Can I search EPG for films?

Gareth Davies

I bought a Humax YouView box yesterday to replace my dearly loved Humax 9200 PVR.

My 9200 allowed me to search the EPG for particular categories - Children, Films and so on.

I know I must be missing something obvious but there's no way I can find to search the EPG for, say, all films in the next seven days.

Could someone tell me how to do this?

redchiz

Here you go.

Gareth Davies

Thanks but no I mean: is there are way of searching the EPG for, say, all films on in the next 7 days? I know it is possible to search for progs with specific names but most PVRs allow you to display a list of all programmes on all channels in the next 7 or 14 days with a specific theme - films, children's, cooking and so on.

I can't find this option anywhere on the YouView box but it is such a basic PVR feature that I am assuming it must be there

stormy

No. There is no way of doing this. Youview vaguely talked about adding the feature but maybe not until next year. Its one of my biggest bug bears with the platform when my **** 8 year old PVR has been able to do this from day one. When I bought Youview I assumed this was covered from the big talk there was about the great search facility. At the moment "film" genre is only available on the on-demand search (and then everything is lost in the NowTV ****, another issue people have). This does need adding. It has been requested here:

http://community.youview.com/youview/...

and here;

http://community.youview.com/youview/...

Add your voice and click on the star on each of them.

Gareth Davies

I'm shocked. Had I known this I wouldn't have bought the box. The Humax 9200 calls the feature "Search by Genre". It's a central and extremely useful - I think essential and so basic - part of any PVR.

I don't understand why this feature would be missing from YouView - surely a simple film flag using the same data as that used by Freeview boxes would be simple to implement?

This is such a crazy omission that it calls into question the credibility of the service. Having just paid £250 for the box I'm not happy and seriously thinking of returning it.

stormy

I can't argue with you, I was really disappointed too. I don't see why its such a big issue for this to be added. But as you will learn there is lots of frustration over features which people want but Youview drag their heals over (especially things like this which are taking for granted on other PVRs).

Gareth Davies

I'm speechless. I have to use my old faulty Humax 9200 to perform a search by genre and then manually enter the results film by film - letter by letter - into the new Humax YouView box.

This is really poor and surely an embarrassment for YouView.

How difficult can it be to add a genre search for the EPG?

I will probably swap the box, under a 14 day return offer, for a Humax HD PVR.

YouView seems to be all fur coat and no knickers

stormy

Gareth Davies said:

I'm speechless. I have to use my old faulty Humax 9200 to perform a search by genre and then manually enter the results film by film - letter by letter - into the new Humax YouView box.

This is really poor and surely an embarrassment for YouView.

How difficult can it be to add a genre search for the EPG?

I will probably swap the box, under a 14 day return offer, for a Humax HD PVR.

YouView seems to be all fur coat and no knickers

Maybe at some point it will be implemented! That's what I am hoping.

Jim Suter

Gareth Davies said:

I'm speechless. I have to use my old faulty Humax 9200 to perform a search by genre and then manually enter the results film by film - letter by letter - into the new Humax YouView box.

This is really poor and surely an embarrassment for YouView.

How difficult can it be to add a genre search for the EPG?

I will probably swap the box, under a 14 day return offer, for a Humax HD PVR.

YouView seems to be all fur coat and no knickers

I wouldn't hold your breath, after a year pretty much nothing that has been suggested has been implemented.

stormy

Gareth Davies said:

I'm speechless. I have to use my old faulty Humax 9200 to perform a search by genre and then manually enter the results film by film - letter by letter - into the new Humax YouView box.

This is really poor and surely an embarrassment for YouView.

How difficult can it be to add a genre search for the EPG?

I will probably swap the box, under a 14 day return offer, for a Humax HD PVR.

YouView seems to be all fur coat and no knickers

Yeah. The only positive for this feature is that Youview have said it will come. Just maybe not before next year.

Gareth Davies

Gareth Davies said:

I'm speechless. I have to use my old faulty Humax 9200 to perform a search by genre and then manually enter the results film by film - letter by letter - into the new Humax YouView box.

