No more free V6 upgrades?
 

Its the time of year for me to renegotiate my contract with VM,
I'm ok with the outcome but when I asked about getting my crappy Tivo box upgraded to a V6 I was told I'd have to pay £99 for it which I declined.

As I only use my Tivo on rare occasions (mainly for PPV sports) I'm not overly fussed by this and the package I got was only a couple of quid cheaper per month to ditch TV altogether, but unless I missed it I haven't seen anything about free V6 upgrades being discontinued.
So my question is have the free upgrades stopped or was I the agent I dealt with misinformed?

Re: No more free V6 upgrades?
 

The free upgrade program for the first TiVo on an account was stopped last April.
Since then the focus has been in replacing those boxes which will soon become obsolete on the cable network. That does not include TiVo.

Re: No more free V6 upgrades?
 

Only a matter of time before it does include TiVo. Happy with mine for the time being, links well with the V6, and an extra output via scart can be handy. iPlayer now works fine on it too, presumably there is less pressure on the network with people taking the V6.

Re: No more free V6 upgrades?
 

Is the old TiVo still dreadfully slow?

Re: No more free V6 upgrades?
 

yeah its slow. but so am i ;)

Re: No more free V6 upgrades?
 

Haha :D It used to really annoy me, but it probably isn't too bad if it's something like a bedroom box.

Re: No more free V6 upgrades?
 

I still like my old Tivo, yes painfully slow but as you say the scart is immensely useful for (in my case) piping the RF feed around the house. The video quality is surprisingly good.

Re: No more free V6 upgrades?
 

I have also noticed that Tivo has been a lot better in the last six months. Not as quick as a Smart TV ,but a lot better than it used to be.

Re: No more free V6 upgrades?
 

They say that removing all the thumbs up/down suggestions speeds it up.

Re: No more free V6 upgrades?
 

I don't use them but it's still slow, however I can live with it :)

Re: No more free V6 upgrades?
 

Well it's not the quickest at loading iPlayer, and processing 300-odd series links can take a few minutes, and I'm sure the V6 is a lot quicker, but... I wouldn't say dreadfully slow to be fair. Definitely quicker recently too, since the whole multiple tuner software update.

Re: No more free V6 upgrades?
 

Not heard of a multiple tuner update, what did that do? It's good that it's not as bad as it was; when I had mine it could take a minute to start playing a recording!

If I had a TiVo in my bedroom, i'd delete all the thumbs up/down info and only use this feature on the V6. This way I think i'd get the benefit of suggestions without it slowing down the TiVo.

Re: No more free V6 upgrades?
 

My Tivo loads a recording in less than 5 seconds.

Re: No more free V6 upgrades?
 

Nah, TiVo is too bright and noisy as a bedtime companion ;). I use it as my main box downstairs, the V6 is relegated to the bedroom where it can be hidden away nice and quiet in cupboard as it doesn't direct line of sight for the remote. As the 2 boxes link doesn't really matter that much.

Re: No more free V6 upgrades?
 

There were probably other changes under the UI I'm sure. But this was the software update that removed the ability on TiVo to view the channels that all 3 tuners were tuned to. If multiple tuners are recording, then you can still view them via the recordings list, but you can't have multiple tuners buffering multiple channels anymore.

There was a very lengthy thread on the official VM forum about it, a few posters who for whatever reason, didn't want to record programs but buffer them instead. Each to their own I suppose. But if that's the price of improving overall performance by having tuners go into standby when they're not being used, well I've settled on the "yes please" side of the fence.

As for the time taken to load a recording, I'd have to concur with alwaysabear - it's certainly only a few seconds. And my suggestions have been switched off since the first hour I had the box.