New Sky Box Planner - Tell us what you think

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SkyNZ

10 posts

Wannabe Geek

Trusted

Sky NZ

#307048 14-Sep-2023 16:31

Share your thoughts and experiences on the new Sky Box Planner feature

We're aware of some issues experienced with the new Sky Box Planner feature. We know how important the Planner feature is and our team are working on improvements and stability. We thought this community would be a great platform to gather feedback on your experiences with the new Planner feature so far. You can tell us what’s working well, what’s not working so well and what your biggest pain points are with the Planner feature and recordings.

Feel free to provide any feedback / here are some starters below.

How often do you use the Planner feature?

Daily

A few times a week

Once a week

Several times a month

Never

If you had a magic wand what’s the 3 things you’d change on the new Planner feature right now?

Anything else you’d like to tell us about the Planner feature?

Thank you, we appreciate your time and patience as we work to solve these issues.

1 | 2 | 3

8953 posts

Uber Geek

#3127851 14-Sep-2023 16:46

Welcome @SkyNZ

Robbo68

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#3127951 14-Sep-2023 21:49

I will basically copy and paste what I wrote in the other thread so you can see it here.

While watching something on Planner that is still recording and you reach the live point it will kick you back to the start.

Particually annoying if you are several hours into say something like golf and instead of stopping when reaching the live point and letting you resume there, it takes you all the way back to the start.

Fairly certain on Mysky when you caught up it to live it would say end of recording, but you could hit play and resume at that point.

I use the Planner quite often for sport and have had instances where the ending has been cut off when the coverage has extended for whatever reason.

At least with MySky you could tack on an extra twenty minutes to your normal recording time. This is a handy feature because some events like golf are prone to going over the scheduled time.

If there was some way possible that it would be signalled to record the rest of these extended events it would be even better. But I might be hoping for a bit much there.

Wakeyboy

3 posts

Wannabe Geek

#3131937 26-Sep-2023 09:02

We use the Planner Daily, here are just a few of the frustrations.
1. After deleting a watched recording the 'Delete Recording' is still active and if other recordings are present it is very easy to accidently delete another.
If there are no other recordings after deleting a recording but recordings are scheduled the active 'Delete Recording' changes to 'Cancel Recording' again so very easy to accidentally delete.

2. Whilst using FFW/REW/Pause.
. Screen Dims (makes it difficult to see especially in dark scenes)
. Title of the program is displayed across the screen (we don't need a reminder of what we're watching)
. Various other icons on the screen (just place together in a discreet position at the bottom)
. REW hardly ever stops at the point wanted, quite often going back to the position REW started from or some other random
position (absolutely infuriating in our household)
. FFW speed needs fine tuning. ( 2 x 4 x 8 x 12 are more relevant along with a means of getting to specific point in recording)
3. Series Link recording everything remotely connected to the series wanted .
i.e. Live Rugby WC. Records Rugby WC replays, Rugby WC highlights as well.

dougierydal

327 posts

Ultimate Geek

#3132112 26-Sep-2023 14:14

Hi Sky, any chance you can run a feedback request for Sky Sport Now?

I've got a few things

Thanks

shadowspawn

20 posts

Geek

#3135338 26-Sep-2023 22:39

We use the Planner daily. Things to fix with magic wand:

1) Need to be very careful with Delete Recording. Easy mistakes to make:

deleting an episode that have not viewed yet
accidentally deleting another episode after deleting an episode
accidentally cancelling a future recording after deleting the last recorded episode

2) Episodes are listed from newest to oldest, so have to scroll all the way through to get to the episode most likely to view.

3) Series link annoyances:

series link finding episodes from multiple series even across multiple channels
sometimes, episode recorded in multiple parts
sometimes, episode missing end

I suspect this is out of scope for Planner as such, but our number 1 complaint is as per earlier comment: "REW hardly ever stops at the point wanted, quite often going back to the position REW started from or some other random position (absolutely infuriating in our household)". In our household we shout at the Skybox at this point.

Raw127

18 posts

Geek

#3135358 27-Sep-2023 07:54

Hello Sky,

Out of scope for the planner subject, but listing our most annoying issues here in the hope someone from Sky takes notice.

1) One of the most annoying issues is during playback of a recorded program. If you rewind using 4x for just a second or 2 to rewatch something that was just shown that you missed, in many cases the Sky box will automatically fast forward to the place you started to rewind from. This is annoying especially when watching sport type programs in which you often want to skip back a few seconds to rewatch something again.

