Whilst remaining familiar with Sky's trademark shades of blue, the guide now displays a small video of the current channel - allowing viewers to see what else is on or make changes to their recording schedule without disrupting their viewing.

If I was a Sky subscriber, this alone would make me upgrade to an HD box :)

Funkstar
If I was a Sky subscriber, this alone would make me upgrade to an HD box :)

Thats because you've not used it.

Sky has far too many channels of utter **** that you need to page through, this makes it much harder because only 50% of the screen is used. You can't seam to change that.

The menu system suffers from aspirations of greatness, it tries to be smooth and cool, this means it takes a long time, even moving time with the search and scan banner, they added this fade slide animation, purely to make it take longer.

it's just something i really miss from my MP system whenever I use a Sky box. I hate their standard EPG.

Its just to damn slow, you have only 6 rows of infomation :(

If they had 1080p hardware there, using say 25% of the screen for the Title and Picture, then 75% of the screen for the program listings it would of been really good. But no, no they didn't.

The new EPG is a mixed bag.

Some of the new features are awesome and make things much better (current channel viewable in guide, grouped recordings, search facility, ITVHD available via manual tuning, “further info” works via the banner, FF/RW now works properly)

But….it is a bit clunky :S Not being able to scroll up from the top item to appear at the bottom of lists, plus navigating via up/down/left/right to get to the various sections is a real pain.

There was no reasons that I could see why the good features could not have been added to the old “non clunky” system :(

does this mean standard sky customers are left out in the cold and have to stick with the EPG that has been around for like ever?

Yes.

Part of the problem is some of the old Pace boxes are so under speced that they even have problems with all the new channels that have been added in recent years. They run out of memory too easily. This meant that Sky had to re-work how the HD channel EPG data was sent, so there was room for channels those boxes could actually deal with. As sky is treated like a universal platform, there is no way they would push out an update for one type of box that nother would break on.

Actually, they may well have no way to differenciate between the different SD boxes out there.

Hello funkstar,
thanks for the information.
is there any advantage of a standard sky customer asking for a new box?

Nope.

A new SD box might have a better spec than an old SD box, but Sky will design their EPG and software for the lowest common denominator. So a higher spec box is pointless.

This is one of the many down sides to a completely closed system like Sky.

TheAnimus
…..

Sky has far too many channels of utter **** that you need to page through, this makes it much harder because only 50% of the screen is used. You can't seam to change that…….

Here, here.

I haven't counted, but I reckon at least 80%, maybe 90% of the channels are, so far as I'm concerned, pure drivel.

The biggest single UI improvement Sky could make, and I might even be prepared to pay for it, is to customise the channels the Guide displays … because I'd turn most of them off. Not only would it not have to store anything like as much, but it'd make it a damn sight faster finding things I actually do want.

Highspec boxes crash less, move through the menu faster.

My parents had a Sky+ box first generation that was making a truely horrific noise, and had been crashing. By contrast the new Sky+ SD box is much faster. But still makes a nasty sound.

i just memorised the numbers for the ones I want. Or at least the rough numbers for the groups of channels I watch (on the rare occation I have a full Sk package in front of me)

Saracen
Here, here.

I haven't counted, but I reckon at least 80%, maybe 90% of the channels are, so far as I'm concerned, pure drivel.

The biggest single UI improvement Sky could make, and I might even be prepared to pay for it, is to customise the channels the Guide displays … because I'd turn most of them off. Not only would it not have to store anything like as much, but it'd make it a damn sight faster finding things I actually do want.

You can use favourate channels.

Yeah, I know. I'd just like to be able to edit the guide channels and disable the vast bulk of them entirely. I can with my Pioneer HD Recorder and GuidePlus. Then, they don't even come up if you scroll up and down channels with the +/- keys, for instance.

i''m intrigued to see how this plays out
even though it cuts down on the amount being able to view, i know which channels are on which pages and i'm sure i'll learn the same again with the cut down info - its not like i'm scanning each page for the desired channel, i know where i'm going

i reckon the new EPG will be great once i've gotten used to which page my chans will be on now :)

wonder if it can be applied for..only had HD for about 2 months
also, how do you manually tune in ITV HD ?
edit: n/m, found it

Saracen
Yeah, I know. I'd just like to be able to edit the guide channels and disable the vast bulk of them entirely. I can with my Pioneer HD Recorder and GuidePlus. Then, they don't even come up if you scroll up and down channels with the +/- keys, for instance.

