MySky on Tony Andrew Meyer

Latest MySky (HDi) update

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 17:51:37 +1200

The latest (and heavily publicised) MySKY (HDi only?) update was released today. Oddly, our update was applied around 2 p.m. - the currently showing program was replaced by a very ugly notice that the system was being updated. I can’t understand why the update wasn’t deployed during the night (e.g. 4 a.m.), when the number of viewers must be significantly lower. What if I had really cared about the program that was showing? My initial reaction was very negative. After it was pointed out (via Twitter) that many of SkyTV’s mistakes are correctable via new options in the settings back, I’m slightly less negative, but it’s still not an improvement. This is especially frustrating considering that the UI is so terrible, and has been ever since MySKY was introduced about five years ago (I’ve had MySKY since just after the launch). Being told that they know about the many problems and fixing them isn’t possible until the hardware is revved doesn’t inspire any confidence at all, since the problems existed with the original MySKY and certainly were not fixed when the hardware was revved (with HDi). Someone at SkyTV is responsible for selecting the hardware - if the platform doesn’t support creating a decent UI, then they should choose something else. (Has anyone on the MySKY team used an Apple product? Or even Windows 7 or a Zune product? Would they recognise good UI when they saw it? Do they have anyone that has any UI talent or experience? If so, perhaps they could give that person a bit of power to fix things?) The “what’s new” page has a feedback form where you can comment on the recent changes. I encourage you to do so. My comments were:

0759 for the hidden Sky menu

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 21:30:10 +1200

This really falls under the “just so I know where to look next time I forget” category. With MySky, the “setup” menu is hidden from casual use (IIRC in both UTF Sky and Sky Digital it is not). To get to it, you go to the system settings menu and type 0759 (0SKY) and then select, and it takes you to the menu where you can change the satellite settings, do a fresh installation, and so on. When we moved house, the theory was I could just pick up the MySky box and plug it in (there was already a satellite) and save $50. Unfortunately, this didn’t work. I was told that I could call their helpdesk and they would be able to help get past the “poor reception” error (which is indeed what I got). Unfortunately, the technician I spoke to couldn’t do much - in fact she had to put me on hold while she looked up the MySky settings (she started out trying to fix Digital - do they not have an indicator on the customer record that shows I have MySky?) and was clearly reading from a sheet - and a slightly inaccurate sheet at that (it missed a couple of menus, although I knew where to go). At the end of the day, the tech on the phone couldn’t help. Although I could again get to the hidden menu, I had forgotten that MySky doesn’t offer a nice simple “choose the satellite” menu - instead you get to enter the frequency and angle yourself, which is information I don’t have. I’m so busy with work and unpacking that I figured that I’d just not bother trying anything else and let the tech fix it. It turned out that it was a cable around the wrong way. However, this isn’t totally my fault - the satellite cable gets split and plugs into the MySky box twice. One lead is white and one is black. There are no indicators at all on the MySky box or the splitter that indicates that there is any difference between the two (no #1 and #2 or ‘white’ and ‘black’ or any markings at all). I’ve unplugged and re-connected MySky many times, and must have luckily picked the same place to plug each cable in, since apparently if you get them the wrong way around you get no signal. Couldn’t the tech on the phone have mentioned this? Even just a “try swapping the black and white cables” would have sufficed. If I’d had more time to play around with things I would have disconnected everything and tried again, and might have randomly selected the right way around, but I didn’t have time for that. Even suggesting that, though, would have been something. I guess they really want their $50 moving fee. For about 5 minutes of technician time. Bah.

MySky Glitch

Wed, 03 May 2006 19:02:50 +1200

After about a month of working as well can be expected, a weird MySky glitch occured the day before yesterday. All of the scheduled programs (all done via series link) more than a day in the future vanished from the planner. Unfortunately, I was later home yesterday than anticipated, so wasn’t able to manually add the programs back. When I did arrive home, I pressed record and was told that I could not record this program (for any program). I rebooted MySky and not only was I able to record again, but all of the scheduled programs (those that hadn’t been missed) were back. Inexplicable glitches are the worse type, because now I’m back to not trusting it to record again. I wonder if I should reboot it once a day, or something like that… technorati tags: MySky, SkyTV

