5 Days with TUTV - My experiences
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OK I bought the box from Tesco last week half expecting a piece of junk but hoping it would be otherwise. Signed up whilst installing the box (the operator must have thought I was mad as I rummaged in packaging and pressed menus as we spoke - probably a correct assumption 
) . Took Picture bOx and TUTV on a month's trial. The story so far ;
-Soon found that if I chose ALL download services a 160Gb box was a tad small - just enough space to record a short news bulletin, so trimmed the choices using the info boxes based on what we thought we might like.
-Worried about whether it would all work, I'm fairly tech savvy so I understood why I had no content . Think some of my 'plug and play' acquaintances would have been on the 'phone to support after the first day - TUTV need to make the process clearer.
-After the second night downloads worked fine , UKTV Gold is a bit hit and miss as Ab Fab turned out to be Fools and Horses but it was the first download and I was quite impressed when I watched it.
- So far so good with the box, series links worked for springwatch , one instance of the fast forward bug but not exactly a life threatening event.
- After playing with channel selection decided that Hallmark, History Channel, and UKTV Style are our kind of thing, Nat Geographic is OK sometimes, dire others. The movies on Picture Box and TCM are mostly watchable with few turkeys , in fact it's finding time to watch that's the problem! We like the chance to choose some channels but not others and having looked at the schedules for Sky we can't see that the choice of programming is any worse.
- We are watching TUTV and recordings more than standard Freeview. My wife likes the cookery progs etc. and I like the documentaries.
- UKTV Gold's biggest drawback is wondering exactly what will come down , The Good Life was mainly Casualty the other night , think this one really needs sorting - I wonder about why it's a download when you could record from the live stream.
- Setanta channels REALLY bug me. Why do hey show up in the live stream when I haven't subscribed , if I choose them in error it's a bind getting back to anything else and when I tried to record a programme as a test it screwed the box up so that I had to hard reset (plug out !)
-Wish there was more UK sourced content but that's today's TV world any way, when you were bought up in the 60's/70's everything seems Cr*p by comparison :mad:
Overall given the drivel being purveyed by many of the traditional channels the opportunity to choose your own drivel seems quite attractive , time will tell if it continues to be so.
For reference I am about 17 miles from Sutton Coldfield and have a loft in the roof, signal strength is no worse than my old digifusion ( at least the Thompson does not come with a power supply that's under powered) but I do use a booster and have realigned my ariel after the messed about with Sutton earlier this year and I lost the BBC channels.
I will keep you posted.
) . Took Picture bOx and TUTV on a month's trial. The story so far ;-Soon found that if I chose ALL download services a 160Gb box was a tad small - just enough space to record a short news bulletin, so trimmed the choices using the info boxes based on what we thought we might like.
-Worried about whether it would all work, I'm fairly tech savvy so I understood why I had no content . Think some of my 'plug and play' acquaintances would have been on the 'phone to support after the first day - TUTV need to make the process clearer.
-After the second night downloads worked fine , UKTV Gold is a bit hit and miss as Ab Fab turned out to be Fools and Horses but it was the first download and I was quite impressed when I watched it.
- So far so good with the box, series links worked for springwatch , one instance of the fast forward bug but not exactly a life threatening event.
- After playing with channel selection decided that Hallmark, History Channel, and UKTV Style are our kind of thing, Nat Geographic is OK sometimes, dire others. The movies on Picture Box and TCM are mostly watchable with few turkeys , in fact it's finding time to watch that's the problem! We like the chance to choose some channels but not others and having looked at the schedules for Sky we can't see that the choice of programming is any worse.
- We are watching TUTV and recordings more than standard Freeview. My wife likes the cookery progs etc. and I like the documentaries.
- UKTV Gold's biggest drawback is wondering exactly what will come down , The Good Life was mainly Casualty the other night , think this one really needs sorting - I wonder about why it's a download when you could record from the live stream.
- Setanta channels REALLY bug me. Why do hey show up in the live stream when I haven't subscribed , if I choose them in error it's a bind getting back to anything else and when I tried to record a programme as a test it screwed the box up so that I had to hard reset (plug out !)
-Wish there was more UK sourced content but that's today's TV world any way, when you were bought up in the 60's/70's everything seems Cr*p by comparison :mad:
Overall given the drivel being purveyed by many of the traditional channels the opportunity to choose your own drivel seems quite attractive , time will tell if it continues to be so.
For reference I am about 17 miles from Sutton Coldfield and have a loft in the roof, signal strength is no worse than my old digifusion ( at least the Thompson does not come with a power supply that's under powered) but I do use a booster and have realigned my ariel after the messed about with Sutton earlier this year and I lost the BBC channels.
I will keep you posted.
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Comments
So have I. Saves a bit of disk space!
I will keep you posted.[/QUOTE]
Well I would have a loft in the roof woudn't I !!!
typo - aerial in the loft- DOh !!!
Good for you, enjoy the service.
Box had a slight wobbly the other day and missed a recording of 'The Wall' from the downloads (no idea why) and TVGold and Style are suffering from the 'wrong programme' syndrome - I'm no fan of this stuff but my wife likes it a lot.
We are going to try without TUTV after 2 weeks to see if we miss it .
So far so good - but I'm waiting for the disaster!
The Box
Quiet little thing with little fan noise (it's in a very open location with about 10 inches /25cm of air gap above so no cooling problems) and the disc is whisper like compared to the grinding of the old Digifusion -RIP-.
We have had one anytime download missed and a couple of standard TV programme recordings missed . One of the recordings was casualty so real negative points from my dearly beloved
One or two power resets but honestly no worse than digifusion.
Overall a reasonably competent box and at the price/feature set I'd recommend it . From the forum I've learnt to avoid 32x ff and the associated bug is far less common now.
The content
Little tricky to call now. The UKTV programmes still sometimes get the wrong stuff sent down and do a search to find what you expect and recording it is a pain - and defeats the 'Anytime' idea really IMHO. so that needs sorting. UKTV food content is also beginning to get repeated so that's not good.
I enjoy the History Channel (some) National Geopgraphic and Sci Fi Channel (Flash Gordon) but could live without it. Warner looks good but it's not really the sort of stuff we enjoy - though I always wanted to try West Wing- . To be honest we are sometimes overwhelmed by the number of downloads and have to delete a lot of stuff we will never watch. Most of the channels are frankly of no interest to us but at least we can customise the box to avoid them so that's good. Not sure if Picture Box is worth £5, the only film we have watched is 'The Long Walk Home' which really was good but TCM seems to have more choice for us , again the option to choose channels is a good idea. My wife enjoys the Style anf Food channels but the caveat re content and repeats needs to be borne in mind.
Overall ,will we subscribe ?
Being a fairly frugal household from choice rather than necessity we are really thinking hard about this. I don't think that Picture Box will be subscribed to but there is content that we watch and a tenner is not too outrageous. Really I'd like to see more contemporary UK based drama of the quakity of 'Hustle' or old tat like Blakes 7 but that's not TUTV's problem it's the fault of those who would rather see the UK tv channels descend into mediocrity than pay a license fee of more than £1 a day (then pay Sky £30 a month to watch repeats and the same content as TUTV !) This rant is now over
Next week is decision time, any comments accepted.
Cheers - Mistabee