# Loads of suggestions



## Drewdroid (Jan 19, 2015)

Add a dedicated "Exit" button on the remotes. As it stands, loads of buttons (Clear, Zoom, Live TV) can perform this task but only sometimes in specific situations. Having a dedicated button would be more useful and user-friendly.

Enable easier "locking" for aspect ratio preferences. Since I use my "Zoom" button to sometimes "Exit". I'm often accidentally changing the aspect ratio preferences for my 4:3 shows from "Panel" to "Zoom" etc. Then when I enter Netflix, I cannot fix this unless I exit to "Live TV", fix it there, then go back into Netflix. Otherwise, I guess just enable the "Zoom" button globally.

Add a favorites button. I'd like to quickly switch between my "favorite" channels, this is impossible at the moment. The A, B, C, D buttons are usually unused during "Live TV" so perhaps one could be used for that? 

Put a clock back on your Set-top boxes. I'm fighting a losing battle here, but I think the *option* to display a digital clock would be nice. Add an option in settings to turn it off though.


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## KariStar86 (May 1, 2015)

Drewdroid said:


> Add a dedicated "Exit" button on the remotes. As it stands, loads of buttons (Clear, Zoom, Live TV) can perform this task but only sometimes in specific situations. Having a dedicated button would be more useful and user-friendly.


If this is possible, I'm all for it. The fact that I need to press "Clear" in the CableCard and tuning adapter diagnostic menus (which I've been navigating a lot lately) and "Back" for everything else EXCEPT getting out of Tivo Central (huh?)... is driving me a little crazy. I suspect there's a reason, though, at least for Clear/Back being different. Maybe certain apps (and those diagnostic menus) only recognize one or the other?

"Zoom" has never made sense to me as a "get back to what you were watching" button, though. Why not just use "Back" for that? I've had the same issue with accidentally switching the wide mode, though I always catch it in time to switch back.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

I've re-trained myself, when away from the show screen, to think of "zooming back" to it. Kinda like it. But I also find that whenever I'm away from the show screen, I can tend to press the left button on the remote top circle--just feels right as a means to get back to something.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Drewdroid said:


> Enable easier "locking" for aspect ratio preferences. Since I use my "Zoom" button to sometimes "Exit". I'm often accidentally changing the aspect ratio preferences for my 4:3 shows from "Panel" to "Zoom" etc. Then when I enter Netflix, I cannot fix this unless I exit to "Live TV", fix it there, then go back into Netflix. Otherwise, I guess just enable the "Zoom" button globally.


Simple fix.... only ever watch HD. Then the aspect options are meaningless.


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## swong_88 (Aug 12, 2014)

Mikeguy said:


> I've re-trained myself, when away from the show screen, to think of "zooming back" to it. Kinda like it. But I also find that whenever I'm away from the show screen, I can tend to press the left button on the remote top circle--just feels right as a means to get back to something.


You can also look at as, I am:

Re-Zooming to watch..


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## Drewdroid (Jan 19, 2015)

Dan203 said:


> Simple fix.... only ever watch HD. Then the aspect options are meaningless.


Yeah that's cute except I'd be limiting myself a lot if I only watched HD. There are some great programs that were never shot in HD. Don't take my X-Files away!

Anyway, I think aspect toggling ought to be stickier or at least changeable from the various VOD apps section... 99% of the time I want to keep it as pillar-boxed.


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## Drewdroid (Jan 19, 2015)

Favorites would be my top thing this suggestions list though. I had this on Time Warner, not sure why Tivo can't implement it. I just wanna be able to cycle through a list of like 10 or so favorite channels by clicking a button a few times. I nominate either the *A* or the *D* button since they are easy access and unused at the LiveTV screen.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Drewdroid said:


> Yeah that's cute except I'd be limiting myself a lot if I only watched HD. There are some great programs that were never shot in HD. Don't take my X-Files away!
> 
> Anyway, I think aspect toggling ought to be stickier or at least changeable from the various VOD apps section... 99% of the time I want to keep it as pillar-boxed.


I agree, the fact that the aspect mode effects the apps but can't be changed in the apps has always seemed odd to me.


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## davidblackledge (Sep 9, 2008)

Drewdroid said:


> Add a dedicated "Exit" button on the remotes. As it stands, loads of buttons (Clear, Zoom, Live TV) can perform this task but only sometimes in specific situations. Having a dedicated button would be more useful and user-friendly.





KariStar86 said:


> If this is possible, I'm all for it. The fact that I need to press "Clear" in the CableCard and tuning adapter diagnostic menus (which I've been navigating a lot lately) and "Back" for everything else EXCEPT getting out of Tivo Central (huh?)... is driving me a little crazy. I suspect there's a reason, though, at least for Clear/Back being different. Maybe certain apps (and those diagnostic menus) only recognize one or the other?
> 
> "Zoom" has never made sense to me as a "get back to what you were watching" button, though. Why not just use "Back" for that? I've had the same issue with accidentally switching the wide mode, though I always catch it in time to switch back.


As best I can understand, the issue is the main User Interface (UI) and HME apps have full access to all remote codes (EXCEPT the BACK button isn't available to HME), but the Opera/Flash apps have only a small standard set of feature buttons they're designed to handle for all devices they might run on, not just the TiVo.

