Homechoice problems with a TiVO/PVR (HD recorder)

If you're thinking about getting Tiscali TV (née Homechoice) for TV, and you want to use it with a PVR or hard disk recorder/TiVO - here's my advice: don't.

A bit over a year ago, we signed up with them. The Video on Demand (VOD) service seemed exciting compared with going out to the video shop, and given our our poor freeview reception, it seemed like a good idea at the time. It also came with 8 megabit broadband, which was about as fast as all the other providers - since our local exchange was not covered by ADSL2 (up to 30 megabit).

But the reality was different. Getting them to install the box took two months alone. Each time we called, there was a different problem, and someone would call us back. No call. We'd call again, and someone would call us back. No call. Then someone would show up a random time and we'd be told they tried to visit.

When it was finally installed, we found the whole interface and menus are EXTREMELY clumsy, slow and hard to navigate (and I'm a techie!). Browsing for the right movie could take an hour, given how easy it was to hit the wrong button and find yourself at the start of a sequence involving another six button presses to get to the movie list again. If you pressed the wrong button you'd miss your chance and have to start again. It was extremely confusing.

And it only gets worse: the Homechoice (Tiscali TV) set top box puts itself into standby 'randomly' if it thinks you aren't watching the TV. How it does this is unknown, and it certainly doesn't work with your recorder. We tried switching plugs, leaving the TV on etc. Nothing worked consistently and nobody on tech support was able to give a solution that worked.

All this took about about 3 or four months, and 12 calls to customer service on their 0845 number (costing about £25 in calls, and many many hours - an average of 45 minutes per call sometimes longer). Often the call would end in them promising to call us back the next morning, or their manager. No call. Never.

Many of their representatives didn't know what a PVR or TiVO was, and it was only after a long long time that we got to speak to someone who told us that the standby was a 'feature' of the Homechoice box, and that we weren't the only people to have a complaint about it. It's apparently "a common customer complaint or reason for disconnecting".

So they kindly disconnected the TV service for us - cutting out the portion of the bill that would have gone to the TV package, and we continued the broadband service for another year to run out the contract.

I am a high bandwidth user, and I often noticed that I didn't get much faster than 400kb/s download speeds, but I assumed that was just the way the internet works - ie you don't often get the full 8 megabit because the peers or servers are congested.

Then I started to notice an upper limit on my download speeds. I figured the blend between TV bandwidth and broadband bandwidth could be twiddled (in favour of broadband since we weren't using it) - but when I called customer service they told me I had a 4 megabit.

The reason? 8 megabit isn't available without TV.

So we've been paying £20 a month for the past year and a bit for 4 megabit, when everyone else offers it cheaper... I think I'm switching to Bethere's 24 megabit now - thanks for nothing Tiscali!

Note: Apparently their set-top box might be fixed "sometime this summer, maybe" so that it doesn't go into standby at random (recording!) moments. Don't expect their support or sales to know if it does or doesn't though - they probably haven't heard of this common reason for Tiscali TV customers to leave...