MySky is falling

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 19:42:37 +1200

As half a million or so New Zealanders know, Sky’s Digital service died a bit before 6pm yesterday until reviving about 8am this morning (in the middle of my recording the final Gilmore Girls episode, argh). I understand that (rarely) satellites fail, and that errors like this are a huge problem, but will sometimes happen, and that Sky was probably mostly at the mercy of Optus (who own the satellite) here. The response time wasn’t great, but it wasn’t as bad as it could be. My issue is that during the outage, all my MySky box would do is show the “atmospheric conditions” error dialog. I have 60-odd hours of recorded material, which don’t need a live signal to display (or shouldn’t), and couldn’t watch any of it. This should have been the time that MySky shone, because I should have had many hours of material to watch while I couldn’t watch/record live TV. Instead, I was stuck with free-to-air TV like everyone else. Poor design. A “mature” product would not have this flaw. (I think, although I’m not 100%, that my MySky box was accessing the guide - i.e. pulling data from the satellite feed - when things died. Maybe this problem didn’t happen for everyone. I would certainly be interested to know if that was the case). technorati tags: MySky, SkyTV

Is MySky "mature"?

Sat, 04 Mar 2006 11:11:04 +1200

Clearly, TiVo is mature (whether it manages to survive amongst all the competition, particularly from PVRs like MySky that are from content providers, is a separate question). So an easy way to consider whether the MySky design is mature is to compare the features of the two systems.

TiVo lets you pause, rewind, slo-mo and instant replay live TV.
TiVo’s Wishlist feature lets you record every movie, biography or interview with your favourite actor, or every game your favourite team plays, and so on.
You can rate programs (’thumbs up’ or ’thumbs down’) to teach your TiVo which programs you like, so that Tivo will fill up available space with Suggestions of things you might like to watch. (Since the PVR manages the space, it doesn’t matter that it’s always full).
TiVo’s Season Pass allows recording an entire season or a certain number of episodes from a season. It will find repeats, if possible, and use those if a clash prevents recording the original broadcast. It has a hierarchy so that you can decide which series you care about most.
TiVo’s online scheduling lets you make changes to your planner via the Internet.
TiVo lets you view your digital photos and listen to your digital music.
With multiple TiVo boxes, you can record on one and watch on another.
With TiVoToGo you can transfer recordings to a computer, mobile device, or DVD.
TiVo has a comprehensive KidZone system that not only blocks adult content, but provides recommendations for children’s content, has separate recording lists for children’s content, and allows filtering on interest, not just rating.
TiVo allows searching for recordings with a particular title, actor, keyword, or genre

So, how many of these do MySky offer? You can pause, rewind and slow-motion view live TV (although the slow motion is flawed, as John Porter has pointed out, since you have to go back an extra two seconds, so that you have time to activate the slow motion). I’m not sure what “instant replay” is - I presume it’s some sort of “play the last 30 seconds” button, which MySky doesn’t have. There’s nothing like the WishList, and the ‘series link’ is pathetic compared to Season Pass, and there’s nothing like the Suggestions. There’s no online scheduling, and no capability for working with the user’s own digital media files. If you have two MySky boxes the recordings are completely separate. The only way to transfer content off MySky is to play it and record it on a device though the various video outputs (e.g. to a DVD-R or to a computer with some sort of tuner card). There is a good, but simple, parental control system with MySky (basically the same as regular Digital Sky) but it doesn’t have the features that KidZone has. You can’t search at all with MySky. There are various guide views that only show certain content (I’d concede that this allows a genre search of a sort), but they are pretty limited compared to a real search. Does MySky have any features that TiVo doesn’t? There’s better integration with the content provider, but I can’t think of anything else. It seems clear to me that the MySky design isn’t mature for 2006. Mature for 2000, sure. I suppose that was when SkyTV started planning this, so maybe that explains it… technorati tags: SkyTV, MySky

The Listener's Take on MySky

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 18:12:39 +1200

My parents have subscribed to The Listener for as long as I remember. When I left home, I subscribed too, and continued for nine years, until Pamela Stirling took over as editor and turned the magazine into a trashy, pale, copy of what it once was. I do occasionally glance over their website, however, and noticed Russell Brown’s MySky review. Either they give the reviewers the only working copies, or Brown didn’t use it long enough for it to break, like it has for everyone else I’ve heard of that has it. Laughably, Brown says:

Latest MySky Correspondence

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 17:58:38 +1200

For a while, I had an email conversation going with SkyTV about the problems, and it did appear that things were progressing. Not any more. They seem to have given up, and have decided to treat me as someone completely unknown. My latest email:

