BT has commenced the rollout of new PVR software to their BT Vision+ Freeview / video on demand recorder. The new BT Vision+ PVR software release is based on an updated version Microsoft Silverlight, which in itself includes new streaming and progressive download capabilities. The new BT Vision+ software provides a number of bug fixes and useful improvements to the PVR. Here we’ll list some of the fixes, new features and the improvements that have been made by the engineers.
MHEG (Red Button) services perform better in this release than in the previous version, as was shown during beta testing. After the update you should find that these services run for many weeks without the need to restart the Vision+ box. You should notice digital text services now run a lot faster. BT have said they will deliver additional improvements to the MHEG performance on the PVR and they will seek to include these in future releases. Unfortunately, the fix to the Subtitles sticking on screen issue is on still outstanding: BT were originally advised that the new software had resolved the issue causing this bug but tests showed this was not the case, and work on resolving this continues.
Improvements have been made to the way information is returned from Search Results; when searching for a Freeview programme via the blue button or the menu the ‘i’ button previously did not correctly return the full programme information. The search results are now correctly linked to the EPG data to show this information. ‘Trickplay’ of radio content has proved problematic for the Vision+ box so the facility has now been removed. There was a problem with the forwarding of live radio and recordings would jump straight to the end of the programme. This also affected live broadcasts when radio that was paused could not be rewound or fast-forwarded. These features have been removed in this release. You will still be able to record radio content but you will not be able to pause, rewind, fast-forward or skip recorded or live radio.
Good news for BT Vision+ users is the little green light has finally been turned off, and will now only show if BT send an important service message. A number of minor bugs have also been resolved, like the fix to the mute button that previously did not work when in the parental controls screen, and RF out ‘off’ setting will now be retained if the Vision+ PVR is restarted so you won’t need to set it again. There are some bug fixes however that are ‘under the hood’ and will not be noticed by users but none the less improve the way the machine functions. If you are a BT Vision+ PVR owner and were previously affected by a bug, BT are encouraging users to try them again after the next software update, and if the problem still occurs to contact them about it.
The BT Vision+ PVR power consumption is 22 watts when on but almost the same power consumption when put into standby. That is because pressing the standby button merely turns the colour of the on/off switch at the front from green to orange, and disables the AV connectors on the back of the box so you can’t see anything on the TV. Otherwise the rest of the system, like Sky+ PVRs, is still on. Thankfully, the Vision+ PVR was previously set to automatically turn to standby if not used for 24 hours. With the latest software update, BT has reduced this to 8 hours to reduce unattended power consumption.
The BT Vision+ box is a little noisier than the average PVR but the good news here is that at around a minute after entering standby the hard disk in the BT Vision+ PVR will now spin down. This reduces power consumption by around 30% and so too the noise. The noise reduces further as the temperature controlled fan is not activated until enough heat is generated again (the next time the hard drive is on basically). BT advise the disk will still periodically spin up again in standby for system checks and updates from the servers, or when a recording is about to start. Note that bringing the box out of standby will take about 4 seconds longer as it’s programmed to activate the rear display connectors after the disk is activated and ready.
BT have also reduced the boot time of the BT Vision+ PVR to less than 2 minutes from a full power on, although, many users may now find the considerable improvements to noise in standby to no longer need a full power down at night. Another feature introduced is that the PVR will detect if the hub is powered on but not yet connected to broadband. This will reduce the chance of the Vision+ PVR failing to start if the box and hub are turned on at the same time. Note however that waiting for the hub will extend the boot time beyond 2 minutes. Other changes on start up include the ‘BT Vision HD’ showing on screen when connected to your TV via HDMI, and when the BT Vision logo appears the diagnostic screen can be called by pressing pause. Note the diagnostic screen does not display until the end of the boot sequence, and the Vision+ PVR will need to be restarted to clear the diagnostic screen.
The BT Vision+ PVR will now automatically start recording 2 minutes before the scheduled time of broadcast as well as the 5 minutes after padding introduced in an earlier update. Autopadding helps prevent missing the start or end of programmes that are not broadcast at the advertised time. The pre-padding can be swiftly skipped by pressing the >| button on the remote to jump forward 30s on each press. This new padding is ’soft’ and now, at last, with the new software any autopadding will not cause clashes to occur if a new recording needs to start at the same time that another one ends. When this happens the recordings will end / start at the scheduled time. Although you cannot adjust or remove this ’soft’ padding you can set ‘hard’ padding at the end if you want via the usual options. Also note, if you have set a recording to finish after the end of the programme this will over-ride the new soft padding feature. This applies to series as well as individual recordings so you may wish to review your series recording settings.
