Hi all, If I had seen this forum earlier I certainly would not have signed up with TC! We haven't even had it a week and already I want to throw the T-box out the window! It is so slowed when changing channels, reverting to the planner and the guide not to mention the problems we are having with our recordings. What is the point of recording anything if you're not going to see the last 5-10 minutes of the program! Rang technical faults tonight and all she could offer was "we could send out a tech (Monday at the earliest!) however if there is nothing wrong with the t-box you will be charged" WTF!!! We have tried the different buffer times to no avail. You would think that TC would be faster considering it uses fibre optic cables!!! Hence our switch from mysky to TCs equal.... for lack of a better word. If TC dont pull their socks up and sort it out we'll be disconnecting! Very very disappointed! By the way our version is the latest: 2.1.22
The fact that TV programs run overtime is not TCL's fault.
Their padding buffer function is a quite stupid though. When you change the setting, it only applies to new recordings you set up. Any existing scheduled recordings or series links will continue to use the old setting (or more accurately, the setting that was in effect when they wee originally set up).
So, short summary, if you change the padding buffer, you need to redo all your scheduled recordings.
@ BigBadaboom...ahhh! That will be why we are still having these issues then. Very good to know. I will reschedule our series links etc and see how we go.
Thank you so so much for this info I really appreciate it!
Pity the TC tech faults lady didn't know her stuff.
Thanks again :-)
One other thing....does anyone else's screen turn black for approx 3-5 seconds when going to the planner or guide and take ages to move up or down??
Thanks :-)
angeldevilnz: One other thing....does anyone else's screen turn black for approx 3-5 seconds when going to the planner or guide and take ages to move up or down??
Thanks :-)
Yes it does take ages to go up and down and that's probably my main issue with it. Going through the end of the planner (doing page down) takes ages and there isn't any way to re-order to go to the latest recording first.
I thought this was the norm until I played with a friend's sky box and saw that it was a lot more responsive. Oh well.
To the telstraclear people monitoring these forums, I do appreciate the help you are providing (I had an engineer visit for my broadband a while back due to these forums) but the T-Box issues are bigger than that (needs more development). And those that say that "it was the same when mysky came out" well telstra had years to look at mysky before releasing their product so that's no excuse. It's basically like Sony releasing a crappy mp3 player and people going "well look at the ipod when it came out".
On a brighter note, we had minimal landline issues after the June 13th earthquake where as our neighbours on telecom were out of service for weeks!
With all these issues, I don't intend to change provider at the moment, but being in the red zone means I'll have to move in the next year and unless there are major improvements with the box I will have to go with Sky...
angeldevilnz: One other thing....does anyone else's screen turn black for approx 3-5 seconds when going to the planner or guide and take ages to move up or down??
Thanks :-)
And yes, the screen does turn black for a few seconds. I'm pretty sure that "feature" wasn't always there. I think it appeared 2 system-updates ago. The sluggishness is acknowledged by TC and it was was of the things mentioned in the Stuff article. If they knock that one on the head it'll be the biggest issue resolved. Fingers crossed ...
angeldevilnz: One other thing....does anyone else's screen turn black for approx 3-5 seconds when going to the planner or guide and take ages to move up or down??
Thanks :-)
And yes, the screen does turn black for a few seconds. I'm pretty sure that "feature" wasn't always there. I think it appeared 2 system-updates ago. The sluggishness is acknowledged by TC and it was was of the things mentioned in the Stuff article. If they knock that one on the head it'll be the biggest issue resolved. Fingers crossed ...
I agree. The sluggishness is the main problem with this decoder. Lets hope that it can be corrected with a software update.
We had a strange one last night. We had viewed a recorded program which we deleted. Then went to Planner to make sure it had deleted. (why I don't know, just habit) Then went to 'Back' and found we couldn't change channels. Nearly ready to reboot (which I am dead against) and decided to have another look at Planner, came back and we could then change channels. Another software glitch.?
Update from my last post: I did what BigBadaboom suggested and rescheduled all of our series links with a 5 minute buffer and for the last 2 days we have not had any problems with our recordings! Yahoo! Also it seems that changing channels, flicking through the planner and guide have sped up. Has anyone else noticed the improvements with theirs? (Wondering if we are just getting used to the speed or lack of lol) Oh and no black screen either!! Anyway all is good!! Thank you BigBadaboom for your help and to TC if you have updated ....well done! :-)
As promised I am reporting back what is happening with my T-Box now that I am experimenting going without a weekly reboot.
I have skipped one reboot and are a week beyond the scheduled reboot making it two weeks since my last reboot. I have noticed a definite slow down in responsiveness. The EPG is slower scrolling . Moving between some channels is slower.
No skipped recordings, I still have my padding set at 5 minutes and have never experienced missed records.
I still prefer not to use the padding buffer as we got too many failed recordings with it. I think it works fine if you are recording programmes that are well spaced out but we were recording programmes at the same time and ones straight after another so I think it was trying to record too many programmes at the same time.
ChristineNZL: I still prefer not to use the padding buffer as we got too many failed recordings with it. I think it works fine if you are recording programmes that are well spaced out but we were recording programmes at the same time and ones straight after another so I think it was trying to record too many programmes at the same time.
My experience was that most failed recordings were due to the T-Box software trying to initiate a third recording when it was technically impossible. It was happening because the EPG had additional links to repeat-screenings (not just a link from one week to the next). The guy at TC recommended I try setting the padding to 0, but my solution has been to record fewer programmes, or to add single recordings week by week. I'm appreciative of my T-Box for reducing the amount of TV that I watch ...
We lost our EPG today too and I had only just been thinking the day before how we hadn't had so many problems with it lately - guess I jinxed myself. Before I could do a reboot to get the EPG back the whole thing froze up so I had to reboot anyway. I feel those of us complaining on here are only the tip of the iceberg. I was speaking to a co-worker today and she said they lose their EPG all the time too and she has had several programmes tape the wrong channel (like mine they always seem to record TV3 by mistake). And yes we also get the black screen for a few seconds when changing channels - I had never really noticed it until it was mentioned here as I guess I just got used to it.
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