The UI is clumsy at best, it's awkward to navigate full of superfluous button presses.
Wow, I would never say that about the Tivo experience I've had for the last 10-12 years. "Superfluous button presses" is not a phrase that's computing with me right now when I think of Tivo. Aside from up/down or selecting a folder of recordings (which is necessary for any DVR), I can play a recorded show in two button presses.
It never seems to remember things, like if I press guide then I expect to be presented with the guide page centred around the channel i'm watching, not back at the start of the list.
As Bitt said, this does not describe my experience. It's not really a case of "remembering," the guide just starts with the channel you're watching and you go up and down from there.
If I stop a recording from playing I expect it to resume from where I left off, not from the start.
Again, I've never seen this happen on any of the Tivos I've owned. The only case in which it happens is if the playback is near the very end of a recording (like the last 5%) and you leave it without choosing to delete the recording. In every other case it remembers the playback. I could go into my Now Playing List, start every recording in there, and stop them half way through, and it would remember the playback position of each recording.
It really doesn't seem that well thought out or particularly polished.
I would love to see a video of what you're talking about, because that's the opposite of how I'd describe Tivo. Tivo has always been the alternative to poorly polished provider DVRs.
Well, you probably won't find a lot of people exclaiming TiVo's virtues any more.
You can find me, and I don't think I'm in a minority.
Most PVRs have come a long way since they first started eating TiVo's lunch.
They have come a long way, and they still eat Tivo's lunch, and Tivo still suffers from people calling those boxes "Tivos," but that doesn't mean they've caught up. My mother has the Fios DVR, which is better than most (not as good as DirecTV though). That interface is clunky, the remote is clunkier, and the whole system is just slow. For example, when I fast forward through a commercial on Tivo and I see the show come back on, when I press play Tivo jumps back a few seconds so you don't miss the start. On her DVR it just starts where you press play. This is a basic thing that a DVR needs to have.
Taking a quick look at the Virgin Media web site, it looks like the one you have has the UI of the US TiVo Premiere, which hasn't gotten good reviews, though mostly due to underpowered hardware 8rather than actual problems like you're describing. However, part of the complaints have been about the new UI being clumsy. It's the first real UI update since TiVo launched, and it sounds like it didn't go all that well.
Ah my apologies, my earlier statements about the interface may not apply to the new version. But given the buttons on my remote, I assume it's just as easy to start a recording.
Basically what I'm saying is that TiVo built up a lot of good will by having a really robust, well made device, then squandered that through glacial updates and a poor version 2.
I can't argue with that. Tivo perfected the interface for the DVR in ~2001, and didn't do a thing to it for 10 years. I think it baffled every Series 3 and TivoHD owner that the freaking menus weren't even updated to be HD. Even now, my little Tivo guy is sitting at the top of my Tivo menus looking low-res and squat. It's odd.
But tha'ts another topic.