[OLD BOY]

Well, I was one of the lucky ones who went home last night to find that the update had been received by my Tivo. As promised, this is my first impression.

I was pleased to note that the home page loaded as soon as I pressed the 'Home' button on the remote. This was a big improvement as before we had to wait quite a few seconds before it would load.

The colour scheme is better in my opinion. Gone are the garish brothel red colours, although my wife commented that the new screen was dark compared with the old one. I found it an improvement, and more restful to the eyes. I guess there will be various opinions as to whether the new colours are better or worse than before.

One thing I did notice was everything looked so sharp and clear, which I liked very much.

I particularly liked the new menu for 'My Shows', which was previewed earlier in this thread. The 'partially watched' section takes you straight to those shows you have started watching, so gone are the days when you unintentionally pick up a half watched programme six months after you started it (which I have done several times before!).

The recordings are now also displayed by genre (just a limited number - movies, sport and kids) but it does make it easier to find what you want. Hopefully they will be able to expand the number of genres after a while. I'd love to keep all my wife's lifestyle/reality programmes separate!

To get all of your recordings displayed, you just select 'All', but the same seems to happen with 'TV and Radio': I've yet to work out the significance of that section.

I cannot yet comment on 'Suggestions' as I think the programmes selected via the last update have just been brought forward, but I will be checking on whether the selections and capacity of this has been improved.

There is a section called 'More to Watch' which provides a selection of live TV programmes currently being shown that you might like. Not something that would be of much interest to me as I watch only recorded/on demand stuff but it is a good alternative to channel hopping.

The apps I think are the same and the new BBC i-Player hasn't been provided yet, but Netflix looks a bit different and now it shows the users that you have entered on the website, which it didn't do before. This is quite good because after a while, I shouldn't be seeing a load of kids' stuff under my name!

I was extremely pleased that the glitch in the previous update in which the EPG returned to today's date when modifying a programme on another day has been resolved. You are now returned to where you were before on the EPG, which saves an awful lot of button pressing when recording programmes for the week!

I thought it was my imagination, but my wife thought the same - the programmes appear to be presented in a better resolution - almost HD quality. I was not expecting this and I was very pleased. All the SD programmes I watched last night were more of a delight to watch as a result.

All in all, a much needed improvement I would say, but don't expect lots of additional features. I think I have described all of the most notable changes. It is definitely faster than before and feels more stable. The only disappointment for me was that the menus are not presented pictorially as mini - TV screens as they are on Sky's system: I think this looks good and it integrates better broadcast TV with recordings and on demand. I hope that VM work on something similar for next time.

If I come across any other improvements that I have not yet noticed, I'll let you all know. But what I have seen is definitely positive and I am pleased to have been one of the first to get it!