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BT YouView Mini Review


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Old 10-12-2013, 20:43
bryhhh
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Having had YouView from BT for a few weeks now, I thought I'd write a short post that hopefully some others thinking of joining the service might find of use.

The box itself is nice looking, Piano black, and possibly one of the best looking STBs on the market in my opinion. It looks really nice compared the my SkyHD box I have sat below it. One thing I liked about the Sky HD box, is that you could see an red LED glow when it was recording. It is possible to see if the box is recording via the LCD display, but it's a tiny little icon that is hard to see from more than about 2m away.

The UI of the box is quite nice, very clean, and overall looks really good. Unfortunately the UI is very sluggish (as almost every Humax box I've owned in the past is). This can be quite frustrating at times.

The menus are quite well organised, however navigating isn't always intuitive for me having recently migrated from Sky HD. For instance if you bring up the list of recorded programs, press the down key to start moving through the list, and it cancels you out of the list, taking back to the previous menu. This actually makes sense when you understand why it does this, however I've grown to hate this behaviour, as I'm still doing it after two weeks of use. The biggest gripe for me is the number of button presses required to get the to recorded programmes list. On Sky HD you can just press the 'play' button on the remote, and as long as you aren't watching something timeshifted, it will take you to the list of recorded programmes. On YouView, you've got to press 'menu', navigate left, press 'select', wait a second or two for the UI to catch up, then press 'select' again, once the list of programmes is then displayed, you've got to press 'select' again to be able to navigate down the list of programmes. Hopefully this will get addressed with an update, but having migrated from Sky, it can feel quite awkward to get to the recorded programmes.

The BT extra services built in to the box fall somewhat short for me. The UI changes completely when you enter this part of the menu, leaving the nice looking YouView interface behind. The BT interface is ugly and slower, and I have no confidence that the button I'm pressing is going to do what I expect.

The ability to access historic programmes on the EPG is fantastic, and an excellent selling point for Youview. Although this content tends to be limited to BBC, ITV, CH4, CH5 and Dave, which for me is more than good enough.

The amount of extra on demand content provided by BT looks quite good, it includes films, box sets of TV programmes etc, however all this extra content comes at a cost. None of the content is free (at least I've not found anything that's free). The £5 subscription doesn't actually provide any content, just the ability to access content at additional cost.

Having said that, the £5/month subscription which gives you nothing more than what you can already get on Freeview HD is actually quite good value, as the Youview boxes normally retail at around £239. With BT you effectively get the box for £100 (£40 for 'connection' which you do yourself, plus £5 x 12 months)

I can't comment on the Internet channels that are available if you live in an infinity enabled area, as unfortunately, infinity isn't available to me. I believe the extra channels appear on the YouView EPG though, which is good news and the selection of extra channels is fairly good, but only available if you cough up the extra to pay for BT Infinity broadband, which is a bit naughty in my opinion.

Overall I'm really pleased with the box, and glad I purchased it, however I'll be cancelling after 12 months, as the £5/month is of no benefit to me, as the extra online content is too expensive. Streaming just two films per month via BT on demand can cost more than a monthly Netflix or LoveFilm subscription, both of which give you unlimited content for the same money.

Should you buy the box? We'll that really depends on your own circumstances. If like me, you want a cheap Youview box and aren't interested in the extra BT on demand content, then yes, the box is a good deal. If you're looking for lots on on demand box sets or films, then there are better priced options available.
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Old 11-12-2013, 12:53
mac2708
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I agree with most of the above especially regarding the number of button presses required for some functions
but
my pet annoyance is 'clicking' of the central navigation arrows/OK button. Is there really any need for it?

I'm almost tempted with this which evidently doesn't 'click'
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Replacement-...remote+control
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Old 11-12-2013, 19:44
psionic
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I agree with most of the above especially regarding the number of button presses required for some functions
but
my pet annoyance is 'clicking' of the central navigation arrows/OK button. Is there really any need for it?

I'm almost tempted with this which evidently doesn't 'click'
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Replacement-...remote+control
The original remote was one of my pet gripes too. However I've noticed the latest generation of YouView boxes that BT are sending out now come with much better remotes. Old and the new versions of remotes that ship with BT YouView boxes shown on this page.
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Old 11-12-2013, 22:38
mac2708
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The original remote was one of my pet gripes too. However I've noticed the latest generation of YouView boxes that BT are sending out now come with much better remotes. Old and the new versions of remotes that ship with BT YouView boxes shown on this page.
I assume (hopefully) that the new remote control will work with older boxes - and that it doesn't 'click'.
If so, any idea how I can get one?
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Old 11-12-2013, 22:54
psionic
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I assume (hopefully) that the new remote control will work with older boxes - and that it doesn't 'click'.
If so, any idea how I can get one?
No idea sorry.

In my case they recently replaced the entire box and everything after my original box (which I've had since March) developed a fault. It was basically crashing and freezing on boot up, even after several factory resets etc. Pleased to say I've had the new box a few days and it hasn't crashed once
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Old 12-12-2013, 12:11
Timbionline
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Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Kernow
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Yup, the new "square" remotes working perfectly. thankfully BT replaced the remotes no questions asked.

Bigger buttons and a better layout than the original remotes in my opinion.
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