Hmm, i know you can block channels in parental controls, same goes with Hide Adult channels etc.

But i'm guessing you looked there?

Tunnah
wonder if it can be applied for..only had HD for about 2 months
also, how do you manually tune in ITV HD ?

New EPG is being released in stages based on the serial number of the boxes. I have 2 HD boxes and only my first box has received the update so far.

Once you have the new EPG, you can go to options > Add channels

11.472
H
27.5
2/3

It should show up as channel 10510 (or something similar)

Saracen
Yeah, I know. I'd just like to be able to edit the guide channels and disable the vast bulk of them entirely. I can with my Pioneer HD Recorder and GuidePlus. Then, they don't even come up if you scroll up and down channels with the +/- keys, for instance.

I second this. With BT Vision you can actually just remove channels from any guide or list, so they don't ever come up anywhere. One of the few good things about it.

BSkyB has announced that it will this week continue to roll out its all-new electronic programming guide (EPG) to long-standing subscribers of its premium Sky+HD service.

grr - I've had SkyHD since the first month of service, so how come my EPG hasn't been updated?

shaithis
New EPG is being released in stages based on the serial number of the boxes. I have 2 HD boxes and only my first box has received the update so far.

There's the rub. I've had SkyHD long enough that the first box broke and I'm on my second. Seems I'm gonna have to wait a bit longer before I can tune in to itv HD.

Considering ITV HD isn't even supposed to be on SkyHD then I don't think you have a lot to complain about :D

The reason it's wrapped up in an obscure data stream instead of a normal video stream and only available via the red button was to stop it being instantly available to Sky subscribers. Making it a unique selling point for Freeview.

Funkstar
Considering ITV HD isn't even supposed to be on SkyHD then I don't think you have a lot to complain about :D

Indeed I don't, but there's no way I'm going to hurt my eyes trying to watch the footy on either ITV1 or ITV4 tonight…

ITV *needs* a HD version cos their SD version is so horribly over-compressed (at least over Sky). Being better than 5 doesn't cut it :-)

Funkstar
Considering ITV HD isn't even supposed to be on SkyHD then I don't think you have a lot to complain about :D

Considering that ITV used a very under-handed technique to stop sky customers from receiving it, I feel fully justified in saying that we SHOULD be getting it.

The reason it's wrapped up in an obscure data stream instead of a normal video stream and only available via the red button was to stop it being instantly available to Sky subscribers. Making it a unique selling point for Freeview.

The system should hold up on it's own, it should not need to try and hide one of it's 3 HD channels from sky customers if the system was a worthwhile purchase. At the end of the day, I do not beleive that was the reason anyway. The reason was they were trying to get early adopters to buy a FreeviewHD box even though they already had a SkyHD box. Lets face it, if all you wanted was Freeview, why would it matter if Sky had the channel? They just wanted to sell Sky customers a box that they really did not need, despicable practice IMO and I am glad it failed miserably.

This line really makes me laugh:

“Following years of development, the new Sky+HD EPG is designed for high-resolution displays and is able to display more information on a single page”

For Christ's sake, if they've been developing it for so long why is it still not right or have as much functionality as the industry leading Tivo EPG. Bugs are still present and as somebody has already pointed out, to the casual channel surfer it actually displays less info regarding what's on. Who the hell developed this, Amdocs and Accenture????

I have only just got this EPG and I bloody hate the thing

Saracen
Yeah, I know. I'd just like to be able to edit the guide channels and disable the vast bulk of them entirely. I can with my Pioneer HD Recorder and GuidePlus. Then, they don't even come up if you scroll up and down channels with the +/- keys, for instance.

only having just recently got sky, i dont know if it was on the old “blue” EPG but there is a favourites tab now and you could juts add say the 30 channels you actually watch out of the ovar 9000 and do it that way?

its OK, not perfect but i find it good enough for meee :)