It's a shame as Youview has some great features that Sky Q could do with but sadly technology moves at a rapid pace these days and without long-term investment how can they keep up. Its reasonable to assume streaming TV will be the way forward for now until the next latest thing comes along.
Good luck Youview and let's hope you remain in the technological race.
In the long term going by the link posted and what I been reading. The future of Youview seems uncertain. I have always said I love my two Youview boxes but the service is starting to look at bit outdated. Compared to Sky Q and the likes of the Amazon Firestick. I do agree the future of TV is streaming services.
BT do seem to be slowly taking over the Youview service. As for Freeview channels over the internet. It will be a few years yet before this will fully happens. As at lest 15%/20% of the UK still get internet speeds of lest then 20mb.
In the long term going by the link posted and what I been reading. The future of Youview seems uncertain. I have always said I love my two Youview boxes but the service is starting to look at bit outdated. Compared to Sky Q and the likes of the Amazon Firestick. I do agree the future of TV is streaming services.
BT do seem to be slowly taking over the Youview service. As for Freeview channels over the internet. It will be a few years yet before this will fully happens. As at lest 15%/20% of the UK still get internet speeds of lest then 20mb.
Interesting point there Darren...I have 4k boxes, televisions and streamers and access to BT sport ultimate...all completely pointless at the moment as my broadband is not fast enough. Virgin (who I wouldn’t touch with a barge pole) are the only fibre provider in my area, BT can't even give a date for supplying it as they seem preoccupied with rolling out the near pointless digital telephone lines.
In the long term going by the link posted and what I been reading. The future of Youview seems uncertain. I have always said I love my two Youview boxes but the service is starting to look at bit outdated. Compared to Sky Q and the likes of the Amazon Firestick. I do agree the future of TV is streaming services.
BT do seem to be slowly taking over the Youview service. As for Freeview channels over the internet. It will be a few years yet before this will fully happens. As at lest 15%/20% of the UK still get internet speeds of lest then 20mb.
I agree mostly Darren, but being old and coming from a hi-tech industry it seems the me that manufacturers feel this compelling pressure to update and improve when often very little really needs changing but that each change seems to bring unintended consequencies with respect to stability. What often previously works now doesn't and they never seem to know why. And that means that older wiser people learn to switch off automatic updates and wait for others to be innocent beta test and sweaty excited heat seekers will do eveything to add the updates manually as quickly as they possibly can.
Also, it seems to me that the tradeoff and balance between the benefits of the user learning curve investment to the user and consequential reasurance of their personal product familiarity against the manufacturers driving need to be seen to add whizz bang and superficial improvement with the added unintended but inevitable injection of new instabilities leaves me inclined to simply want to have a Youview product that stays the same except when a change really has something wonderful to add but has been patiently soak highly beta tested before realease. I don't like bad suprises.
There will always be the drag-on effect of platform changes to box technology but once you get to a plateau (a good example might be 8k tv v 4k TV for most viewers in most lounges or 3D or all that Dolby sound stuff on flat screen 2 tinny speaker TVs) then improvement tends to be a marketing gimmick to sucker most punters to dump perfectly adequate stuff for new exensive stuff they wil;l probably not benefit from and have been fooled into believing would be better. If they don't puff up the emerging technologies then they have nothing "new and better" to sell and will go bust. The tame press who get free product and early access are complicit.
I was a part of the early Youview beta tester programme and received a few free boes and thought they were genuinely interested in ensuring stable products. Now each new improvement flattens my boxes and I simply yearn for them to leave the box fw alone.
Not much there I would disagree with, but equally, not much being said there that hasn’t already been said here in the Community, though.
The major point it didn’t cover, as far as I am concerned, is that the box is reliant for its smooth functionality on YouView’s servers; if these go, we have no thumbnails and no Search, unless BT step up to the plate, as they did with remote recording.
Interesting that he characterised the very late delivery of the Players on Sony TVs last year as a YouView issue; very few people on the Sony Community, who were vitriolic about the lack of the Players, connected those particular dots.
But if the issue wasn’t with the broadcasters, then the cracks in the relationship with Sony must have widened into a fissure; was YouView really behind it, or did Sony try to do a deal with the broadcasters to go it alone, failed, and had to come back to YouView with their tail between their legs, or what? Either way….
But though Sony may go its own way in 2022 or later, and TalkTalk may shift to NetGem (good luck with that when it isn’t a proper recorder, and zapper boxes are so last century), I think BT are so invested in YouView boxes (if not actually in YouView, a word that seems to rank just below ‘Voldemort’ in unsayability) that they will take over the rump of YouView and keep it ticking along, even for those of us outside the BT TV fold.