2) On the old Sky box you could position into a long recording (golf, rugby) by typing in the number of minutes to skip to in the recording. e.g. Typing 120 would position 2 hours into the recording. It would be good if this feature was added to the new Sky box.

3) Is there a good reason why you dull the screen when using FFWD/RWND/Pause?

4) The "<-Back" display in the top/left of the screen while FFWD/RWNDing is really annoying because it displays over important information such as the scores in rugby and the lap count in motor racing events such as supercars/Indycars/Formula1.
Is that display really necessary?

Ross.

Shadbolt

130 posts

Master Geek

#3135460 27-Sep-2023 12:50

We use Planner all the time - it's our "home screen".

I agree with comments about the trickiness of Delete, and the ease to screw up.

I agree with the comment about ordering Old to New for a series link, but sometimes you do want to see newest first, to check that recordings are still happening. I'd suggest that when you select a series link, there are a pair of new buttons along with the episodes - "Order New to Old" and "Order Old to New" or similar, so that you can change the order at will, whilst looking at episodes.

When you exit back to the main Planner screen after watching and deleting a recording, the "active box" could be anywhere on the screen, and not visible. I always have to randomly go up/down/left/right to find it. I would rather it defaults to the top left recording, and show up with the white outline.

I would like to see the "percentage storage used" display being able to update as soon as you come back from a series link to the Planner - rather than having to exit Planner and go back in again to see the change.

Equinox IT

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invisibleman18

1360 posts

Uber Geek

#3135735 28-Sep-2023 09:42

Raw127:

2) On the old Sky box you could position into a long recording (golf, rugby) by typing in the number of minutes to skip to in the recording. e.g. Typing 120 would position 2 hours into the recording. It would be good if this feature was added to the new Sky box.

I posted this in the other thread but in case this thread is checked more by Sky I would also love this option on the Sky Pod as fast forwarding is a slow and frustrating process. A recent example was trying to watch the last couple of hours of the British Open golf before work. As it was an 11 hour programme it took me a full 18 minutes to fast forward at the fastest speed to the 9 hour mark. An option to select a time to start from would be awesome. I assume this is a streaming vs satellite issue, however with TVNZ+ it was much quicker to fast forward hours through similarly long streams such as the Ashes cricket and US Open tennis so it must be doable.

Another feature I'd love would be a 10 second skip option such as Sky Go has. This kind of thing is really helpful for things like watching sport before work and being able to quickly skip through things like injury stoppages or susbstitutions etc. By the time you've been able to fast forward through 10 or 20 seconds with the current speed of it you may as well have not bothered trying. As the Pod is very much based on the Sky Go interface this is hopefully something possible to implement.

SkyNZ

10 posts

Wannabe Geek

Trusted

Sky NZ

#3143660 6-Oct-2023 16:38

Wakeyboy: We use the Planner Daily, here are just a few of the frustrations.
1. After deleting a watched recording the 'Delete Recording' is still active and if other recordings are present it is very easy to accidently delete another.
If there are no other recordings after deleting a recording but recordings are scheduled the active 'Delete Recording' changes to 'Cancel Recording' again so very easy to accidentally delete.

2. Whilst using FFW/REW/Pause.
. Screen Dims (makes it difficult to see especially in dark scenes)
. Title of the program is displayed across the screen (we don't need a reminder of what we're watching)
. Various other icons on the screen (just place together in a discreet position at the bottom)
. REW hardly ever stops at the point wanted, quite often going back to the position REW started from or some other random
position (absolutely infuriating in our household)
. FFW speed needs fine tuning. ( 2 x 4 x 8 x 12 are more relevant along with a means of getting to specific point in recording)
3. Series Link recording everything remotely connected to the series wanted .
i.e. Live Rugby WC. Records Rugby WC replays, Rugby WC highlights as well.

Hi there,

Thank you so much for your feedback.

1. Regarding deleting functionality, we're aware that deleting a recording by accident is very easy, that's why we're introducing a confirmation message when user clicks to delete a recording. So, it'll be easier to recover if clicked by accident. We're also aware that the Delete Recordings button is very disjointed with the rest of the page, and it confuses some users. We're planning to introduce an improved way of deleting a recording.

2. We're also improving the design of the FF and RW functions. Removing the dimming, making programme title smaller, putting all buttons and other interface elements together in one place so it's less intrusive when you just want to watch TV. We are also investigating on improving the FF and RW. So, when you skip or rewind you can see what's skipped on the screen. (our team is still working on this).

