'TV Categories' page on Android app replicated on the TV box to compliment the EPG

Nick

Just been using the YouView app on my Samsung Galaxy S4 in anger and noticed an entry on the menu that said "TV Categories".  When you select it the following page is displayed:


It is a fantastic summary of the TV ahead on all the Freeview channels and would be ideal as an additional feature on the main YouView box.  Surely the viewing box developers could talk to the mobile developers and take the code from this extremely useful feature and include it within the standard EPG?

Sometimes it's really hard to find out what is coming up on the telly and summary screens like this one really help us users drill down our viewing for the week ahead.

churchwarden

Yes. It does rather prove what CAN be done with good planning and design. Pity the same approach wasn't applied to the box itself. It has always been a surprise (and sadness) to me, knowing what is possible, that the design team seemed to be content with providing a clone of other PVRs, albeit with a few features missing.
The YouView box offered a perfect opportunity to really RETHINK the whole PVR experience, and bring the features really into the 21st century. Unfortunately that opportunity was missed.
However, as you point out - one part of the YouView team seem to be providing excellent additional features that are completely missing from the box itself. Proving it can be done - but either the decision was made not to implement these features on the box itself, or it didn't even occur to them to do it.

Nick

churchwarden said:

Yes. It does rather prove what CAN be done with good planning and design. Pity the same approach wasn't applied to the box itself. It has always been a surprise (and sadness) to me, knowing what is possible, that the design team seemed to be content with providing a clone of other PVRs, albeit with a few features missing.
The YouView box offered a perfect opportunity to really RETHINK the whole PVR experience, and bring the features really into the 21st century. Unfortunately that opportunity was missed.
However, as you point out - one part of the YouView team seem to be providing excellent additional features that are completely missing from the box itself. Proving it can be done - but either the decision was made not to implement these features on the box itself, or it didn't even occur to them to do it.

Hopefully it was the latter and they'll quickly add it to the box. Glass half full guy me..

churchwarden

The categories have been available on the app for quite a while now, Nick. I find the app is actually a better way for some things to decide what to record, over the box itself. Films being one area. All the app guys need to do is pick up on a post I made on these forums AGES ago, and that is to code a VERY simple search string for each film, giving a link to the film title on the IMDB. That would be so useful and I suspect only a couple of lines of code. Dead easy. Dead simple. Dead USEFUL! But possibly also 'dead in the water'. Won't hold my breath.

Nick

churchwarden said:

The categories have been available on the app for quite a while now, Nick. I find the app is actually a better way for some things to decide what to record, over the box itself. Films being one area. All the app guys need to do is pick up on a post I made on these forums AGES ago, and that is to code a VERY simple search string for each film, giving a link to the film title on the IMDB. That would be so useful and I suspect only a couple of lines of code. Dead easy. Dead simple. Dead USEFUL! But possibly also 'dead in the water'. Won't hold my breath.

It is frustrating, I think there's been multiple suggestions like that via this forum (I've requested it myselff) but like you say they don't seem bothered at all about enhancing the box.

Roy

churchwarden said:

Yes. It does rather prove what CAN be done with good planning and design. Pity the same approach wasn't applied to the box itself. It has always been a surprise (and sadness) to me, knowing what is possible, that the design team seemed to be content with providing a clone of other PVRs, albeit with a few features missing.
The YouView box offered a perfect opportunity to really RETHINK the whole PVR experience, and bring the features really into the 21st century. Unfortunately that opportunity was missed.
However, as you point out - one part of the YouView team seem to be providing excellent additional features that are completely missing from the box itself. Proving it can be done - but either the decision was made not to implement these features on the box itself, or it didn't even occur to them to do it.

But they did rethink the PVR. What they didn't rethink, despite early claims to the contrary, was what a Home Entertainment Hub should be, and to be that.

'Any of your media - on your TV. And any of our media, like you've never seen before'. (YouView didn't say that, I did. But they should have).