I still don’t know if BT getting on board with YouView was a poisoned chalice, or its only salvation; I guess if BT had decided they wanted a box to replace BT Vision, and YouView had declined to be it, BT would have gone elsewhere for a box, and although Freeview Play wouldn’t have happened, that might still not be enough to ensure YouView’s survival.
Either way, I guess it would show with hindsight that YouView’s business model was flawed 😢
i must get my old DigitalStream PVR out, just for grins, and see if it still functions, or if Freeview has moved away from it; but certainly, it survived the demise of its maker, as YouView may not. Though if they brought back the Lists UI before any big switch off, that would certainly help 😛
‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ Wm Morris
I susupect - but of course do not know - that if Youview decided to upsticks shrug and give up that if they simply told all exisitng customers via a screen flash that they could pay £1 per month to retain the Youview servers etc or not have it - then a sufficient number would be prepared to pay to make it a low-level cash-cow for YV. If they also said "for a £1 extra we promise as an enhanced service not to improve it" I'd take the £2 option.
The servers needn't be replaced until each is knackered and when they need to be replaced then replacement would be on a reducing cost basis because the technology was frozen yesterday and becomes increasingly cheap and YV could buy a stock rather than any future proofing need. Staff would need to be a single dusty person with a dog and some curly sandwiches hanging around or at the end of a phone and called in. But this is all wishful thinking. I'm happy with Youview as it is and need nothing "better". I'd just like the boxes to stop being improved with new defects.
As for Freeview channels over the internet. It will be a few years yet before this will fully happens. As at lest 15%/20% of the UK still get internet speeds of lest then 20mb.
I think you may be confusing ‘Freeview over the internet’, which should happen quite soon, with ‘Freeview terrestrial switch-off’, which will indeed require much better broadband penetration, and so happen rather a lot further down the track?
‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ Wm Morris
You lost me there a bit, I’m afraid; digital telephone lines operate over fibre broadband, even if it’s only just enough broadband to support the phone, so a push for these is a push for fibre. And there’s a deadline for copper to cease, to be met; so, perhaps paradoxically, concentrating on customers who want fibre would push that deadline back 😛
‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ Wm Morris
In your Shangri-La, who is going to create tomorrow’s thumbnails, Dusty or his dog? 😛
You have perfectly made my point for me.
Shangri-La is a mythical place that is supposed to always be the better place than where we are ever currently. So like the donkey with a carrot on a stick in front of him to encourage forward movement - it is and always will be unreachable. You basically never ever get there.
That is why Shangri-La can never ever be where you are now or where you land, but is instead always only a new release of firmware away and somewhere I am wishing everything to avoid.
In your Shangri-La, who is going to create tomorrow’s thumbnails, Dusty or his dog? 😛
I'm not sure either of them needs to create the thumbnails so both Dusty and his dog can put their feet/paws up.
I have a YouView box and more recently a Manhattan T3-R (due to the sluggishness introduced by the recent "enhancements") and where I have the same programme recorded on both, they appear to share the same thumbnails (so far at least) so I'm assuming these are piped in direclty from Freeview or elsewhere.
Thanks, that’s useful to know. But it now makes we wonder why the thumbnails for programmes recorded when we had Lists never backfilled?
Not sure on that one either. Although I noted the thumbnails drop off after some time also (looks to be about a year, I have thumbnails going back to last May and nothing for anything older than that) so it will be interesting to see whether the same happens on the Manhattan.
Interestingly however it turns out not all programmes have the same thumbnail on both boxes. For example the Ipcress File, which I happen to have recorded on both, shows one thumbnail for all episodes on the Youview and nothing on the Manhattan for any episode except the last, and that one does not match Youview.
The Manhattan, incidentally, is much faster and more responsive* and therefore nicer to use than the sluggish mess that Youview has become of late. It is however slightly let down by missing a few key features such as remote recording.
*As an example, I timed getting to my second recording on the Manhattan at about 2 seconds and 3 button presses. On my T2000 the same journey is 9-10 seconds (although it felt longer) and 6 button presses - more still if I need to go into the full MyTV section to access all the recordings.
I went to watch a recorded program from Sky Crime last night (BT PRO) and the artwork was for believe it or not Landscape Artist. Sky Arts.
Not sure how or why this happens but it has done so a few times. Just confirms really that Youview either needs some major investment and an overall not tweaks or move on.
Fingers crossed BT do take it on and invest.
