Vodafone TV - new Gen2 box

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stevec
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#2482841 13-May-2020 15:43

Oh dear Geekzone, you've let me down. :-(
Saw that PBTech had a Vodafone TV box on special for $130. Good price. Is it worth having? Looked here:
* Can (usually) see the picture while fast-forwarding now, good (usually).
* The app works now, good.
* Seems there are more shows that you can record etc now, good.
Perhaps the box is OK now.
Got it today. Not excited yet. :-(
* Everywhere we look the device and app shout at us BUY BUY BUY more services.
* App is very slow - lots of spinning circles.
* Can't find a comprehensive instruction site ('user manual' for us old dudes). 'Setting up' gets you far enough to be told to buy stuff.
* First two shows I tried to 'record' - Hawaii Five-O and NCIS. Both unavailable for recording.
(Bad luck when '90%' of content is available.) App won't even show me Hawaii Five-O yet because it is one week plus a few hours away.
* At least I can stop seeing all the channel listings that I don't want to BUY BUY BUY? Welcome email says:
" ... add the Sky channels you love and remove the ones you don't ... " Remove is good, but 'See how' button just takes me to my account details page. Apparently I can stop it shouting at me. :-( :-(

Can I remove or at least re-order the Apps on the device? At the moment the top three just scream (you can guess). We need to scroll to get to any apps we might use. I would read the manual, but ...

Good thing the T-Box still does all the above quickly with minimum fuss. MythTV does the recording well, with a bit more fuss.

I really hope someone can tell me that I'm missing something please!

freitasm

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#2482847 13-May-2020 15:51

No, you can't remove or re-order the apps.

I have a box and don't see BUY BUY - granted we already have Amazon and Netflix so that's a given. And simply ignored SKY. Done.

You can't record some shows because of rights, not because of the box.

You can "catch up" on programmes up to 72 hours after screening on FTA.

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stevec
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#2482867 13-May-2020 16:24

freitasm:
No, you can't remove or re-order the apps.

I have a box and don't see BUY BUY - granted we already have Amazon and Netflix so that's a given. And simply ignored SKY. Done.

You can't record some shows because of rights, not because of the box.

You can "catch up" on programmes up to 72 hours after screening on FTA.

Thanks for some answers. Yes, the difference is that you get some functionality out of having the paid apps always in your face. We don't.
I guess we will get used to recognising and ignoring the Sky channels.
All up - I see this product as focused on selling more services, not on focused on what the customer currently has / wants. I totally understand that rights is everything. I guess that is how TV entertainment has changed and I just need to lower my expectations and hope Vodafone keep updating this box. What it does, it does seem to do well.
I thought I saw somewhere that the Vodafone box supports streaming from other devices, but perhaps I got boxes mixed up there. Don't suppose I'm missing something, and it does support DLNA or Chromecast etc?

Elmoz

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#2482875 13-May-2020 16:32

SteveC:
freitasm:

No, you can't remove or re-order the apps.

I have a box and don't see BUY BUY - granted we already have Amazon and Netflix so that's a given. And simply ignored SKY. Done.

You can't record some shows because of rights, not because of the box.

You can "catch up" on programmes up to 72 hours after screening on FTA.

Thanks for some answers. Yes, the difference is that you get some functionality out of having the paid apps always in your face. We don't.
I guess we will get used to recognising and ignoring the Sky channels.
All up - I see this product as focused on selling more services, not on focused on what the customer currently has / wants. I totally understand that rights is everything. I guess that is how TV entertainment has changed and I just need to lower my expectations and hope Vodafone keep updating this box. What it does, it does seem to do well.
I thought I saw somewhere that the Vodafone box supports streaming from other devices, but perhaps I got boxes mixed up there. Don't suppose I'm missing something, and it does support DLNA or Chromecast etc?

You can go into the settings on the box and turn off the sky channels to stop them appearing in the guide.

