RE: Re: Christmas gadgets

["Paul Gordon" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've said this before, and having lived with both TiVo & SKY+ for
several years each, I'll say it again...

Whilst the overall "experience" of the TiVo is vastly better in
terms of
its *Functionality*, the TiVo UI _does_ have faults that the SKY one
doesn't... - specifically, the TiVo's use of translucent overlays on top
of the video image makes it very difficult to read from a distance. I
constantly had problems reading the TiVo menus (translucent background,
white text) and many times I had to wait for the programme that was
showing to get to a dark scene so that the text became readable... -
nothing to do with its size, or my distance from the screen, just that
white text against a white background isn't particularly easy to see...
I've never had this problem with the Sky UI, with its (IMHO) vastly more
logical choice of highly contrasting colours (yellow on blue), on a
SOLID background for all its menus...

OK, when you get there, the operating environment isn't as rich or as
flexible, but least it's readable!

All IMHO of course... :-)

Paul G.


-----Original Message-----
From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of mwgardner2000
Sent: 27 December 2007 14:37
To: UKHA Group
Subject: [ukha_d] Re: Christmas gadgets


Hi,

At the risk of being flamed..... :-)

What is so awful with the Sky UI? I guess its maybe horses for
courses, but as I've never used Tivo, and personally have found two
PC based media centers to be less than user friendly, including Vista
MC, I'm not sure what it is thats missing / wrong with the Sky UI.

Sky+ does what I need it to do, and in a pretty user friendly way,
with IMHO two minor gripes (the colours used, no dedicated planner
button on the remote) and one major gripe (Murdoch...), but it does
what it says on the tin, and for me is right up their with Sonos as
two of my top gadgets. Touching wood heavily, after some initial
reliability problems, its rock solid too....

So, enlighten me please! What could be better? I'm genuinely
interested to know what features the UI is missing...

OK - I can think of a couple of additional Sky+ features I'd like
(ability to network the box so you can take recordings to another
device, and have full control of it from the web), but the UI itself
works for me.

Is the Sky HD UI materially different to Sky+?

Roll on the "promised" Sky Server...

Ducks for cover.....

Mark (no, not that one!)