As the service is new, we are experiencing a few teething problems. You may want to pass on the idea of quality control and pre-launch testing to your development teams. These are pretty simple concepts, and avoid widespread “teething problems” after product launch. You’ll find that a great many successful companies around the world use these simple ideas to deliver products that work as advertised. To date we do not have any problems with recordings. This is a blatant lie. I know many people have complained to SkyTV about such problems. I have talked on the phone to a SkyTV representative who has admitted that people have such problems. I have email from SkyTV that admits there are such problems. If a recorded event is “cut” at the end, we suggest that the guard time be adjusted through the Active Menu, System Setup, Recordings Setup to the maximum time limit. Do you think I am stupid? This is not the issue. If a recording is meant to be 60 minutes, plus a 2 minute pre and 5 minute post buffer, then it should be about 67 minutes long. When it is 45 minutes, there is a clear problem. This is 100% reproducible. When a program records for 0 minutes, or displays a “FAILED”, that is clearly not an issue with the “guard time”, either. We appreciate your feedback and assure you our IT department are looking at resolving the issues as soon as we can.

MySky Live Pause/Rewind Failure

Thu, 02 Mar 2006 17:09:15 +1200

A new (just what I need!) MySky problem appeared yesterday: live pause & rewind no longer worked: they displayed a “this program cannot be recorded” error message, even when nothing else was recording (and on any channel). I managed to fix this with a reboot (hold down ‘go back’ and ‘select’ on the front panel), but it’s yet another reason to avoid MySky for now. technorati tags: MySky, SkyTV

Gmail and SpamCop

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 14:26:30 +1200

My now lengthy email discussion with SkyTV about my MySky problems hit a new snag today: I have been using my gmail account for this correspondence, and my last message failed to be delivered:

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently: skyweb@skytv.co.nz Technical details of permanent failure: PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 9): 550 Rule imposed as tony.meyer@gmail.com is blacklisted on SpamCop or SpamHaus

Searching, I see a couple of articles ([1], [2]) that indicate this isn’t anything new. I’m not sure why all the previous messages made it through - perhaps SpamCop just made an update, or some sort of load-sharing at gmail switched me to a different SMTP server. What a PITA. Back to regular mail for now, I guess. Please, anyone who can decide, don’t use SpamCop. Blacklisting is such a stupid system, especially blacklisting one of the world’s most popular webmail systems. technorati tags: MySky, SkyTV, Email, Spam, gmail, SpamCop

On the subject of MySky...

Thu, 09 Feb 2006 21:16:55 +1200

While I’m pointing out MySky flaws - it continually bounces back to the preview channel. Why? It also comes up with the ‘conflict’ screen fairly regularly, with a program that is recording or set to recording and a “searching…” ‘recording’. Cancelling the “searching…” ‘recording’ seems to fix the problem. I think this is the series link system trying to find new episodes, but that shouldn’t cause a conflict. technorati tags: MySky, SkyTV

Another MySky Failure

Thu, 09 Feb 2006 21:08:24 +1200

Another program failed tonight. MySky was set to record Shortland Street from 7pm to 7:30pm. My wife watched last night’s episode while tonight’s was on; the red light was on the whole time, and nothing else was being recorded. After finishing last night’s episode, she started to watch tonight’s. The planner showed that all 30 minutes had recorded. She managed to watch two and a half ads, and then the recording stopped. She went back to the planner, and it now says that 0 minutes were taped. In other words, the program is lost. I sent yet another email to Sky. This is really unacceptable, and clearly a faulty product. technorati tags: MySky, SkyTV

NZ Herald MySky Endorsement

Thu, 09 Feb 2006 11:28:15 +1200

A few days ago (I don’t get the paper copy, so only just saw it), the New Zealand Herald ran basically an ad for MySky disguised as an article. The author, Richard Thorne, praises the unit without mentioning any of the flaws (see any of my previous entries), or that this technology was all available in the US in 1999 (six years ago!) and we’re getting a buggy out-of-date system. He also says:

