[ched]

I have had Tiscali TV for about 18 months and I recently deceided to upgrade to Tiscali TV+ (£50 for box and engineer to install).
Well I think its great value at £50 as you would be hard pressed to but a twin tuner freeview recorder for £50.
I am using hdmi output to a 720p projector and the picture is very good, well as good as sky or normal freeview.
New Menu and epg is great, not perfect but great.
Now the TiscaliTV+ part:
Recordings nice and easy to set, and the series recording option is great.
Recordings menus are great, you can see the info for each recording and start, duration, and when it was recorded. You can also switch between your recorded list and the schedualed recording very easilly which is great.
When you select a program to play it starts nice and fast, the fastforward features are great. You can just press the fast forward to go forward at 2x 6x and 2 other speeds that I cant remember. But you can also skip forwards by preset time increments ie. 1min, 3min, 5min, 10min. This is great for adverts skipping, my only niggle with this function is that the remote has a skip forwards and skip backwards button which could be used very nicely to skip forwards by the preset time increment ( this function is available on Humax Freeview recorders). This would be a great control addition. Just found option to lock recordings edited 06-07-09

Now the not so good things:
The box has crashed 3 times in 2 weeks while playing back recordings from DTT. A power cycle sorted it and the recordings played fine second time.
The recording time of 50 hours is way too small. The reason I say this is that the box preallocates disc space for schedualed recordings so even if you have only 10% space filled by recording you might have 0% free as your series links are taking up 90%. I dont want to use the auto delete feature as there is no method to protect recordings that you want to keep.

So over all I would say 8 out of 10.

Improvements that would be great:
Allow users to use more of the Hard drive for their recordings instead of 80Gb of the 160Gb hard drive.
Add the remote control's ability to skip forwards.
It would be nice if you could see a live tv program in the top right window while you look at the guide, like Humax boxes.
Recording Protection.

Dream features: BBCi Player, ITV Player, Full 4OD, and Demand 5. Media Streaming from network hard drive or PC.

Overall a brilliant box for £50 I would reccommend it to everyone who can get TTV.
I do hope now that Tiscali have a stable future TTV is rolled out to more people.

[pdoherty76]

Originally Posted by ched

I have had Tiscali TV for about 18 months and I recently deceided to upgrade to Tiscali TV+ (£50 for box and engineer to install).
Well I think its great value at £50 as you would be hard pressed to but a twin tuner freeview recorder for £50.
I am using hdmi output to a 720p projector and the picture is very good, well as good as sky or normal freeview.
New Menu and epg is great, not perfect but great.
Now the TiscaliTV+ part:
Recordings nice and easy to set, and the series recording option is great.
Recordings menus are great, you can see the info for each recording and start, duration, and when it was recorded. You can also switch between your recorded list and the schedualed recording very easilly which is great.
When you select a program to play it starts nice and fast, the fastforward features are great. You can just press the fast forward to go forward at 2x 6x and 2 other speeds that I cant remember. But you can also skip forwards by preset time increments ie. 1min, 3min, 5min, 10min. This is great for adverts skipping, my only niggle with this function is that the remote has a skip forwards and skip backwards button which could be used very nicely to skip forwards by the preset time increment ( this function is available on Humax Freeview recorders). This would be a great control addition. Just found option to lock recordings edited 06-07-09

Now the not so good things:
The box has crashed 3 times in 2 weeks while playing back recordings from DTT. A power cycle sorted it and the recordings played fine second time.
The recording time of 50 hours is way too small. The reason I say this is that the box preallocates disc space for schedualed recordings so even if you have only 10% space filled by recording you might have 0% free as your series links are taking up 90%. I dont want to use the auto delete feature as there is no method to protect recordings that you want to keep.

So over all I would say 8 out of 10.

Improvements that would be great:
Allow users to use more of the Hard drive for their recordings instead of 80Gb of the 160Gb hard drive.
Add the remote control's ability to skip forwards.
It would be nice if you could see a live tv program in the top right window while you look at the guide, like Humax boxes.
Recording Protection.

Dream features: BBCi Player, ITV Player, Full 4OD, and Demand 5. Media Streaming from network hard drive or PC.

Overall a brilliant box for £50 I would reccommend it to everyone who can get TTV.
I do hope now that Tiscali have a stable future TTV is rolled out to more people.

