Review: 48 hours with a YouView box

I don’t watch much TV, but I remember in 2005 when I got my first PVR it genuinely changed my watching habits. Generally my TV goes on ‘on demand’ rather than appointment to watch, so a PVR meant I could ensure there was something I wanted to watch when I wanted the TV on, rather than rely on whatever was on.

Just over a year ago, I noticed we were going over our broadband limit, mainly because we were watching stuff on iPlayer, so phoned to upgrade the package. The net result was it was cheaper to get a BT Vision box, which puts iPlayer on the TV. A year later, now we’re out of contract, I phoned again, as usually happens with these things, it was cheaper to upgrade to a YouView box than stick with the BT Vision box (which we can also keep).

So on Saturday the YouView box arrived. Set up and everything was pretty simple, which given it is aimed at low-tech users is a good thing. Once you’ve switched it on, the first thing you’ll notice is how well deisgned the on-screen menus look. Compared to the fiddly controls and clunky graphics of my first Humax, this feels vastly superior.

The main advantage of a YouView box over the BT Vision box is that with YouView you can access catch-up TV direct from the TV schedule rather than having to go into each channel’s player (although you can also do that). So, if you missed yesterday’s Eastenders, you simply go to the schedule, click back a day and find Eastenders in the schedule. It’ll take you direct to the programme in iPlayer. This is the same for ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5.

The other advantage is that it offers high definition (HD), which none of my previous PVRs have been. I can’t get that excited about seeing the news in HD, but already owning a four-year old HD-ready TV (HD-ready, but no Freeview HD-receiver), now I have the option I’ll make use of it.

This weekend, with nothing but snow predicted, I’ve spent more time on the sofa than usual. So I’ve had a good with the basic functionality. And, despite everything that has been promised, I’ve had a few niggles that have left me wondering whether I should stick with the BT Vision box after all.

Firstly, the biggest gripe is that the search functionality only works on catch-up rather than on the TV schedule. So, having enjoyed the BBC’s current natural history epic Africa, I wanted to set it up to record it. I couldn’t tell you what day it was on, as I’ve watched it on catch-up / iPlayer, so in order to find it I had to scroll through every day of BBC1 to set it to record. Given that the whole point of a PVR/catch-up is you get rid of the need for a TV schedule, it seems frankly bonkers that I’ve got to use that to find programmes to record.
(On an aside, whilst you can flick back and forward by a day, you can only scroll forward and backwards by half-an-hour; so moving around the schedule is a bit laborious.)

But, given that everything is available on catch-up, should I even be bothering with recording stuff? Well, admittedly this was tested on a snowy Saturday in January, when the Guardian ran a piece saying this was the worst Saturday night in TV history, and therefore I was using it possibly an exceptional peak in broadband demand but my enjoyment of Africa in HD on iPlayer was somewhat ruined by it stalling several times, twice to the point of stopping altogether (and once I had to restart my router to recover it). The second time, because it was in the “how we made” section, I just gave up. TV is meant to be ‘lean-back’ technology, not mid-way through a programme having to reach for the reset switch on your router, and the remote to manually find where you are. For the time being, I’d prefer to record everything I can off the air, and use iPlayer etc only when necessary.

So, I’ve set to record this week’s programme on my Youview box. Which leads me to another issue. I’d like to watch in HD, as I have the option, and given the broadcasters have invested so much into HD technology, you’d think they’d make it easier to select it. So, whilst BBC1, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 all have simultaneous HD channels showing the same programming at the same time in HD, there doesn’t seem to be a way to make these the default channel 1,3,4 and 5. You end up on BBC1 and then have to remember that you need to go to channel 101 to get the HD version. (There is an option that says “show HD when available”, but either this is so subtle that it doesn’t inform me and I don’t notice, or it’s simply not working as I’d expect). The BBC channels do at least let you make a choice if you set to record a programme on the standard definition channels, but ITV didn’t and I had to manually choose 103 to record the Sunday night drama my other half wanted to watch.
Once you’ve recorded it, and sit back to enjoy it, watch out for the most irritating feature you could possibly imagine. Throughout the viewing you get the programme name and duration scrolling across the display on the front of the box. I can’t imagine one good reason why being constantly told what you are watching and how many minutes into it you are, but because it is scrolling it is a massive distraction and there seems no possible way of turning it off.

There is not any more content on the YouView box that I couldn’t get on the BT Vision box, it’s just its easier and more consistent way of accessing it. However, there is the potential for more, and in addition to the main channels, there is a “Now TV” player provided by Sky. Don’t expect to be able to watch it without a subscription, but it does mean that if you pay you can access a lot of the films that Sky offers. Which is all fine, except for the search functionality, which includes all this content and no way to hide it. So you end up flicking through pages and pages of stuff you can’t watch to find the thing you can. If the number of subscription-based players increases (and you could easily see Lovefilm etc appearing on here) then that would just end up making the search functionality unusable.

And there is one final gripe, which when you get the box you get a little note admitting that there are some “issues” that they are working on. And that is the start-up. To get from stand-by to on takes the best part of two minutes. (There is a eco-mode ‘low’ option that only takes fifteen seconds, but it uses 7x the amount of electricity whilst on standby). Given I can guarantee there will be 20 hours each day the box isn’t on and four that it may be, I’d prefer to save the money. But two minutes is proper switch on, go and make some tea, come back, check your emails and Facebook, and you might be ready to start watching.

Don’t get me wrong, these gripes are things around the edges of an otherwise good service, and the ability to get catch-up programmes in HD on my TV is something I do think is amazing. But given that YouView was about creating a service that would standardise the digital menus and improve the experience for low-tech customers, I think they’ve made a few schoolboy errors. My BT Vision box is less technically impressive, but at least it doesn’t leave me wondering who on earth thought that was a good idea...