No-one's asking these guys to write any new code. Just an implementation of the recording lists as an option with the tiles. it can't be that hard. That redchiz feller is patently on the youview payroll.
But new code would be required they can't use the lists from the youview classic software as that software is flash based and next gen is cloud based. If it was as simple as people make out ask yourself this if it was that simple why didn't the include this in the very first release of next gen.
Ultimately only time will tell whether options and different views are implemented. If one looks to the past then YouView have received various strongly supported suggestions for improvement, some requiring choice/options, and have implemented only a few of them despite the fact some others would most likely require very minimal code change/addition. Based on that one might thus hold the view that bringing in an optional second view for MyTV is something YouView are unlikely to do (any time soon, if at all).
Without seeing the code it is rather difficult to comment on whether adding such an optional view would be easy or not. My impression from other systems though is this should just be a view of underlying data and to code an optional different presentation would not be significant work. How much work it would be may depend on how complex this different view is (and how flexibly the underlying code is currently written). If one views the current tiles view as a set of rectangular tiles in a 3x4 grid then one could imagine how there are parameters in the code that might allow that grid to be varied in dimensions and could thus be changed to Nx1 and hence effectively a list. It would of course need a little more work than that but if there were a desire within YouView to implement such a list of tiles then I would expect it can be done and would not be too complicated or time consuming to do.
For now though I would expect the focus to be on bringing back the missing features and addressing the inefficient journeys. The recent announcement shows some changes are on the way but the ones coming soon sound like the most minimal of code changes so so far the signs of progress and more substantial fixes are still only on the horizon.
Phil, Why should we have to wait for something we already had a month ago, the fact that features missing that were there before this update, shows that is was not ready for release. If you really are listening to us, give us back the original software and when you have fully fixed and sorted out this new one then roll it out.
As for the key themes you mentioned, we don't want tiles of any description, we want nice easy to read lists, surely it can't be that hard to give the option to have lists or tiles.
I think the tile option could be for people who can't read?!?!?!?! Oh, sorry! - It's NOT an option!
I'm guessing you aren't a software developer, right?
It's like I have with the builders we have in at the moment - jobs I think should be easy are actually hard, and things I think might be complicated are 'no problem'.
Because I don't know enough abut building.
Daniel is quite right about the impossibility of reusing code from CurrentGen; if it could have been used, there would be no need for NextGen to be less functional than CurrentGen at all, but the fact is that the move to HTML 5 means everything needs to be rewritten.
Fredy
Your short question deserves a much longer answer, but as Comments are soon swept away in the onrush, I'm going to make it a topic in its own right, as I think it deserves more general consideration, and therefore a longer lifespan.
I'll put a link here when I post it, but right now real life intervenes, so it won't be until later,
‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ Wm Morris
Following your valuable feedback on MyTV there are a number of improvements that will be rolled out to your box shortly.
These include;
• Easier navigation with a new layout of 12 equally sized, larger scale tiles • See more of the programme title and details with the new larger tiles • Start at the beginning of a series folder as we now land you on your first recorded episode • And in addition, the main menu will now timeout after 30 seconds so you can get back to watching your favourite shows quicker
The phased rollout of the updates to MyTV start shortly. We will let you know as soon as possible.
Thank you again for your feedback.
Phil
@redchiz - examples of user selectable viewing formats;
'Explorer' on Windows, 'Finder' on Mac - many ways of seeing content from large to small tiles to lists of varying detail levels
Google Drive web view - tiles or list view option, same in the iOS apps
Dropbox web interface - grid or list view option
iBooks iOS app - grid or list option
Those are the ones I can see in front of me right now. No doubt there are plenty more where the developer decided that their arrogance of limiting choice (especially after changing from a previous format) wasn't the right thing to do - and that list above includes some really arrogant dev teams/companies.
Following your valuable feedback on MyTV there are a number of improvements that will be rolled out to your box shortly.