This is really poor and surely an embarrassment for YouView.

How difficult can it be to add a genre search for the EPG?

I will probably swap the box, under a 14 day return offer, for a Humax HD PVR.

YouView seems to be all fur coat and no knickers

Amazing. I just checked my six year old Panasonic TV - its built in Freeview tuner (no PVR) displays programmes by movie, news, entertainment, sports, children's, education, lifestyle and drama.

There must be an explanation aside from just incompetence as to by YouView lacks this feature.

Visionman

There has been an explanation posted for this. No doubt not a satisfactory one, but one nonetheless -

________________________________________________________________

Piers (Official Rep)>
Just a bit of background. YouView boxes have access to 3 types of information for all programmes including films:

a) data via the aerial like all freeview boxes use. (DTT)
b) the same data available via YouView's IP servers. (we need this for searching, and to avoid gaps in the EPG while the box is still waiting for the DTT data to load if it's been off for a while)
c) YouView's enhanced data that is sent to us from the content provider or collected by us, including on demand availability, and in some cases longer synopsis - and in the future - actors, directors, ratings etc.

There's a couple of YouView bugs relating to "Films" that we're hoping to squash in the next few months. It's been hard to raise the priority as the don't really break features as such - they're just annoying, but they're moving up the queue steadily.

1) Most films in the future EPG showing as "Programmes". The cause of this is just a missing feature in the UI - it doesn't know how interpret the category data (film in this case) from either DTT aerial feeds or the IP feed of that DTT data (types a and b from above). It does work correctly, (e.g shows "Film") for a lot BBC films because they are (or will be in the 7 day EPG period) available on-demand, and we get the data in a format we do understand from the content provider (type c from above) - bypassing the DTT data, and using our own metadata system. The important part is that our servers and the YouView box do know which items are films in all cases - we just can't show it in the UI yet for items that only have DTT or DTT via IP data.

2) Our search servers don't return films if you ask for film. This one isn't really a bug as we don't have a "search for films" option yet, but we do want to add this to the mobile search as well as the YouView box search. And we need to fix the server problem first.

I'll update when we've made progress on either bug. No date has been set yet for a "search for films" option, but I'm doing what I can!
_________________________________________________________________

http://community.youview.com/youview/...

Unknown

Visionman - any chance you could contact [email protected] ?

Gareth Davies

Thanks.

So basically the genre search feature was not programmed into the YouView software - box GUI or server side.

Remarkably though the data is available and could be used.

This would probably take very little coding time to implement and test. What a difference it would make to the product.

Visionman

Agreed.

Hm, I honestly don't know how I can impart this properly, but both this box and how it works are a complicated beast. And where this subject is concerned - there are three inputs -

The Terrestrial over the air search of the EPG.

Combined with the IP search of the Terrestrial EPG.

And the IPTV On Demand search too.

So its not as simple as it looks to get such a basic feature onto the box due to the fact its a hybrid one. But I don't mean to placate you with what I'm saying, I'm just trying to explain it, in my own fumbling way.

Unknown

Visionman said:

Agreed.

Hm, I honestly don't know how I can impart this properly, but both this box and how it works are a complicated beast. And where this subject is concerned - there are three inputs -

The Terrestrial over the air search of the EPG.

Combined with the IP search of the Terrestrial EPG.

And the IPTV On Demand search too.

So its not as simple as it looks to get such a basic feature onto the box due to the fact its a hybrid one. But I don't mean to placate you with what I'm saying, I'm just trying to explain it, in my own fumbling way.

You never fumble Vm.

Visionman

Visionman said:

Agreed.

Hm, I honestly don't know how I can impart this properly, but both this box and how it works are a complicated beast. And where this subject is concerned - there are three inputs -

The Terrestrial over the air search of the EPG.

Combined with the IP search of the Terrestrial EPG.

And the IPTV On Demand search too.

So its not as simple as it looks to get such a basic feature onto the box due to the fact its a hybrid one. But I don't mean to placate you with what I'm saying, I'm just trying to explain it, in my own fumbling way.