And then YouView should have made it their business to make all the media they possibly could their media, i.e. available on, and optimised for, the YouView box.

But it's our experience that even here, the catchup Players, for example, are much clunkier than they are on other devices. So much so that if we can't get the programme via the 7-day backward EPG, a true YouView innovation in ease of use, we get it on an iPad, and throw it at the TV via an Apple TV box.

But why do we even need the Apple TV? YouView ought to support Airplay, it ought to support casting, etc., etc.

But no matter what it is or isn't, the YouView box, the recording one at least, needs a superset of PVR functionality, not to omit those things that even the cheapest Chinese knockoff takes for granted, like Favourite Channels, or at least some idea of what is happening when the thing goes wrong.

Actually, that is an area where YouView really have Innovated. I can't recall if there has ever been a device with so many, many different ways of malfunctioning, both temporary, long-term, and terminal :-)

And don't even get me started on this forum software. Just like YouView, it has innovated in some directions, and yet gone backwards in others, from the norm. It may be the administrator's happy dream (he says, choosing his words carefully) but it is too often the user's bad dream.

Birds of a feather, do we think?

Nick

How about it Sanj/Piers/Phil? Can you put this extremely useful summary screen onto the main Youview box?

Sanj

Nick4 said:

How about it Sanj/Piers/Phil? Can you put this extremely useful summary screen onto the main Youview box?

Hi Nick - Thanks for your feedback here. The TV categories section has been a great addition to the mobile app and we're glad that you're enjoying it. In regards to seeing a similar feature on the YouView box, I don't have any news on this at the moment. I've already passed this thread on to our product team, so if we have anything to share on this we'll make sure we let you know. 

Nick

The latest update to the Android app has renamed the 'TV Categories' feature into 'Discover'.

Sanj/Piers/Phil - Does this mean that you are aligning the Set-Top-Box (STB) and App features?  The current 'Discover' page on the STB is next to useless and just appears to be knocked up from existing functionality within the interface development toolbox.  Please can you make the STB 'Discover' match exactly the extremely useful one in the apps as currently I never use the STB version as it's so poorly implemented and also gets bogged down with Now TV films which I never use.

Nick

Raised this suggestion with YouView again and got the following email reply:

Hi Nick, 
Thanks for emailing us with your feedback.
 
I will certainly share your suggestions and the forum discussion with both our Product and Mobile teams. The YouView platform is developed to ensure viewers can always find the content they want to watch, and better discover new and exciting programmes. We plan to continue development to ensure this at the forefront of our thinking and making the platform more intuitive for users. At the moment there is no information to share on the Discover menu on the box, but if I do have any more information on this particular feature I will feedback on the discussion thread.
 
If you have any further feedback or queries let me know.
 
Thanks again,
 
Phil

At least it's been re-raised with them and hopefully with Phil's nudge they might rework the Discover section to be something that will be extremely useful to us all.

stormy

Nick4 said:

Raised this suggestion with YouView again and got the following email reply:

Hi Nick, 
Thanks for emailing us with your feedback.
 
I will certainly share your suggestions and the forum discussion with both our Product and Mobile teams. The YouView platform is developed to ensure viewers can always find the content they want to watch, and better discover new and exciting programmes. We plan to continue development to ensure this at the forefront of our thinking and making the platform more intuitive for users. At the moment there is no information to share on the Discover menu on the box, but if I do have any more information on this particular feature I will feedback on the discussion thread.
 
If you have any further feedback or queries let me know.
 
Thanks again,
 
Phil

At least it's been re-raised with them and hopefully with Phil's nudge they might rework the Discover section to be something that will be extremely useful to us all.Its high time we had a "film" search on the box but while you have raised excellent points we just have to look at the list of requested features graveyard of all the stuff thats really good ideas that have never been implemented. Seems "passing the comment onto the product teams" is as far as they ever get.