These include;
• Easier navigation with a new layout of 12 equally sized, larger scale tiles • See more of the programme title and details with the new larger tiles • Start at the beginning of a series folder as we now land you on your first recorded episode • And in addition, the main menu will now timeout after 30 seconds so you can get back to watching your favourite shows quicker
The phased rollout of the updates to MyTV start shortly. We will let you know as soon as possible.
Roy, no. that's where all the money was in IBM, I was in hardware Service Delivery ... customers chewing my ears off on a daily basis for years and years etc. But anyway, yes, get your point. Cheers.
Following your valuable feedback on MyTV there are a number of improvements that will be rolled out to your box shortly.
These include;
• Easier navigation with a new layout of 12 equally sized, larger scale tiles • See more of the programme title and details with the new larger tiles • Start at the beginning of a series folder as we now land you on your first recorded episode • And in addition, the main menu will now timeout after 30 seconds so you can get back to watching your favourite shows quicker
The phased rollout of the updates to MyTV start shortly. We will let you know as soon as possible.
Thank you again for your feedback.
Phil
The relevance to TV boxes is they are all computers (of one sort or another) used by the general public. AND, if the general public don't like them, they will not buy them. Windows Vista and Windows 8 being very expensive (for Microsoft) proof of that simple fact. I for one, will not buy YouView again.
Following your valuable feedback on MyTV there are a number of improvements that will be rolled out to your box shortly.
These include;
• Easier navigation with a new layout of 12 equally sized, larger scale tiles • See more of the programme title and details with the new larger tiles • Start at the beginning of a series folder as we now land you on your first recorded episode • And in addition, the main menu will now timeout after 30 seconds so you can get back to watching your favourite shows quicker
The phased rollout of the updates to MyTV start shortly. We will let you know as soon as possible.
Thank you again for your feedback.
Phil
Because a tv box is run by software like all of the things mentioned, and that software can be altered? Or am I and many others missing something? Maybe tv boxes are indeed magic?
Following your valuable feedback on MyTV there are a number of improvements that will be rolled out to your box shortly.
These include;
• Easier navigation with a new layout of 12 equally sized, larger scale tiles • See more of the programme title and details with the new larger tiles • Start at the beginning of a series folder as we now land you on your first recorded episode • And in addition, the main menu will now timeout after 30 seconds so you can get back to watching your favourite shows quicker
The phased rollout of the updates to MyTV start shortly. We will let you know as soon as possible.
Thank you again for your feedback.
Phil
Because a tv box is run by software like all of the things mentioned, and that software can be altered? Or am I and many others missing something? Maybe tv boxes are indeed magic?
Following your valuable feedback on MyTV there are a number of improvements that will be rolled out to your box shortly.
These include;
• Easier navigation with a new layout of 12 equally sized, larger scale tiles • See more of the programme title and details with the new larger tiles • Start at the beginning of a series folder as we now land you on your first recorded episode • And in addition, the main menu will now timeout after 30 seconds so you can get back to watching your favourite shows quicker
The phased rollout of the updates to MyTV start shortly. We will let you know as soon as possible.
Thank you again for your feedback.
Phil
It is a ridiculous comparison. Different devices have different functions and differing levels of processing power. You might as well compare the chip in your washing machine to the one in your toaster and say aha, but they are all computers.
Following your valuable feedback on MyTV there are a number of improvements that will be rolled out to your box shortly.
These include;
• Easier navigation with a new layout of 12 equally sized, larger scale tiles • See more of the programme title and details with the new larger tiles • Start at the beginning of a series folder as we now land you on your first recorded episode • And in addition, the main menu will now timeout after 30 seconds so you can get back to watching your favourite shows quicker
The phased rollout of the updates to MyTV start shortly. We will let you know as soon as possible.
Thank you again for your feedback.
Phil
"Or am I and many others missing something?" Show me one. A TV box I mean.
I'm now happy with the disagree icon, because its gone.
Following your valuable feedback on MyTV there are a number of improvements that will be rolled out to your box shortly.
These include;
• Easier navigation with a new layout of 12 equally sized, larger scale tiles • See more of the programme title and details with the new larger tiles • Start at the beginning of a series folder as we now land you on your first recorded episode • And in addition, the main menu will now timeout after 30 seconds so you can get back to watching your favourite shows quicker
The phased rollout of the updates to MyTV start shortly. We will let you know as soon as possible.
