Minor UI improvement suggestions

nsayer

Well-Known SatelliteGuys Member
Original poster
May 21, 2009
27
0
Santa Clara, CA
This isn't really feature requests, just suggestions for minor UI tweaks.

1. "Exit" should not abort recording playback. If you're watching a recorded show and enter the menu system, then hit exit, you return to the show you're watching. Hit exit once again, and it clears the info display. Hit it one more time, though, and it's as if you hit the 'stop' button - the playback is aborted and you return to live TV. I do this way more often by accident than on purpose. Exit shouldn't be an alias for "stop" under certain circumstances. "Stop" should have simply been labeled "Live TV", but it's probably too late to redesign the remote at this point.

2. "The remote is in TV/AV1/AV2 mode" - that display entirely ruins the concept of using AV1 or AV2 to control a VCR to tape a recording.

3. Screen savers are very important for LCD TVs. However, the music channels (800s) simply put a static DirecTV logo in the bottom right corner of the screen. Redrum! Let's enter the 1990s, what say, and create visualizers that actually respond to the music?

4. Setting the name of the receiver in the 'advanced networking' doesn't feel right. That panel should be where you set up static IP addressing, when necessary (and it rarely is). There ought to be a linkage between the website (you can label each receiver with the room that it's in) and the default receiver name. The receiver name should be something you set when doing the initial network setup, and should replace the 'room' on the website.

5. If you're in the menu tree over an OTA channel, and the AM21 loses signal, it rips you out to the live TV window with the 771 display. That's really, really, irritating. A device should never interrupt the user while they're involved in a task.

6. "Format" should bring up a format menu. It should be actually two menus - a resolution menu (480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p) and a format type (pillar bar, stretch, crop, etc). Repeatedly pressing format should run through the available resolutions - that way you can quickly reclaim the display if it is on an unsupported resolution. Holding down format should immediately force 480i. There should be a link from the format menu to the HDTV system properties pane. There should be a way to force the composite and S-Video outputs to stay at 4:3 regardless of the 4:3/16:9 setting so that you can record shows to without having them squished between inappropriate pillar bars.

7. "Channels I get" should allow the option to remove local channels over the dish if you can receive them OTA. That is, if my AM21 can receive KTVU on 2-1, then I don't need to have channel 2 in the guide. This is a similar concept to "Hide SD Duplicates".

8. This one is an outright bug: KSBW and KUNO both are 8-1. I can receive KSBW, but not KUNO (I doubt anyone who is actually in the San Francisco DMA can actually receive KUNO, quite frankly). The receivers regularly confuse the two, despite my regularly visiting the OTA setup and telling it that I don't want KUNO and do want KSBW.
 
2. "The remote is in TV/AV1/AV2 mode" - that display entirely ruins the concept of using AV1 or AV2 to control a VCR to tape a recording.
Agreed. It also ruins using the remote as a universal when the TV is not set to the DirecTV input.
 
I second this.. Perhaps totally new software too... maybe even replace the entire receiver.. than we'll have a good HD DVR :up

darren, you ever had an HR20? if so, is there less lag than the HR21?
 

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