The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Telewest coughs to PVR 'teething problems'

'Effectively unusable' say punters

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

Telewest has admitted that its new TVDrive hard disk based video recorder has suffered some "teething problems" and that a new software patch has been issued to try and fix the snag.

Telewest, which merged with NTL to create a single UK cableco, launched its TVDrive PVR (personal video recorder) in March after a three month pilot of the service.

But customers have complained that the boxes keep resetting - making them as useful as a chocolate teapot.

One Telewest customer, who declined to give his name, told us his PVR was "effectively unusable" and that Telewest's customer support staff knew nothing of the problem. Yet an engineer who came round to check the PVR told him, "they're all like that".

A spokesperson for Telewest said: "We are aware of some minor teething problems that maybe affecting a small number of TVDrive customers. A new software download released yesterday should have solved the majority of these issues and we apologise to any customers affected."

The cableco has 1.2m digital TV customers but declined to say how many TVDrive subscribers it has signed up. ®

What you need to know about cloud backup

More from The Register

 breaking news
UK telcos chuck another £1m at online child abuse watchdog
Web enforcers IWF gain power to seek and destroy illegal content
 breaking news
Pttow! Ofcom kicks hams out of MoD bands
Geet off my land, you, you ... 'secondary user'
 breaking news
Now you can use your phone instead of your wallet at the ATM, too
Blimey, these little paper towels out of the vending machine are really expensive
 breaking news
UK.gov's £530m bumpkin broadband rollout: 'Train crash waiting to happen'
Whitehall whispers of damning watchdog report next month
Google launches broadband balloons, radio astronomy frets
A careless Loon could blind the square kilometre array
 breaking news
MySpace zaps millions of teens' tearful rants, causes wave of angst
'Your crappy redesign SUCKS, I wanna read my blogs' screech users
 breaking news
Microsoft Office 365 on iPhone NOW: No, we're not making this up
Word, Excel, Powerpoint for your pocket-stroker
Increased cell phone coverage tied to uptick in African violence
'Significantly and substantially increases the probability of violent conflict'
 breaking news