cable TV to HD, and had used V+ box at daughter & son-in-laws - great device, and so easy to use.
On telephoning Virgin Media, I was persuaded by to get the TiVo box. Told about the large hard drive memory; the facility to watch a programme and record two others simultaneously; etc., we were really looking forward to enhanced viewing – and the rest of the family envious at the prospect!
The TiVo was installed on 22/08/2011. No customer instruction book available, and I had to waste a considerable amount of time on the phone, getting passed from department to department, to arrange delivery of hard copy, which I was told would take ten days to arrive. Meanwhile they sent an email copy, but that is not of much use if you are sitting in front of the TV and someone else is on the computer – and as of today, almost two weeks later the hard-copy has still not arrived!
We were not told that, unlike previous Virgin decoder boxes, that all followed a fairly similar and logical format, with some on-screen use instructions (e.g., for programme lists, ‘red button’ page down/ ‘green button’ page up), the functioning of the TiVo remote and system is considerably different: for example there are no on-screen instructions; no ‘page up’ / ‘page down’ facility – which causes such a waste of time when looking through programme lists; on the Catch up lists there are no times displayed for when the programmes were aired, a very useful piece of information; the Mini Guide, a very useful facility, is, as far as I can make out, non-existent; etc., etc.!
I was not told that you can’t set programme reminders – only set to record, and then play back later if you miss the programme because of the lack of the reminder!
[Just looked at Virgin’s email. To quote:
“4) Worried about missing a show? You can't set a reminder with your TiVo box, but you can record it, then watch it back from My Shows whenever it suits you.”
That’s not what I want to do!]
To continue: The Listings, etc., windows all have ‘Dante’s-Inferno-Red’ background! I’m told that it is actually the Virgin colours, but red isn’t exactly a calming colour when you are getting more and more frustrated while trying to make some sense of the user-unfriendly system without a user manual, and developing a headache into the bargain! There was nothing wrong with the neutral, tried and tested, white text on black background format that we are all familiar with – why give the pages a bordello-look, and the remote an hour-glass shape?!*
I am extremely disappointed, and angry. I think that I shall be following Trammess’s example, and asking Virgin to replace this TiVo box with a tried and trusted V+ box, certainly until the TiVo system becomes considerably more user friendly, is no longer in the guinea-pig stage, and brings back the very useful facilities of the previous systems – and the rest of the family and several friends, having come round to try the TiVo out and see what all the fuss is about, have also decided not to ‘upgrade’ (What a misnomer!) to it!
Please, Virgin, sort it out!

Still a failing beta test

1/10

Trammess

25th July 2011

I had the 1Tb TiVo installed in June, I have just asked VM to replace it with a V+ box. Interestingly, there was no attempt to keep me on TiVo or to find out why I want to change back, and they accepted giving me a full refund, including installation charge.

If the TiVo service actually worked it would be fantastic, but VM haven't worked out the very significant bugs, and have now admitted that they do not have any control over the meta-tags that TiVo needs to set up series links. The series link is so unreliable (because the meta tags are often incorrect) that after losing many recordings I had to check every recording as it started to avoid further losses. The final straw was the 'National Outage' for all TiVo links, that three days after being reported is still going on. You have to manually set every record and all previous links have been lost.

Its not all bad, the TiVo choices were scarily accurate and useful. The 1Tb has enormous storage. The three tuners are a real boon. The interface is much better than the V+, but the repsonse on the box was so slow that I sometimes forgot want I was looking for by the time I reached the menu.

I would love to have TiVo back, but I will be waiting until VM have actually made it work. - July 2011