Serious MySky problems

Thu, 09 Feb 2006 11:17:38 +1200

Things have not been going well with MySky recently. Badly enough, in fact, for me to contact Sky about the problems. I’ve posted before about the recording failing to add the ‘buffer’, so that the ends of programs are missed. I’ve mistakenly said 3 minutes in the past when it’s meant to be 2 minutes (either side), but that doesn’t change the problem. This just isn’t happening, regardless of what channel, date, time, whether something else is before/after the program, or anything else. It’s clear that it’s not happening, because the planner tells you how long the recorded program is. If the recording is 28 minutes for a 30 minute program, there’s no way that there’s a two minute buffer on either side. It should be at least 33 minutes, if not 34. The response from Sky was that I should look at the manual (I’ve already done that, thanks), and that the problem is that it’s set to ‘automatic’. But the manual says that automatic means 2 minutes. If that isn’t the case, then they either have a documentation bug or a software bug. There is much worse to come, however. Last Monday, Desparate Housewives returned to New Zealand television. Not really a show I want to miss, considering that the first episode of season two not only sets up that season, but contains the resolution of the season one cliffhanger. All appeared to be going fine - the red light was on, the planner showed “recording” and then “recorded”. But when I tried to play the recording, it wouldn’t. When I went back to the planner screen, the status had changed from “recorded” to “failed”. It’s not possible to watch the episode. I am very angry at this point, and have to spend time finding a copy online to illegally watch (if there was a New Zealand iTMS that sold the episodes, I would have just bought it, but there isn’t, and the DVD isn’t out, and I need it before next week, so …). More problems occured last night (Wed 8/2). I had four programs set to record:

MySky "Recorded" changing to "Viewed"

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 14:16:59 +1200

MySky suffers from the same problem as iTunes podcasts: they are marked as viewed (played) as soon as they start playing, instead of when they finish.

This is more of a problem with MySky - the automatic space management will delete any programs that are viewed before it deletes ones that are not.

While marking as viewed only when the program was viewed to the very end would not be ideal (with the (at least theoretical) extra three minutes at the end of a program, as well as the habit people have of skipping the credits, the end would often never be reached), something smarter than the existing system could be designed. Something like when 95% of the program (57 minutes of a hour-long show, 28.5 minutes of a half-hour-long show) is reached, it is marked as viewed.

MySky Series Link Redux

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 21:41:26 +1200

My initial impressions were that the “series link” feature of MySky (the most important feature, in some ways) didn’t work right. I set Gilmore Girls to be recorded on Tuesday, then it was next recorded Monday the next week (not Tuesday as I originally posted), missing Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. This also happened with Shortland Street, the only other program I have set to record that is on more than once a week. I thought that maybe it only worked for weekly programs. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case. After that first week, both Gilmore Girls and Shortland Street have recorded every day without problem (and without me changing anything). Weekly programs have also recorded fine. More impressive, Boston Legal isn’t on this week, but resumes next week, and MySky managed to find it even with the larger-than-normal break. I am at somewhat of a loss to explain the initial problem. This is of concern, since I still have some distrust for the feature, which isn’t how it’s meant to work (I should just trust that it’ll get everything). It’s possible that there was an update that fixed it - since updates occur silently (unless you watch the many version numbers hidden away in the status) there’s no way to know (this is somewhat of a negative, in my opinion, since users don’t find out that things are fixed). It’s also possible that this is a ‘first week’ bug. Maybe if I set something else to record that’s on weekly, it’ll skip a week after the first one, and then work fine. I’ll try this at some point. Since I don’t know exactly how the feature is implemented, I suppose it’s also possible that there was some problem with the data that week, which caused the problem, which is now fixed. I like this answer the least, since that means that it could happen again, once I do trust it enough not to check. Interestingly, it seems that it looks for programs of the same name and channel, and doesn’t know anything more. Charmed is on TV 3 on Tuesday night (new episodes) and Saturday afternoon (repeats), and (unless I set it to record, which I don’t recall) the series link is picking up both. I’m not sure if this is a feature (I like the program, so want all episodes) or not (it should ask if I want all episodes or episodes of a season). technorati tags: MySky, SkyTV