TiVo, rather than build all new custom apps, had to just use those apps as-is, and map the Remote buttons to those feature buttons. I think they must also support keyboard keys in those apps for Slide Remote owners, at least.

I found what the Opera TV store shows as its emulator onscreen remote:







You can ignore the web/dragonfly/settings/restart buttons, I'm sure. 
The rest explains what Opera apps expect, and we can guess what they map to with the TiVo. Other than the obvious, I think INFO is menu, perhaps both PLAY and PAUSE map to play/pause or maybe that's just the TiVo PLAY button and PAUSE maps to stop, of course BACK for back, and CLEAR maps to exit.

As far as the Opera apps are concerned, no other buttons on the TiVo remote exist, severely limiting us in navigation.

So...that explains some of the issue. The other side of it is because of this money saving move by TiVo, they lose control of the UI for all these apps, so all the familiar idioms of TiVo are missing in these apps (e.g. LEFT to go back to the previous page, and normal responses during playback).

I really think this is TiVo's biggest mistake. The carefully designed, user tested TiVo UI is one of its biggest distinguishing features, and they've thrown that out the window by depending on these external apps with different UIs.

One other compromise has been using the ZOOM button for "back" since on non-Roamio remotes it is in the same place that the BACK button is, and when you have PIP, there is some logic that ZOOM would make it full screen again.

Exiting with Live TV, TiVo, or Guide *always* works (not just sometimes), but it's not the same as the more desirable "back" concept.

The LEAST TiVo could do for us is make the BACK button work in the main TiVo UI in a fashion consistent with the apps.



Drewdroid said:


> Enable easier "locking" for aspect ratio preferences. Since I use my "Zoom" button to sometimes "Exit". I'm often accidentally changing the aspect ratio preferences for my 4:3 shows from "Panel" to "Zoom" etc. Then when I enter Netflix, I cannot fix this unless I exit to "Live TV", fix it there, then go back into Netflix. Otherwise, I guess just enable the "Zoom" button globally.


Drives me nuts as an HME developer... I have no way of knowing what mode you're in, even if I knew what mode I needed for the video I'm displaying. Technically I can detach the video from the screen mode by shrinking the video slightly (ever notice your mode doesn't seem to apply to the PIP in the UI?), then I kind of know what mode it will be in, but I can only manipulate the mode manually up to a point. I'd love to be able to say "do the Zoom Global video adjustment action" when they press Zoom in my apps if I could.



Drewdroid said:


> Put a clock back on your Set-top boxes. I'm fighting a losing battle here, but I think the *option* to display a digital clock would be nice. Add an option in settings to turn it off though.


Yeah... too expensive in manufacturing to do nicely, not enough people want it... just buy a stick-on clock and attach it to the front of your TiVo ;]


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## davidblackledge (Sep 9, 2008)

davidblackledge said:


> The rest explains what Opera apps expect, and we can guess what they map to with the TiVo. Other than the obvious, I think INFO is menu, perhaps both PLAY and PAUSE map to play/pause or maybe that's just the TiVo PLAY button and PAUSE maps to stop, of course BACK for back, and CLEAR maps to exit.
> 
> As far as the Opera apps are concerned, no other buttons on the TiVo remote exist, severely limiting us in navigation.


Ok, found some more info, and some bad news.
https://dev.opera.com/tv/functional-key-handling-in-opera-tv-store-applications/#functional-buttons
First, additional info:

Menu and Info are two separate concepts that exist. So maybe INFO is info.
Play, Pause, and Stop are all independent key possibilities in Opera apps, so I'm sure Play and Pause map from PLAY and PAUSE and nothing on TiVo maps to Stop.
Next and Previous are concepts that are available... I'd guess TiVo mapped them to SKIP and REPLAY
The bad news: 

all of the above are considered "may not be present" keys for an app, so they app may not bother to look for them.
that still leaves out thumbs, page up/down and other valuable buttons as normal features... I'm sure the TiVo supports them if the app looks for them, but they're not standard, so most apps won't support them.
the only buttons guaranteed for apps are directions and select (and exit), so lazy developers will only support those buttons.
the EXIT concept is EXPLICITLY HANDLED BY OPERA and not passed to the app, so you CAN'T add a confirm option to your app when the user hits CLEAR.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

As someone who's used Macs since '02, I'm a little bit of a UI snob. Good design and controls are important to me. I recently bought a TiVo Roamio OTA because it currently represents the best single device for marrying OTA and OTT content. I had mistakenly thought the TiVo was sort of the "Mac" of the DVR world. It is not. It is a UI design nightmare. As noted above, so many things are unintuitive and inconsistent. I'm learning my way around and, overall, I do like my new TiVo but, yeah, it's a weird little box.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

The apps on TiVo are written by the individual OTT services. TiVo tried to impose a consistent UI on OTT apps at one point but it scared a lot of the services off and we just didn't get apps from those services at all. Now they're acting more like a Smart TV where they just supply a base set of controls and allow the services design their apps however they want. It's inconsistent but we've got more new apps in the last year or so then we ever got under the old model. 

The only two devices I know of that still enforce UI guidelines on apps are Xbox and Apple TV, both of which have significantly more users then TiVo so they can get away with it. With TiVo we have to either accept the apps as-is or just not get them at all. I'd rather have something then nothing.


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