Ta. And I'm on the MSE forum gwatuk, if you want to register and PM me. I'm on the Digital TV board. The forum software won't let me post a link to it for some reason.

Unknown

Unknown

gwatuk said:

Vm I've just registered.
Can't find you.
Can you find me?

stormy

Visionman said:

Agreed.

Hm, I honestly don't know how I can impart this properly, but both this box and how it works are a complicated beast. And where this subject is concerned - there are three inputs -

The Terrestrial over the air search of the EPG.

Combined with the IP search of the Terrestrial EPG.

And the IPTV On Demand search too.

So its not as simple as it looks to get such a basic feature onto the box due to the fact its a hybrid one. But I don't mean to placate you with what I'm saying, I'm just trying to explain it, in my own fumbling way.

Yeh I do understand, just hope this feature does come eventually, as I do miss it.

Unknown

gwatuk said:

As mentioned above Nick's thread is excellent - http://community.youview.com/youview/...
Piers comment a month ago included '...No date has been set yet for a "search for films" option, but I'm doing what I can!' - but we don't seem to hear much from Piers anymore.

Gareth Davies

Freeview manufacturers like Humax, Sagem and Topfield were offering this feature years ago without the need for promoting or customer requests. It was even advertised as being a central Freeview feature.

My initial impression of YouView is that it is not a well designed service but rather a cut and paste job with little thought given to foundational features or basic Freeview functions.

If the software architecture has been so badly designed as to omit the genre flags from EPG search then this is a serious project management failure. Such failures can be tricky to correct down the line but in this case it should be pretty easy to take remedial action. It does though say something about the quality of management in YouView that a year on this so basic feature is missing. Still no implementation time either. Is this partly because the YouView companies are more interested in on demand programming and have a disincentive to develop Freeview EPG viewing?

iPlayer integration with YouView is okay but the lack of genre search of EPG means that the total package lacks an essential feature.

I am really tempted to exchange the box, using the retailer's 14 day exchange period, for a Humax Freeview box.

Unknown

Gareth Davies said:

Freeview manufacturers like Humax, Sagem and Topfield were offering this feature years ago without the need for promoting or customer requests. It was even advertised as being a central Freeview feature.

My initial impression of YouView is that it is not a well designed service but rather a cut and paste job with little thought given to foundational features or basic Freeview functions.

If the software architecture has been so badly designed as to omit the genre flags from EPG search then this is a serious project management failure. Such failures can be tricky to correct down the line but in this case it should be pretty easy to take remedial action. It does though say something about the quality of management in YouView that a year on this so basic feature is missing. Still no implementation time either. Is this partly because the YouView companies are more interested in on demand programming and have a disincentive to develop Freeview EPG viewing?

iPlayer integration with YouView is okay but the lack of genre search of EPG means that the total package lacks an essential feature.

I am really tempted to exchange the box, using the retailer's 14 day exchange period, for a Humax Freeview box.

When I first received my YouView box (from TalkTalk) over a year ago I was pretty gobsmacked by the lack of many basic features that anyone might reasonably have expected. And, like you, I gave some serious thought to cancelling the contract. A number of the features I wanted have now been added, but as you've found there's still some way to go.
At present it seems that YouView, TalkTalk and BT are totally focussed on providing internet channels, and they seem to have run up against big problems with enabling record capability for these. Perhaps when this is resolved we'll see some more progress with the core features.

stormy

gwatuk said:

Yeh I wondered were Piers had gone, as I would have liked him of Phil to comment on my sound issue.

stormy

Gareth Davies said:

Freeview manufacturers like Humax, Sagem and Topfield were offering this feature years ago without the need for promoting or customer requests. It was even advertised as being a central Freeview feature.

My initial impression of YouView is that it is not a well designed service but rather a cut and paste job with little thought given to foundational features or basic Freeview functions.

If the software architecture has been so badly designed as to omit the genre flags from EPG search then this is a serious project management failure. Such failures can be tricky to correct down the line but in this case it should be pretty easy to take remedial action. It does though say something about the quality of management in YouView that a year on this so basic feature is missing. Still no implementation time either. Is this partly because the YouView companies are more interested in on demand programming and have a disincentive to develop Freeview EPG viewing?

iPlayer integration with YouView is okay but the lack of genre search of EPG means that the total package lacks an essential feature.