The problem is that £50 is NOT buying you the box. They still own the plus box if you ever cancel and they take it away.

[ched]

Originally Posted by pdoherty76

The problem is that £50 is NOT buying you the box. They still own the plus box if you ever cancel and they take it away.

Interesting. I must admit that I haven't seen that you dont own the box on any of the info I have read on Tiscali's web site. Do you have a link?
Some of the Tiscali staff do post here and in a previous response have suggested that trying to change the hard drive would invalidate the warantee. I would guess if you effectively 'rent' the box then Tiscali's staff would have said that it is not your box to modify!!
As I said I haven't read that you dont own the box but I would be interest in reading the details.

Thanks for pointing it out.

[pdoherty76]

Originally Posted by ched

Interesting. I must admit that I haven't seen that you dont own the box on any of the info I have read on Tiscali's web site. Do you have a link?
Some of the Tiscali staff do post here and in a previous response have suggested that trying to change the hard drive would invalidate the warantee. I would guess if you effectively 'rent' the box then Tiscali's staff would have said that it is not your box to modify!!
As I said I haven't read that you dont own the box but I would be interest in reading the details.

Thanks for pointing it out.

I may have gotten it wrong but I know for sure that the normal box isn't owned by us. In fact my box was collected today because I am moving house and can't get tiscali where I am going.

When the engineer installed it he gave me a set top box hire agreement. If this holds for the normal box I can't see them letting you buy a plus box for £50.

As I said, I may be wrong and you should ask them, but I am sure you aren't buying the plus box.

EDIT: It seems I may have been wrong!

I have just spoken to someone at tiscali (i was ringing regarding my cancellation anyway) and he said this:

"I can't see it in the terms and conditions and I assume because you are paying for it it is yours to keep"

So thats pretty vague but it sounds like you can keep it. Sorry to mislead you.

But an important point to make is that even if the box is yours to keep, I don't think it will work without a tiscali subscription. So you may be buying it but if you ever leave tiscali it won't work as a freeview recorder. It will in effect be useless.

That is enough of a reason to object to the charge in my view. I would rather they just let you have the plus box on loan and phased out the normal boxes.

[MK_Brett]

Hi,

Let me clear this up once and for all
The set top box (including the T+ and the router) belongs to Tiscali.
If you modify it, you will invalidate your warranty and will be charged for any replacement. When you leave Tiscali, we arrange a collection because we want the hardware back. The STB is of no use to you if you are not on the TTV service.
http://www.tiscali.co.uk/products/tv...onditions.html paragraph 2.15
@pdoherty76
What number did you call about your cancellation? I need to address the incorrect message you were give below with that team.

Regards

Brett

[pdoherty76]

Originally Posted by MK_Brett

Hi,

Let me clear this up once and for all
The set top box (including the T+ and the router) belongs to Tiscali.
If you modify it, you will invalidate your warranty and will be charged for any replacement. When you leave Tiscali, we arrange a collection because we want the hardware back. The STB is of no use to you if you are not on the TTV service.
Terms and conditions paragraph 2.15
@pdoherty76
What number did you call about your cancellation? I need to address the incorrect message you were give below with that team.

Regards

Brett

The router does NOT belong to tiscali. I was clearly told when I joined and by the engineer who collected my box that the router is mine to keep. And I intend to keep it. I will flash the firmware and someone else can make use of it.

I knew I was right about the box being owned by tiscali though. It would be pointless to keep it because it doesn't work on any other service.

It was a foreign lady in billing who told me the + box was to keep. She sounded (like most customer service people at tiscali) like she didn't have a clue. I asked her to confirm it 3 times. She was an eastern sounding lady, maybe malaysian. The call occured just before that post I made.

[ched]

Originally Posted by MK_Brett

Hi,

Let me clear this up once and for all
The set top box (including the T+ and the router) belongs to Tiscali.
If you modify it, you will invalidate your warranty and will be charged for any replacement. When you leave Tiscali, we arrange a collection because we want the hardware back. The STB is of no use to you if you are not on the TTV service.
Regards

Brett

Very interesting. So that means if either the router or the TTV+ box has a problem Tiscali will replace it fee of charge no matter how old the devices are!!! (provided that the user hasn't caused the problem).

Thanks for clearing that up Brett.