Thank you again for your feedback.
Phil
Close but no cigar on the tiles but thanks for trying. We''ll give it a go but SWMBO has stopped using youview and I think she's too far gone now. PS Visionman - Humax Fox T2 was very customisable https://hummy.tv/forum/threads/cfw-3-12-customised-firmware-v3-12-released.7835/. You can run custom firmware on almost all processors, it's just rarely worth the effort.
Following your valuable feedback on MyTV there are a number of improvements that will be rolled out to your box shortly.
These include;
• Easier navigation with a new layout of 12 equally sized, larger scale tiles • See more of the programme title and details with the new larger tiles • Start at the beginning of a series folder as we now land you on your first recorded episode • And in addition, the main menu will now timeout after 30 seconds so you can get back to watching your favourite shows quicker
The phased rollout of the updates to MyTV start shortly. We will let you know as soon as possible.
Thank you again for your feedback.
Phil
"Humax Fox T2 was very customisable"
Topfields were customisable as well, but they aren't made any more either.
Matthew Johns> (talking about offering a customiseable GUI) "Close but no cigar on the tiles but thanks for trying. We''ll give it a go but SWMBO has stopped using youview and I think she's too far gone now. PS Visionman - Humax Fox T2 was very customisable https://hummy.tv/forum/threads/cfw-3-12-customised-firmware-v3-12-released.7835/. You can run custom firmware on almost all processors, it's just rarely worth the effort." I completely agree.
I'm now happy with the disagree icon, because its gone.
Following your valuable feedback on MyTV there are a number of improvements that will be rolled out to your box shortly.
These include;
• Easier navigation with a new layout of 12 equally sized, larger scale tiles • See more of the programme title and details with the new larger tiles • Start at the beginning of a series folder as we now land you on your first recorded episode • And in addition, the main menu will now timeout after 30 seconds so you can get back to watching your favourite shows quicker
The phased rollout of the updates to MyTV start shortly. We will let you know as soon as possible.
Thank you again for your feedback.
Phil
>> Um, yes, and the relevance to TV boxes is?
These are just UI examples. So few PVR options out there - by your logic YouView could never have tiles as it had a list before.
Back in the mist of time ISTR that the PS3 PlayTV had a selectable list or grid view. Wikipedia seems to think it did too - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayTV - Library section. And the reference links to a 2008 Eurogamer review, which shows how long ago it was perfectly possible to offer a choice.
Ooh look - the library "is also fully sortable by date, channel and name." wow - how nice would that be to have on the YouView box?
Am sure you are just playing Devil's advocate for the LOLs but you know perfectly well that they could easily produce an alternative interface that restored the features they killed off with 'next gen' - that they've chosen not to, and instead given us this dogs dinner early beta version is curious.
Following your valuable feedback on MyTV there are a number of improvements that will be rolled out to your box shortly.
These include;
• Easier navigation with a new layout of 12 equally sized, larger scale tiles • See more of the programme title and details with the new larger tiles • Start at the beginning of a series folder as we now land you on your first recorded episode • And in addition, the main menu will now timeout after 30 seconds so you can get back to watching your favourite shows quicker
The phased rollout of the updates to MyTV start shortly. We will let you know as soon as possible.
Thank you again for your feedback.
Phil
Ahh yes, I had PlayTV, it lasted about 10 minutes before I hated it and binned it.
as per your link that was a well constructed piece of software and well worth aspiring to..
'On 6 December 2010, another update, version 2.02, was released. Many users complained that since the update the PlayTV software became unstable, with the most commonly reported symptom being the software hanging on the PlayTV launch screen and not proceeding any further'
Following your valuable feedback on MyTV there are a number of improvements that will be rolled out to your box shortly.
These include;
• Easier navigation with a new layout of 12 equally sized, larger scale tiles • See more of the programme title and details with the new larger tiles • Start at the beginning of a series folder as we now land you on your first recorded episode • And in addition, the main menu will now timeout after 30 seconds so you can get back to watching your favourite shows quicker
The phased rollout of the updates to MyTV start shortly. We will let you know as soon as possible.
