BT TV Box Pro Software Update 4.0.222 / 0.6.18

Louise MurdochLouise Murdoch Administrator Posts: 146 admin
in Community
Please feel free to discuss the latest BT TV Box Pro Software Update 4.0.222 / 0.6.18 here.

This release enables Internet Mode on BT TV Box Pro, allowing viewers to watch Freeview channels over the internet!

To find out how to switch between Internet and Aerial modes please see our article here.

Thanks,
Louise.

Comments

  • jimbjimb Member, Super User Posts: 1,425 ✭✭✭
    Wow!
  • lawiltshirelawiltshire Member Posts: 1 ✭
    Hello,

    What about people that are continuing to use the bt youview box but have switched to a new broadband provider 
  • StephenStephen Member, Super User Posts: 801 ✭✭✭✭✭
    lawiltshire said:
    What about people that are continuing to use the bt youview box but have switched to a new broadband provider 
    The channels are currently delivered over BT's network so I'm afraid keeping the Pro/Mini box and switching to another ISP won't work.
  • RoyRoy Member, Super User Posts: 17,813 ✭✭✭
    edited 26 August 2022, 10:25PM
    Stephen said:
    lawiltshire said:
    What about people that are continuing to use the bt youview box but have switched to a new broadband provider 
    The channels are currently delivered over BT's network so I'm afraid keeping the Pro/Mini box and switching to another ISP won't work.
    The Mini box won’t work at all, and the Pro box won’t work in the new Internet Mode, but the Pro box will continue to work in Aerial Mode, I presume.

    So essentially for people wanting to use a Pro box with a different broadband provider than BT, or even with BT but without BT TV, nothing changes from how things were yesterday.

    Though I don’t know, @Stephen, if you can throw any light on the technical reasons for the horrible kludge of needing Maintenance Mode to switch between the Internet and Aerial Modes, and the only slightly less horrible kludge of only being able to play recordings made in one of the Modes when you are actually in that Mode?

    I suspect many (wo)man-hours were spent in vainly looking for a way round these two issues 😢
    ‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’ Wm Morris
  • StephenStephen Member, Super User Posts: 801 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Well, the Mini box will effectively become a streaming-only box if separated from BT multicast. You'll still be able to use players on it, albeit the ones that need to know your region will likely vanish when deprived of a BT line able to tell the box the region availability.

    And the Pro box you'll need to follow the instructions linked to above to put it back into Aerial mode if you move ISP and the box is still in Internet Mode. There isn't currently anything to force you back to Aerial if it sees your ISP change.

    The reasons for asking users (at the moment) to go back through Setup to switch modes is because a number of edge-cases come up if you toggle backwards and forwards during normal use which are rather lengthy to try to explain to the user and can lead to odd things.

    Can you switch modes if something is mid-recording or just about to start? Should we try to recreate series recordings post-switch? HD or SD? How do you explain to a user that some recordings in the series are now unplayable if they switched to DTT mode? And similar...

    If you Factory Reset it's very clear what's happening, and that recordings and scheduled recordings will be cleared, and if you go via maintenance mode keeping recordings, you're likely a more-technical user and have already read up on what to expect.

    With regards to recordings, DTT recordings on all boxes are always playable regardless of mode, so that's fine. Internet Mode recordings (as with all IP recordings) are encrypted and so when you play them we have to find the channel info for the channel they came from, which has info as to where to get the playback key from. If you switch from Internet Mode to Aerial Mode, those DTT-flavoured Internet channels have now vanished so when you try to look them up they're no longer there to tell you how to unlock them.

    We could implement fixes and explanations for these edgecases, but we want to see how many people actually switch backwards and forwards or if BT get a lot of feedback that people want to do that. And if they want to mix recording sources etc.
    If people love Internet Mode but also want to toggle (or e.g. have a fusion of modes) then we can work towards implementing those things, but if only a handful of people want that and everyone else is happy, then we should spend more time towards delivering the [redacted], [redacted], [redacted] on [redacted] and the [redacted] [redacted] in the upcoming quarters instead!