Sky Q in comparison is miles ahead but that is far from perfect. They so need to add a Watchlist section to collate streaming activities.
pjcornelly
Member Posts: 13 ✭
Comments
More a depressing read.
Probably got 2 years left.
Once it's existence starts to get discussed you know the writing is on the wall.
Good luck Youview and let's hope you remain in the technological race.
I have always said I love my two Youview boxes but the service is starting to look at bit outdated. Compared to Sky Q and the likes of the Amazon Firestick.
I do agree the future of TV is streaming services.
As for Freeview channels over the internet. It will be a few years yet before this will fully happens. As at lest 15%/20% of the UK still get internet speeds of lest then 20mb.
Virgin (who I wouldn’t touch with a barge pole) are the only fibre provider in my area, BT can't even give a date for supplying it as they seem preoccupied with rolling out the near pointless digital telephone lines.
The major point it didn’t cover, as far as I am concerned, is that the box is reliant for its smooth functionality on YouView’s servers; if these go, we have no thumbnails and no Search, unless BT step up to the plate, as they did with remote recording.
Interesting that he characterised the very late delivery of the Players on Sony TVs last year as a YouView issue; very few people on the Sony Community, who were vitriolic about the lack of the Players, connected those particular dots.
But if the issue wasn’t with the broadcasters, then the cracks in the relationship with Sony must have widened into a fissure; was YouView really behind it, or did Sony try to do a deal with the broadcasters to go it alone, failed, and had to come back to YouView with their tail between their legs, or what? Either way….
But though Sony may go its own way in 2022 or later, and TalkTalk may shift to NetGem (good luck with that when it isn’t a proper recorder, and zapper boxes are so last century), I think BT are so invested in YouView boxes (if not actually in YouView, a word that seems to rank just below ‘Voldemort’ in unsayability) that they will take over the rump of YouView and keep it ticking along, even for those of us outside the BT TV fold.
I still don’t know if BT getting on board with YouView was a poisoned chalice, or its only salvation; I guess if BT had decided they wanted a box to replace BT Vision, and YouView had declined to be it, BT would have gone elsewhere for a box, and although Freeview Play wouldn’t have happened, that might still not be enough to ensure YouView’s survival.
Either way, I guess it would show with hindsight that YouView’s business model was flawed 😢
i must get my old DigitalStream PVR out, just for grins, and see if it still functions, or if Freeview has moved away from it; but certainly, it survived the demise of its maker, as YouView may not. Though if they brought back the Lists UI before any big switch off, that would certainly help 😛
In your Shangri-La, who is going to create tomorrow’s thumbnails, Dusty or his dog? 😛
I think you may be confusing ‘Freeview over the internet’, which should happen quite soon, with ‘Freeview terrestrial switch-off’, which will indeed require much better broadband penetration, and so happen rather a lot further down the track?
You lost me there a bit, I’m afraid; digital telephone lines operate over fibre broadband, even if it’s only just enough broadband to support the phone, so a push for these is a push for fibre. And there’s a deadline for copper to cease, to be met; so, perhaps paradoxically, concentrating on customers who want fibre would push that deadline back 😛
I have a YouView box and more recently a Manhattan T3-R (due to the sluggishness introduced by the recent "enhancements") and where I have the same programme recorded on both, they appear to share the same thumbnails (so far at least) so I'm assuming these are piped in direclty from Freeview or elsewhere.
Thanks, that’s useful to know. But it now makes we wonder why the thumbnails for programmes recorded when we had Lists never backfilled?
Quite right - apologies.
Interestingly however it turns out not all programmes have the same thumbnail on both boxes. For example the Ipcress File, which I happen to have recorded on both, shows one thumbnail for all episodes on the Youview and nothing on the Manhattan for any episode except the last, and that one does not match Youview.
The Manhattan, incidentally, is much faster and more responsive* and therefore nicer to use than the sluggish mess that Youview has become of late. It is however slightly let down by missing a few key features such as remote recording.
*As an example, I timed getting to my second recording on the Manhattan at about 2 seconds and 3 button presses. On my T2000 the same journey is 9-10 seconds (although it felt longer) and 6 button presses - more still if I need to go into the full MyTV section to access all the recordings.
I will check my archives when I get home, and see how far back the thumbnails go….
Not sure how or why this happens but it has done so a few times. Just confirms really that Youview either needs some major investment and an overall not tweaks or move on.
Fingers crossed BT do take it on and invest.
Sky Q in comparison is miles ahead but that is far from perfect. They so need to add a Watchlist section to collate streaming activities.
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