Thank you again for your feedback.
Phil
@scott - yeah, it had a *lot* of teething problems. There was a major update at one point that stabilised it, but even then if you were using a game that pushed the system it had problems.
The benefit to me was that it was better than what I had before - some Panasonic DVD/HDD analogue TV recorder that had an interface that must have inspired the current YouView developers to match its laggy nature.
That's my biggest problem with the tiles, after the outsized one on each page - the box hardware just can't handle loading and rendering the pictures all over the place. Mine's a Humax DTR-2000 and you can see it having to work to load all the images - the old software would never be described as snappy but this is noticeable worse.
That was the best thing about the PlayTV in the end - when it worked it was *quick* - benefit of throwing a game console CPU/GPU at it rather than the cheap ARM SOC that I'd bet the Humax boxes run on.
Following your valuable feedback on MyTV there are a number of improvements that will be rolled out to your box shortly.
These include;
• Easier navigation with a new layout of 12 equally sized, larger scale tiles • See more of the programme title and details with the new larger tiles • Start at the beginning of a series folder as we now land you on your first recorded episode • And in addition, the main menu will now timeout after 30 seconds so you can get back to watching your favourite shows quicker
The phased rollout of the updates to MyTV start shortly. We will let you know as soon as possible.
Thank you again for your feedback.
Phil
@Richard Groves So you will be happy with the announcement that the single larger tile has now gone. My box doesn't have any issues loading the pictures, is this because of your internet speed or your box? Have you tried the soft reset to confirm a clean boot doesn't help.
Following your valuable feedback on MyTV there are a number of improvements that will be rolled out to your box shortly.
These include;
• Easier navigation with a new layout of 12 equally sized, larger scale tiles • See more of the programme title and details with the new larger tiles • Start at the beginning of a series folder as we now land you on your first recorded episode • And in addition, the main menu will now timeout after 30 seconds so you can get back to watching your favourite shows quicker
The phased rollout of the updates to MyTV start shortly. We will let you know as soon as possible.
Thank you again for your feedback.
Phil
I am happy to hear that the 'hero' tile has gone. 12 per page vs the current ~15 (if they'd just removed the tile) should give more space to be able to read the title too. One small step and all that....
Can't see how internet speed would affect the loading of images from recorded content - please tell me they're not grabbing it from the 'cloud' (aka someone else's computer). And anyway I have over 200Mbs download and the Humax box is wired into the main router - so it better not be having a bandwidth problem. Might be time to wireshark it and see just what it is downloading (and more importantly uploading - every time we change channel maybe? [purely for the 'improving user experience of course' cough cough....])
The box has performed a few 'soft resets' itself since this update - never had that problem in the previous couple of years, but twice in the last month or so I've had it crash on startup and go through the full (slow) reboot process. Will give it a 30 minute break from the power though to see if that can clear some caches.
Following your valuable feedback on MyTV there are a number of improvements that will be rolled out to your box shortly.
These include;
• Easier navigation with a new layout of 12 equally sized, larger scale tiles • See more of the programme title and details with the new larger tiles • Start at the beginning of a series folder as we now land you on your first recorded episode • And in addition, the main menu will now timeout after 30 seconds so you can get back to watching your favourite shows quicker
The phased rollout of the updates to MyTV start shortly. We will let you know as soon as possible.
Thank you again for your feedback.
Phil
Richard, it is grabbing the images from the cloud, as to make my view more readable I have disconnected my box from the internet so I get blank tiles, which makes it easier to read the text. It also has the added bonus of stopping youview messing with my box any more.
Only when I read a report of am update that I think is worth having and people have reported as been OK, only then will I think about reconnecting my box and then once I've got the update, I will disconnect again.
Never again will youview mess with my box again without my permission
Following your valuable feedback on MyTV there are a number of improvements that will be rolled out to your box shortly.