  • qwertyberty1235qwertyberty1235 Member Posts: 10 ✭
    At £10 a month I see limited attraction. 
    Unlike Sky Q you can't access recordings on your pro box through the mini box so it's just basically a streaming device, abelt a costly one.
  • BillyMBillyM Member Posts: 17 ✭

    @Stephen thank you for those insights and thanks @Roy for posing the question. Some of the assumptions described matched what I have been going through as a viewer so I thought I would share my own experiences.

    There was a lot of excitement on the BT community forum late on Thursday night when people realised that there was a software update for the BT Pro box that would enable Internet mode. I thought I would bide my time until I understood how to set this new mode up properly and what the implications of switching from Aerial mode to Internet mode were. Knowing that a Factory rest would be required definitely made me pause and establish pros and cons before switching.

    The update on the Youview community that came out around 3:00pm on the Friday was very useful as it said that existing recordings would still be available if you did decide to switch to Internet mode. The advice that a Maintenance mode option 2 (to keep recordings) might work rather that a full Factory reset was also appreciated.

    Late Friday night, after checking the Forums and seeing that some long-time posters had decided to make the jump I though I would give it a try.

    I was impressed at how smooth the transition from Aerial to Internet mode was. All. My recordings were still there. All my Scheduled recordings information had been updated (e.g. from EPG 104 (Channel 4 HD) to the new EPG 4 (Channel 4 HD). Also impressed that the subsequent recordings under Internet mode were filed under the same tile as existing recordings that had been made under Aerial mode. The only thing I was missing was my Trial/Feedback group information, but a reboot sorted that out.

    I had considered the downsides of switching to Internet mode. The first being that currently fewer channels are available - a subset of those available via Aerial mode. (The big loss for me is Talking Pictures.) The second, one caused be more pause for thought – the Recording being limited to a maximum of two channels.

    The big pro for me were having certain channels available in HD. The big one for me is ITV4 as it carries some sport I wasn’t able to get in HD (also applies to a lesser extent on Quest HD). Great to have BBC local news in HD (no more switching between 101 and 1) and to have BBC News and BBC 4 back in HD. 

    Another pro I’m appreciating more and more is the simplified viewer experience. The Freeview EPG can be pretty chaotic with +1 channels, SD and HD versions, limited hours of broadcasting etc. The Hide function helps but the workarounds can sometimes be a pain. 

    The slimmed down channel offering is much easier to navigate and the transition from free channels to the subscription channels in the EPG is much less jarring. Another bonus of Internet mode, the HD versions of the 5 main channels are the only ones listed and start at 1 (not 101) in the EPG. A bonus is that the main 5 channels in HD are the ones listed in LiveTV section on the home page (not the SD versions as with Aerial mode). Sometimes less is more

    On the question of whether or not to focus on developing hybrid. Based on my experience I would rather BT worked on increasing the channels available via Internet mode (Talking Picture please!) and worked on investigating whether it is possible to increase the maximum number of recordings.

    So thanks again for the insights and nice to see the initial wave of positive responses to the update over on the BT forum.


     

  • jimbjimb Member, Super User Posts: 1,425 ✭✭✭
    BillyM said:

    @Stephen thank you for those insights and thanks @Roy for posing the question. Some of the assumptions described matched what I have been going through as a viewer so I thought I would share my own experiences.

    Thanks for that @BillyM - very interesting.  :)
  • Horstead1Horstead1 Member Posts: 3 ✭
    My pro box hasn’t updated and shows no update available. Is it a phased launch?
  • Horstead1Horstead1 Member Posts: 3 ✭
    Correction - the software has updated but I can’t find an option to switch to internet mode. I did a factory reset but it only gave option to search for aerial channels. Am I missing something?
  • StephenStephen Member, Super User Posts: 801 ✭✭✭✭✭
    The Setup app only offers you Internet Mode if it sees you have very poor or non-existent aerial signal, so the easiest way to "force" the option to appear is to remove the aerial cable before Setup starts.
  • Horstead1Horstead1 Member Posts: 3 ✭
    Thanks.That worked!
  • qwertyberty1235qwertyberty1235 Member Posts: 10 ✭
    Stephen said:
    The Setup app only offers you Internet Mode if it sees you have very poor or non-existent aerial signal, so the easiest way to "force" the option to appear is to remove the aerial cable before Setup starts.
    Brilliant advice and one for future reference. 
Sign In or Register to comment.