I am really tempted to exchange the box, using the retailer's 14 day exchange period, for a Humax Freeview box.

Yeh which means for users like me on a Retail box (because I can't get BT or TalkTalk where I live I feel even more hard done to ).

Gareth Davies

Called retailer today and claimed 14 day exchange. They asked me why I wanted to exchange. The guy didn't dissuade me when I explained.

YouView is flawed big time stylie.

stormy

Gareth Davies said:

Called retailer today and claimed 14 day exchange. They asked me why I wanted to exchange. The guy didn't dissuade me when I explained.

YouView is flawed big time stylie.

What are you going for instead? The problem I found unless I had Sky there was nothing which did iPlayer, ITV Player, 4oD and Demand5 with a PVR. So I am living with this annoying flaw for now.

Unknown

Gareth Davies said:

Called retailer today and claimed 14 day exchange. They asked me why I wanted to exchange. The guy didn't dissuade me when I explained.

YouView is flawed big time stylie.

I got the impression that this was a good bet: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-BD-F8...
It even looks a bit like a TalkTalk YouView box!

JamesB

Gareth Davies said:

Freeview manufacturers like Humax, Sagem and Topfield were offering this feature years ago without the need for promoting or customer requests. It was even advertised as being a central Freeview feature.

My initial impression of YouView is that it is not a well designed service but rather a cut and paste job with little thought given to foundational features or basic Freeview functions.

If the software architecture has been so badly designed as to omit the genre flags from EPG search then this is a serious project management failure. Such failures can be tricky to correct down the line but in this case it should be pretty easy to take remedial action. It does though say something about the quality of management in YouView that a year on this so basic feature is missing. Still no implementation time either. Is this partly because the YouView companies are more interested in on demand programming and have a disincentive to develop Freeview EPG viewing?

iPlayer integration with YouView is okay but the lack of genre search of EPG means that the total package lacks an essential feature.

I am really tempted to exchange the box, using the retailer's 14 day exchange period, for a Humax Freeview box.

Why? If you researched the YouView box, knew its problems, knew it didn't have all the features you wanted, but bought it anyway, why feel aggrieved?

stormy

Gareth Davies said:

Freeview manufacturers like Humax, Sagem and Topfield were offering this feature years ago without the need for promoting or customer requests. It was even advertised as being a central Freeview feature.

My initial impression of YouView is that it is not a well designed service but rather a cut and paste job with little thought given to foundational features or basic Freeview functions.

If the software architecture has been so badly designed as to omit the genre flags from EPG search then this is a serious project management failure. Such failures can be tricky to correct down the line but in this case it should be pretty easy to take remedial action. It does though say something about the quality of management in YouView that a year on this so basic feature is missing. Still no implementation time either. Is this partly because the YouView companies are more interested in on demand programming and have a disincentive to develop Freeview EPG viewing?

iPlayer integration with YouView is okay but the lack of genre search of EPG means that the total package lacks an essential feature.

I am really tempted to exchange the box, using the retailer's 14 day exchange period, for a Humax Freeview box.

The fact is I didn't know it could not search for Films. I wrongly assumed with all the trumpeting about its "killer search features" that this would have been included.

Before I bought the box I came on this forum but didn't trawl it religiously and THIS is the only place I would have found out the search short comings.

Originally when the box was released search didn't even work for the EPG (I would not even consider buying the machine at that point), when that was fixed I wrongly assumed again that searching for Films would be possible. So while I am partly to blame, to research such a feature was not easy as the OP has found out.

The first response to him even suggested it was possible! So yeh, its confusing.

Jim Suter

Gareth Davies said:

Called retailer today and claimed 14 day exchange. They asked me why I wanted to exchange. The guy didn't dissuade me when I explained.

YouView is flawed big time stylie.

Beware 4OD, ITV, and Demand 5 are coming soon! I have learnt that these claims are not worth much. However once these players are available it looks like a good box.