These include;
• Easier navigation with a new layout of 12 equally sized, larger scale tiles • See more of the programme title and details with the new larger tiles • Start at the beginning of a series folder as we now land you on your first recorded episode • And in addition, the main menu will now timeout after 30 seconds so you can get back to watching your favourite shows quicker
The phased rollout of the updates to MyTV start shortly. We will let you know as soon as possible.
Thank you again for your feedback.
Phil
I suppose that makes some sort of sense rather than grabbing a random image from in the program - no wonder they appear wedded to the tile images after they've gone to the trouble to aggregate a source of images for each and every program on every channel.
It can't be daft enough to re-load them each time the MyTV page is accessed though can it? Must be cached at record time, or on first view. Will have a play with removing the network connection and see if that helps things in the speed of page changes and jumping around.
Following your valuable feedback on MyTV there are a number of improvements that will be rolled out to your box shortly.
These include;
• Easier navigation with a new layout of 12 equally sized, larger scale tiles • See more of the programme title and details with the new larger tiles • Start at the beginning of a series folder as we now land you on your first recorded episode • And in addition, the main menu will now timeout after 30 seconds so you can get back to watching your favourite shows quicker
The phased rollout of the updates to MyTV start shortly. We will let you know as soon as possible.
Following your valuable feedback on MyTV there are a number of improvements that will be rolled out to your box shortly.
These include;
• Easier navigation with a new layout of 12 equally sized, larger scale tiles • See more of the programme title and details with the new larger tiles • Start at the beginning of a series folder as we now land you on your first recorded episode • And in addition, the main menu will now timeout after 30 seconds so you can get back to watching your favourite shows quicker
The phased rollout of the updates to MyTV start shortly. We will let you know as soon as possible.
Thank you again for your feedback.
Phil
Give it time.....
‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ Wm Morris
Following your valuable feedback on MyTV there are a number of improvements that will be rolled out to your box shortly.
These include;
• Easier navigation with a new layout of 12 equally sized, larger scale tiles • See more of the programme title and details with the new larger tiles • Start at the beginning of a series folder as we now land you on your first recorded episode • And in addition, the main menu will now timeout after 30 seconds so you can get back to watching your favourite shows quicker
The phased rollout of the updates to MyTV start shortly. We will let you know as soon as possible.
Thank you again for your feedback.
Phil
I must it does look like an improvement, but i'll wait for some more comments before I make a decisions
Comments
Ultimately only time will tell whether options and different views are implemented. If one looks to the past then YouView have received various strongly supported suggestions for improvement, some requiring choice/options, and have implemented only a few of them despite the fact some others would most likely require very minimal code change/addition. Based on that one might thus hold the view that bringing in an optional second view for MyTV is something YouView are unlikely to do (any time soon, if at all).
Without seeing the code it is rather difficult to comment on whether adding such an optional view would be easy or not. My impression from other systems though is this should just be a view of underlying data and to code an optional different presentation would not be significant work. How much work it would be may depend on how complex this different view is (and how flexibly the underlying code is currently written). If one views the current tiles view as a set of rectangular tiles in a 3x4 grid then one could imagine how there are parameters in the code that might allow that grid to be varied in dimensions and could thus be changed to Nx1 and hence effectively a list. It would of course need a little more work than that but if there were a desire within YouView to implement such a list of tiles then I would expect it can be done and would not be too complicated or time consuming to do.
For now though I would expect the focus to be on bringing back the missing features and addressing the inefficient journeys. The recent announcement shows some changes are on the way but the ones coming soon sound like the most minimal of code changes so so far the signs of progress and more substantial fixes are still only on the horizon.
Oh, sorry! - It's NOT an option!
I'm guessing you aren't a software developer, right?
It's like I have with the builders we have in at the moment - jobs I think should be easy are actually hard, and things I think might be complicated are 'no problem'.
Because I don't know enough abut building.
Daniel is quite right about the impossibility of reusing code from CurrentGen; if it could have been used, there would be no need for NextGen to be less functional than CurrentGen at all, but the fact is that the move to HTML 5 means everything needs to be rewritten.