Senecio

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#2482879 13-May-2020 16:36

I use the VTV Gen 2 box solely for watching live FTA TV and the odd 3 day rewind. Everything else is stream via the ATV 4K.

It does everything I could ask of it without shouting at me to buy more services.

freitasm

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#2482890 13-May-2020 16:44

SteveC:

Don't suppose I'm missing something, and it does support DLNA or Chromecast etc?

There's indication Chromecast support is being worked.

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Elmoz

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#2482891 13-May-2020 16:46

freitasm:

SteveC:

Don't suppose I'm missing something, and it does support DLNA or Chromecast etc?

There's indication Chromecast support is being worked.

You can cast YouTube and Netflix from a device to the VTV box.

SteveC

stevec
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#2482892 13-May-2020 16:47

Elmoz:
You can go into the settings on the box and turn off the sky channels to stop them appearing in the guide.

Yea! Will go looking!

01EG

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#2482895 13-May-2020 16:52

SteveC:
Yea! Will go looking!

its here: Settings > Content Settings > Unsubscribed Channels

mclean

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#2482903 13-May-2020 17:03

SteveC: ... First two shows I tried to 'record' - Hawaii Five-O and NCIS. Both unavailable for recording.
(Bad luck when '90%' of content is available.) App won't even show me Hawaii Five-O yet because it is one week plus a few hours away.

You can go to the previous episode in the EPG and record the whole series from there.

snowfly

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#2484824 16-May-2020 13:31

I've been looking for a device to replace our aging Panasonic Freeview Recorder (BWT835), and essentially 'upgrade' the experience we get with our 5 year old Panasonic 50" TV (where even the YouTube app no longer works!)

And possibly purchasing multiple devices (if they all work together, or can access same content/recording), e.g main Lounge TV, bedroom TV, and even the TV at a holiday house.

BUT, trying to search through this post, not sure if the Vodafone TV box will tick all our boxes.

Can any Vodafone rep, or others, answer the following for me please:

Is there an ETA for Disney+? This is important for the kids - and a road block for us to purchase the device
The last mention of this was back in March, saying "couple of months"?
Are there plans (and an ETA) to support 1.25x or 1.5x playback speed with audio?
We use the 1.5x playback on the Panasonic Freeview Recorder quite a lot on shows like news, current affairs, documentaries, etc, to get rid of all the pauses and slow talking.
Are there any Parental Controls, to stop younger children accessing either channels/programs/apps?
I couldn't find this listed anywhere, only a brief mention of a PIN lock code? Is there a manual on this?
Would hate for kids to start watching AO programs on demand during the day
Can you pause live TV, or rewind live TV (in case you missed what someone said, rewind a few seconds, watch again), like we can with the Panasonic box?
Again I couldn't find specific info on this - is there a full manual / user guide somewhere, what what you can/can't do with live TV?
Can the Vodafone TV remote automatically turn on/off the TV and HMDI connected stereo (Onkyo)?
e.g. currently our panasonic TV remote turns on the TV & stereo at the same time, and turns both off, I think this was called Viera link or HDMI CEC?
Is there a list of Freeview programs that CANNOT be recorded (e.g. outside the advertised 90% covered content).
Interested to see what shows we cannot record, as currently our Panasonic device can record 100% (as its a local HDD, not cloud based)
How long are cloud recordings kept?
I couldn't find any official word on this, only forum posts saying possibly 90 days? Is that for all recordings including protected?

I might have more questions, but I can't think of them for now. (maybe about downloading content for offline viewing, but that might be a separate discussion).

Thanks all.

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SteveC

stevec
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#2484881 16-May-2020 14:34

All the best for finding a single solution @snowfly! Sounds like you have similar underlying objectives to us.
It seems to me that this is a product for it's time. No, definitely nothing resembling a manual, just features that the customer has to 'discover'.
Different subject, but similar issue I think, is the demise of DLNA streaming. As far as i can tell it is a technically OK protocol that has gone out of fashion. I appears to me that many people seem to 'expect' electronic items to have a max two year lifetime. Terrible waste, but is you measure our well being by how much money is being spent, then it is good.