MySky Surrounding Space

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 21:23:26 +1200

One of the features I initially liked about MySky was that it automatically started recording three minutes early, and finished three minutes late, to cover for programs starting or ending early/late (TV 2 and TV 3 are notorious for doing this). At first this seemed to work fine. However, recently I’ve noticed that it doesn’t always seem to occur - especially at the end of the program. Only once, with Alias, has the recording finished before the end. However, I wasn’t watching it anywhere near live, so I don’t know if the program actually finished more than three minutes after it was meant to. The recording wasn’t 66 minutes, though, which is what I would expect. I know that when two sequential programs (same channel) are scheduled to be recorded, the first will miss a bit of the end so the next can start, but that isn’t the case here (for some programs it might be, but certainly not for Alias, which wasn’t near anything else being recorded). Since two programs can be recorded at the same time, this should only be a problem when three programs are involved, anyway. (Actually, clever programming could avoid this sequential problem. It would be simple, and not break the ‘only two at once’ rule, to have a period of time added to two recordings (the end of the first, and the start of the second). This would be much more convenient, especially when not watching them in order). I’ll post more about this if I figure anything more out. Update: something is definitely wrong here. Shortland Street was recorded yesterday, there was nothing scheduled after it, and the recording finished before it the show did. The recording length is only 34 minutes, when it should be 36, and it definitely did start 3 minutes early. Even more strangely, if I try to view that recorded program now, I can’t. It says it’s using 0% of space (it’s not deleted, and watching it yesterday worked fine), and nothing happens when I try to play it (nor does the back button work). If this happens again, there’ll certainly be a phone call to Sky. technorati tags: MySky, SkyTV

MySky Watching Tip

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 21:16:13 +1200

Although live pause and instant rewind (or whatever the marketing names are) work well, it is always best to watch programs via the ‘Planner’ page. For example, Shortland Street is scheduled to be recorded, and you get home about halfway through. While you can just change to TV 2 (if necessary) and rewind, using rewind and fast forward as you expect, what you should do is go to the ‘Planner’ page and play the program from there. (Watching programs as they are recording is fine). There are two benefits to this, both important. One is that the status in the ‘Planner’ page changes from Recording/Recorded to Viewed, which makes it much easier to keep track of what you’ve seen and what you haven’t. (It would be great if the PVR could do this itself, but without having sensors to tell that you’re in the room with the TV on, I can’t see how it can do that - although if you used the remote, that would tell it). The other (more important) reason is that you can watch a recorded program and record two other programs at the same time, but you cannot watch ’live paused’ TV and record two other programs at the same time (essentially, you’d be recording three programs). Continuing the example, when NCIS (Sky 1) and Charmed (TV 3) are both scheduled to be recorded at 7:30 when Shortland Street finishes, watching the recorded program isn’t a problem - it will stop at the end, and switch to taping the other two. Watching ‘paused’ or ‘rewound’ TV is a problem - when 7:30 arrives, you’ll have to choose to cancel one of the other two programs to continue watching Shortland Street. technorati tags: MySky, SkyTV

MySky Interface

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 21:08:27 +1200

In my initial impressions, I noted that the “Planner” page of the MySky interface wasn’t that great. So far, this is what has annoyed me most. The page lists all the programs that are viewed, recorded, recording, and scheduled (for recording or watching). They are sorted by date (this can’t be changed) and the page shows the name of the program, the rating (e.g. PG13, R18), the status (“viewed”, “recorded”, “recording”) or date & time it’s scheduled to be watched/recorded, the channel it was/will be on (name not number), and some indicator icons (series link, a “record” icon for recording/to-be-recorded programs, etc). Some of this information needs to be there. The name of the program, for example, and the icons at the end (series link etc). However, I really don’t need to know what channel the program was on. I don’t care what channel things are on, I want the PVR to just get everything recorded for me, so I can watch what I want when I want. That information would be fine just in the information you get by selecting an item and pressing the ‘i’ button. The rating also belongs there - if I’ve recorded it, then I’m probably aware of the rating; if I’m not, pressing a button to get that information would be fine. Removing this superfluous information would mean that useful information could be added. When the program was played (or, if it was more clever, an episode/season number) is essential information. For example, I have probably about 10 episodes of Shortland Street (for my wife, not me!) in the list. Finding the one I want involves selecting an episode, pressing ‘i’ (to get the date), going to the next one, etc. That information belongs on the main screen. I still feel that there should be a separation of viewed/recorded & recording/scheduled programs. It’s a pain to have to flick through the scheduled programs when looking for something to watch (I very rarely want to see that list; if I can trust the series link feature, then I really hardly need it). It’s also a pain to flick through all the viewed programs; yes I could manually clear these out, but the point is meant to be that the PVR takes care of space management for me. I really hope that Sky updates this soon (although I suppose that’s unlikely). I wonder if this interface is very New Zealand specific, or if others that use this device (someone in Australia, IIRC) have essentially the same one. technorati tags: MySky, SkyTV

MySky Playlists

Thu, 26 Jan 2006 09:05:10 +1200

It’s minor, but another problem: you can’t fast forward in a playlist. It skips to the next item. Stupid. technorati tags: MySky, SkyTV