3. The team is aware of this too, but it needs a bit more investigation to solve this issue.

SkyNZ

10 posts

Wannabe Geek

Trusted

Sky NZ

#3143661 6-Oct-2023 16:38

invisibleman18:

Raw127:

2) On the old Sky box you could position into a long recording (golf, rugby) by typing in the number of minutes to skip to in the recording. e.g. Typing 120 would position 2 hours into the recording. It would be good if this feature was added to the new Sky box.

I posted this in the other thread but in case this thread is checked more by Sky I would also love this option on the Sky Pod as fast forwarding is a slow and frustrating process. A recent example was trying to watch the last couple of hours of the British Open golf before work. As it was an 11 hour programme it took me a full 18 minutes to fast forward at the fastest speed to the 9 hour mark. An option to select a time to start from would be awesome. I assume this is a streaming vs satellite issue, however with TVNZ+ it was much quicker to fast forward hours through similarly long streams such as the Ashes cricket and US Open tennis so it must be doable.

Another feature I'd love would be a 10 second skip option such as Sky Go has. This kind of thing is really helpful for things like watching sport before work and being able to quickly skip through things like injury stoppages or susbstitutions etc. By the time you've been able to fast forward through 10 or 20 seconds with the current speed of it you may as well have not bothered trying. As the Pod is very much based on the Sky Go interface this is hopefully something possible to implement.

Hi there,

Thanks for your feedback. We’re already working on improving the FF and RW functions. We’ve also passed your feedback to the team to investigate if you can enter a time to start the video from.

SkyNZ

10 posts

Wannabe Geek

Trusted

Sky NZ

#3143662 6-Oct-2023 16:39

Shadbolt:

We use Planner all the time - it's our "home screen".

I agree with comments about the trickiness of Delete, and the ease to screw up.

I agree with the comment about ordering Old to New for a series link, but sometimes you do want to see newest first, to check that recordings are still happening. I'd suggest that when you select a series link, there are a pair of new buttons along with the episodes - "Order New to Old" and "Order Old to New" or similar, so that you can change the order at will, whilst looking at episodes.

When you exit back to the main Planner screen after watching and deleting a recording, the "active box" could be anywhere on the screen, and not visible. I always have to randomly go up/down/left/right to find it. I would rather it defaults to the top left recording, and show up with the white outline.

I would like to see the "percentage storage used" display being able to update as soon as you come back from a series link to the Planner - rather than having to exit Planner and go back in again to see the change.

Hi there, thanks for your feedback.

We’ll be introducing a new Sort button on the recordings page so you can sort your recordings however you like to

Regarding the progress bar updating after deleting a recording, we’ve passed this to the team and they’ll be investigating if this can be done as you delete a recording. Once we hear from them will let you know.

SkyNZ

10 posts

Wannabe Geek

Trusted

Sky NZ

#3143663 6-Oct-2023 16:40

Raw127:

Hello Sky,

Out of scope for the planner subject, but listing our most annoying issues here in the hope someone from Sky takes notice.

1) One of the most annoying issues is during playback of a recorded program. If you rewind using 4x for just a second or 2 to rewatch something that was just shown that you missed, in many cases the Sky box will automatically fast forward to the place you started to rewind from. This is annoying especially when watching sport type programs in which you often want to skip back a few seconds to rewatch something again.

2) On the old Sky box you could position into a long recording (golf, rugby) by typing in the number of minutes to skip to in the recording. e.g. Typing 120 would position 2 hours into the recording. It would be good if this feature was added to the new Sky box.

3) Is there a good reason why you dull the screen when using FFWD/RWND/Pause?

4) The "<-Back" display in the top/left of the screen while FFWD/RWNDing is really annoying because it displays over important information such as the scores in rugby and the lap count in motor racing events such as supercars/Indycars/Formula1.
Is that display really necessary?

Ross.

Hi there,

Thanks for your feedback.

1. We’re working on improving the FF and RW functions.

2. We’ll pass this to the team and see if this is something can be done with the new box 3&4. We’ll be removing the dimming and tidying up all the buttons

SkyNZ

10 posts

Wannabe Geek

Trusted

Sky NZ

#3143664 6-Oct-2023 16:41

shadowspawn:

We use the Planner daily. Things to fix with magic wand:

1) Need to be very careful with Delete Recording. Easy mistakes to make:

deleting an episode that have not viewed yet
accidentally deleting another episode after deleting an episode
accidentally cancelling a future recording after deleting the last recorded episode
2) Episodes are listed from newest to oldest, so have to scroll all the way through to get to the episode most likely to view.

