BT YouView review

PVR

As well as providing online services, the BT YouView Humax DTR-T1000 is also an excellent PVR. The clean EPG makes it easy to find the shows that you want to watch and, as the box is internet connected, extra programme information is pulled from online, giving better descriptions than provided by standard Freeview.

Recordings are simple to access, you can view programmes that have been recorded and scheduled recordings, so you can cancel the latter if required. You can also filter the list of recordings by those you’ve watched and those you haven’t. There’s also the standard option to delete a recording or lock it, so that you can keep it forever.

Recordings are easy to manage and you can filter shows to find exactly what you want to watch

Watching live TV gives you all of the features you’d expect, including the ability to rewind and pause live TV. As there are dual Freeview HD tuners, you can record two programmes at once and watch a third, provided it’s on the same multiplex as one of the current recordings (multiplexes being the small groupings that digital channels are broadcast in). All-in-all, it’s a very simple, feature packed PVR that does everything we’d expect.

A 500GB hard disk provides a decent amount of space for recordings, with around enough space for 125 hours of HD and 300 hours of SD broadcasts.

CATCH-UP PLAYERS

As well as browsing through the EPG for content, each catch-up service has its own player app you can use to browse through the entire catalogue of available shows. Each player is controlled by the providing company, not YouView, so the range of features differs.

BBC iPlayer is probably the best on-demand app on standard YouView

We found BBC iPlayer and Demand Five to provide the best interfaces with full search integrated, 4oD has a nice interface but no proper search (there’s an A-to-Z index), but ITV Player is relatively basic and only has an A-to-Z index with no search.

INTEGRATED CONTENT

A content hub also lets you view the most popular content and view categories, such as Radio, Films and TV, across all of the players. It’s a neat way to see available to watch regardless of where the actual content is stored and it’s yet another advantage of YouView’s integrated approach.

Then, there’s system-wide on-demand search, which will find content no matter where it’s from. This is much better than having to load each individual app to search them for the content you want. At the time of writing the search facility only looks at on-demand content, although an update is planned that will let you search live TV, too.

BT VISION

With BT YouView, BT Vision is now a separate App, accessible through the main YouView menu. There’s no dedicated key for it on the remote, but that’s no trouble as finding the app using the YouView interface isn’t difficult.

BT Vision is now an app accessible through the YouView menu

BT Vision retains the same interface as it did on the old boxes, although there are now no catch-up or Live TV options, as YouView provides these. Vision feels a lot better as an app, as it always felt a little bit clunky for live TV and managing recordings. With only on-demand content available, the bright and big interface is really easy to navigate through.

The BT Vision app has the same interface as the old box, only there’s no catch-up or live programming available here

The range of content is pretty impressive, although it depends on the type of service you take out. TV Essential costs £5 a month to add to your existing broadband contract (bundles with internet and phone are also available) and on-demand programming costs from 50p a TV show and from £3.50 for Box Office films.

TV Unlimited costs £12.50 a month to add to your existing contract (again, bundles are available) and includes all of the on-demand TV shows with unlimited viewing and adds in Vision Film for older films, although Box Office movies are still from £3.50.