Fredy
Your short question deserves a much longer answer, but as Comments are soon swept away in the onrush, I'm going to make it a topic in its own right, as I think it deserves more general consideration, and therefore a longer lifespan.
I'll put a link here when I post it, but right now real life intervenes, so it won't be until later,
'Explorer' on Windows, 'Finder' on Mac - many ways of seeing content from large to small tiles to lists of varying detail levels
Google Drive web view - tiles or list view option, same in the iOS apps
Dropbox web interface - grid or list view option
iBooks iOS app - grid or list option
Those are the ones I can see in front of me right now. No doubt there are plenty more where the developer decided that their arrogance of limiting choice (especially after changing from a previous format) wasn't the right thing to do - and that list above includes some really arrogant dev teams/companies.
Show me one. A TV box I mean.
PS Visionman - Humax Fox T2 was very customisable https://hummy.tv/forum/threads/cfw-3-12-customised-firmware-v3-12-released.7835/. You can run custom firmware on almost all processors, it's just rarely worth the effort.
Topfields were customisable as well, but they aren't made any more either.
"Close but no cigar on the tiles but thanks for trying. We''ll give it a go but SWMBO has stopped using youview and I think she's too far gone now.
PS Visionman - Humax Fox T2 was very customisable https://hummy.tv/forum/threads/cfw-3-12-customised-firmware-v3-12-released.7835/.
You can run custom firmware on almost all processors, it's just rarely worth the effort."
I completely agree.
These are just UI examples. So few PVR options out there - by your logic YouView could never have tiles as it had a list before.
Back in the mist of time ISTR that the PS3 PlayTV had a selectable list or grid view. Wikipedia seems to think it did too - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayTV - Library section. And the reference links to a 2008 Eurogamer review, which shows how long ago it was perfectly possible to offer a choice.
Ooh look - the library "is also fully sortable by date, channel and name." wow - how nice would that be to have on the YouView box?
Am sure you are just playing Devil's advocate for the LOLs but you know perfectly well that they could easily produce an alternative interface that restored the features they killed off with 'next gen' - that they've chosen not to, and instead given us this dogs dinner early beta version is curious.
Ahh yes, I had PlayTV, it lasted about 10 minutes before I hated it and binned it.
as per your link that was a well constructed piece of software and well worth aspiring to..
'On 6 December 2010, another update, version 2.02, was released. Many users complained that since the update the PlayTV software became unstable, with the most commonly reported symptom being the software hanging on the PlayTV launch screen and not proceeding any further'
The benefit to me was that it was better than what I had before - some Panasonic DVD/HDD analogue TV recorder that had an interface that must have inspired the current YouView developers to match its laggy nature.
That's my biggest problem with the tiles, after the outsized one on each page - the box hardware just can't handle loading and rendering the pictures all over the place. Mine's a Humax DTR-2000 and you can see it having to work to load all the images - the old software would never be described as snappy but this is noticeable worse.
That was the best thing about the PlayTV in the end - when it worked it was *quick* - benefit of throwing a game console CPU/GPU at it rather than the cheap ARM SOC that I'd bet the Humax boxes run on.
Can't see how internet speed would affect the loading of images from recorded content - please tell me they're not grabbing it from the 'cloud' (aka someone else's computer). And anyway I have over 200Mbs download and the Humax box is wired into the main router - so it better not be having a bandwidth problem. Might be time to wireshark it and see just what it is downloading (and more importantly uploading - every time we change channel maybe? [purely for the 'improving user experience of course' cough cough....])
The box has performed a few 'soft resets' itself since this update - never had that problem in the previous couple of years, but twice in the last month or so I've had it crash on startup and go through the full (slow) reboot process. Will give it a 30 minute break from the power though to see if that can clear some caches.
Only when I read a report of am update that I think is worth having and people have reported as been OK, only then will I think about reconnecting my box and then once I've got the update, I will disconnect again.
Never again will youview mess with my box again without my permission
It can't be daft enough to re-load them each time the MyTV page is accessed though can it? Must be cached at record time, or on first view. Will have a play with removing the network connection and see if that helps things in the speed of page changes and jumping around.