I see the biggest weakness of the Vodafone TV box as being the fact it is custom built by/for Vodafone. If Vodafone London had a big spat with Vodafone NZ (which is locally owned), then perhaps we could loose localised support for the box. Alternative is a Google TV box from the likes of Dish TV. They have their own problems, but using an OS written and supported by Google might be safer.

From your list, only things I can comment on (from one week of use and quite a bit of research regarding features we want):

3. There is a Parental Control feature. Haven't investigated it thoroughly. Just found this press release: https://news.vodafone.co.nz/news/technology/vtvupdates If we still have VTV when the grand daughter is old enough to change channels, might investigate further!

4. Yes - except the current firmware has a bug that screws up with fast-forwarding. It has '20 second forward / backward' buttons which do work OK. The rewind / fast forward is good when it is working and I think the bug will be fixed soon.

5. Maybe - it does support HDMI-CEC in some form (our 2012 Samsung TV lists the VTV three times under sources - one standard HDMI, and two HDMI-CEC options). Doesn't seem to work with our TV (HDMI-CED Samsung BlueRay box works perfectly). This post might be relevant to you: https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=40&topicid=255631

6. NONE! (Shouting - to encourage @JasonParis to work on getting better licensing arrangements!)

For us the most useful source of information about the VTV has been Geekzone. I hope my efforts here can help you.
In the meantime, we will keep using our old Vodafone T-Box until it stops working. We also have a laptop that lives permanently next to the TV. We use it for 'computer things' that VTV doesn't do (like you, 'smart' features on our TV have pretty-much died), and it runs https://www.mythtv.org/ for recording anything we like. VTV was cheap ($130 at PBTech) and is currently not offering anything significant that we want but can't get from T-Box + laptop.

netspanner

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#2484904 16-May-2020 15:35

I want to heartfully thank ZollyMonsta for whatever wizardry he did to fix our box a month back. Since the new box came out in September we have been plagued with "cannot connect errors", making it almost unusable every. single. night.

However since ZollyMonsta did something, its worked perfectly for the first time ever. In the last month we have been holding our breath every time we turned it on expecting it to revert back to the trouble it was was in the past, but it still works!!! We have only had about 3 since then which we just turned off an on the box to fix.

Thanks ZollyMonsta!!

IvanPiacun

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#2484918 16-May-2020 16:20

snowfly:

5. Can the Vodafone TV remote automatically turn on/off the TV and HMDI connected stereo (Onkyo)?
e.g. currently our panasonic TV remote turns on the TV & stereo at the same time, and turns both off, I think this was called Viera link or HDMI CEC?

The remote can be programmed to turn on/off the TV as well which would then mean your existing Viera Link would turn on/off the Stereo I believe.

As stated elsewhere:

To Pair your Vodafone TV Remote with your TV after setting the VTV Remote to use Bluetooth with Vodafone TV.

Turn on your TV that you wish to pair with
Press and hold the Yellow and OK buttons on your remote until the Power button blinks green twice
Point the remote towards your TV
Press and hold the Power button on your remote until your TV turns off (this may take up to 30 seconds), then release the Power button
The LED will indicate its progress by a long green blinking
Press the Power button to turn your TV back on

Also:

To Reset your remote control

Press and hold the Blue and Menu buttons until the Power button blinks green twice
Press 9 four times, the Power button will blink green each time you press 9

After the fourth time, the Power button will blink Red four times and your remote will be back to it's original state

Ivan Piacun CITPNZ

freitasm

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#2485351 17-May-2020 21:14

Make sure when buying a Vodafone TV that you are not tying it to a plan - they sell the Gen 1 version with plans. You want the Gen 2.

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