BT has made changes to the way the EPG is collected, and now stored. EPG data for the next 14 days will now be stored on the BT Vision+ PVR hard disk. The EPG on the hard disk will be updated every day to add the latest information. This will address the slow EPG population time issue Pace have always had with their Freeview PVRs. The much faster response times when scrolling through the EPG as the information will be coming from the Vision+ PVR instead of the servers. There are some nice touches with the ability, when viewing the EPG, to now use the shortcuts button on the remote to easily jump ahead to another day or switch from gird to list view.
BT has improved the navigation of recorded programmes by introducing a Series Stacking feature. Series Recordings will now be grouped in the menu by the title of the series. Selecting the title will then list the episodes in that series. This will make it easier to find and view the recordings in the correct order and reduce the number of separate listings to navigate when looking for a particular item. These will appear in the recordings menus as the programme name with the number of episodes in brackets after the title, for example:
Loose Women (3)
Pressing select will then list the individual episodes as follows:
Loose Women <date 1> <time 1>
Loose Women <date 2> <time 1>
Loose Women <date 2> <time 2>
What’s more, download to hard disk video on demand content can now be viewed before it is fully downloaded, provided that the download is expected to complete before you would reach the end of the programme. A small tolerance is built in to allow you to fast forward through the title credits if you wish. The amount of completed download needed before you can start the programme will vary with the speed of the download.
BT have worked hard on improving the stability and flexibility of the HDMI connection and it is hoped the new software will reduce the number of error messages and increase the range of supported devices connected via HDMI. In particular BT say they have tried to improve performance for use of HDMI switches but they do say that direct connection to the screen is preferred and any switch devices will need to be HDCP compliant. Users should now be able to split the Hi Def output to more than one screen from one Vision+ PVR but BT say that it is not a configuration they actively support.
Also, the SCART and S-Video connection will now remain live when an HDMI connection is in use. As the analogue connection is showing the same image as the Hi Def connection the picture will be in 16:9 format and part of picture may be off the edge of the screen if the secondary screen is 4:3. So, it is now possible to connect 4 different devices to one BT Vision+ PVR – HDMI / SCART / S-Video / RF but we expect most people will use this as HDMI for the TV and SCART for a recording device.
The digital audio output (SP-DIF) from the Vision+ PVR can now be set to either Stereo or 5.1 Surround Sound to match the audio device you are connecting to (BTVision> Settings> General Settings> Digital Audio Output). The default setting is stereo and surround sound will only work via this optical connection. If you set the surround sound option the audio output over the HDMI cable is disabled, but you can use surround sound and SCART at the same time for a normal screen. Please note Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is currently only available on BT Visions Hi Def content – and normal VOD and Freeview content is in stereo. Talking about sound, the audio output level of the Vision+ PVR has been increased by 5dB to the maximum possible level. This will bring the output from the Vision+ PVR up to a similar level to that used by many other PVR’s and set top boxes.
Where a Freeview broadcast includes Audio Description for visually impaired viewers this is now accessible on the BT Vision+ PVR (BTVision> Settings> General Settings> Audio Description). The settings screen includes options to enable or disable the service and to set the volume of the description relative to the normal broadcast. By default the setting is +3 but you can try the normal or +1 settings first and tweak as necessary. Note that as Audio Description works by suppressing the normal audio you may find that you need to slightly increase the volume on your TV set. The separate increase to the default volume of the Vision+ PVR will help to offset this effect. BT have stated that there is a known bug with their new Audio Description implementation – if the channel is changed while an Audio Description is playing the suppression of normal audio may continue on the new channel. BT have said you can recover to normal audio just go back to the original channel, wait for the ‘voice over’ to pause and change again. Again, this is a problem BT is working to solve.
Staying on Freeview, the Vision+ PVR will now automatically check for any new or updated freeview channels. This scan will be run once per day, after being in standby for 30 or more minutes, unless there are any recordings in progress. If there are no new channels found then no update will occur and in any case it will make sure the settings for any existing channels are not deleted. But if there are new or changed channels found then the EPG will go through an update process. Channels not received at the time of the scan will then be missing until the next scan. But to stop this feature from causing problems for customers in variable reception areas or that are affected by reception from multiple transmitters the automatic scans can be disabled in the menu (BTVision> Settings> TV Settings> Automatic Freeview Updates) but BT say that manual scans can still be performed in the usual way.
On the whole, your BT Vision+ PVR should work quicker and feel more stable than before and conflict issues with recordings should be a thing of the past (or much reduced) with this new software release from BT. So well done to the engineers and keep up the good work. There are some undocumented features that you may come across, like if you press the info button whilst watching a programme there’s an option called Other Times, which tells you when/if the programme will be shown again. If you come across any more please share using the comments form below this article.
BT has advised PVR Junction that the new software is being released from their servers in batches of around 20,000 customers per day, and hope to complete the new software update programme for all customers by mid September.