3) Series link annoyances:

series link finding episodes from multiple series even across multiple channels
sometimes, episode recorded in multiple parts
sometimes, episode missing end

I suspect this is out of scope for Planner as such, but our number 1 complaint is as per earlier comment: "REW hardly ever stops at the point wanted, quite often going back to the position REW started from or some other random position (absolutely infuriating in our household)". In our household we shout at the Skybox at this point.

Hi there,

Thanks for your feedback.

1. We’ll be introducing a confirmation message when user wants to delete a recording or cancel a future recording. So it’s always easy to recover

2. We’re planning to introduce sort option for recordings, so you can sort however you like to view.

MajorFigjam

23 posts

Geek

#3144218 8-Oct-2023 09:43

So Sky, I've filled in your half hearted survey attempts by email - sent to me as a long time customer, and early adopter. Thank goodness I didn't have to pay for the [cough] "upgrade". Having received no response, I'll add my voice here.

Let's stress the most important point that seems to be missed in your responses. That is, quoting from above" "On the old Sky box you could position into a long recording (golf, rugby) by typing in the number of minutes to skip to in the recording. e.g. Typing 120 would position 2 hours into the recording. It would be good if this feature was added to the new Sky box."

It is totally annoying to have to skip an hour of banal chat to catch up and watch a rugby game, or 55 minutes of news to get back to the weather forecast. The cynic in me says that this is so you can force us to watch the ever growing time on adverts, which even at x64 should have subliminal effect, so you won't even try to fix this. I live in hope.

On a slightly separate note, all the early adverts said how wonderful the new interface is, and how it had been tested before. If that was remotely true, why are you still playing catchup?

MajorFigjam

23 posts

Geek

#3153806 30-Oct-2023 21:23

So Sky appears to have lost interest in this thread - no updates from them for three weeks on what they are doing, or when we may see fixes.

Juut to summarise various contributions here and in the other thread, we still have the following problems at least:

1. After deleting a watched recording the 'Delete Recording' is still active and if other recordings are present it is very easy to accidently delete another. If there are no other recordings after deleting a recording, but recordings are scheduled the active window, 'Delete Recording' changes to 'Cancel Recording' again so very easy to accidentally delete. This results in deleting an episode that yoou have not viewed yet, or accidentally deleting another episode after deleting an episode, or accidentally cancelling a future recording after deleting the last recorded episode

2. Whilst using FFW/REW/Pause.
Screen Dims (makes it difficult to see especially in dark scenes)
Title of the program is displayed across the screen
Various other icons on the screen eg "<-Back" display in the top/left of the screen while FFWD/RWNDing is really annoying because it displays over important information such as the scores in rugby
REW hardly ever stops at the point wanted, quite often going back to the position REW started from or some other random position. If you rewind using 4x for just a second or 2 to rewatch something that was just shown that you missed, in many cases the box will automatically fast forward to the place you started to rewind from.
FFW speed needs fine tuning.2 x 4 x 8 x 12 are more relevant along with a means of getting to specific point in recording - except of course if you have to skip through 2 hours of preamble to get to the halftime highlights!

3. Series Link records everything remotely connected to the series wanted, also series link finding episodes from multiple series even across multiple channels, sometimes episode recorded in multiple parts, sometimes episode is missing end

4. Episodes are listed from newest to oldest, so have to scroll all the way through to get to the episode most likely to view.

5. On the old Sky box you could position into a long recording (golf, rugby) by typing in the number of minutes to skip to in the recording. e.g. Typing 120 would position 2 hours into the recording.

6. When you exit back to the main Planner screen after watching and deleting a recording, the "active box" could be anywhere on the screen, and not visible.

7. The ability to hide channels you are not subscribed to has gone

8. If watching something on Planner that is still recording and you reach the live point it will kick you back to the start. Particularly annoying if you are several hours into say something like golf and instead of stopping when reaching the live point and letting you resume there, it takes you all the way back to the start.

9. On some recordings, mainly the TVNZ 6pm news, a few minutes into replay, the picture goes black for a few seconds, and it then resumes playing from around five seconds prior to the black screen. I'm guessing that the box is stitching together the two recordings.

10. The new Sky Box now randomly puts itself into full shutdown overnight. For example, when we turn the TV on to watch Breakfast TV, or the TVNZ News, it turns out that the box was fully shut down, and only starts recording from then. Any other overnight recordings have been missed.

Major

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