Trying to view catchup on SBS - not a good experience

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prl
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Trying to view catchup on SBS - not a good experience

Post by prl » Fri Aug 31, 2018 13:02

A few nights ago, we wanted to watch the first two episodes of SBS's Transfer on catchup, so I tried to use the SBS app on the WizTV dongle. It didn't go well. We eventually used the catchup app on our HT system instead.

When in the SBS app:
  • The original WizTV dongle remote could move up/down in the list of programs in the app home page ("Featured"), but couldn't seem to move left/right.
  • By going up far enough and pressing OK on the remote, it was possible to display the drop-down menu, but using UP/DOWN in the menu only ran over the account entry (but didn't highlight it), Support, Feedback and About. It didn't seem possible to highlight or select any of the program selection choices (Featured, Programs, Catch Up, or Favorites).
  • I couldn't find any way to use the same program selection choices on the bottom bar on the main screen, either.
  • If I used the supplied wireless keyboard, I could use the mousepad to point to to the program selection choices either in the menu or the bottom bar and click to select.
  • In many of the pages, it looked like the rows of programs were supposed to scroll left and right, but I couldn't find any way of doing that.
  • I couldn't initially find any way of doing the BACK function on the remote from the keyboard (the keyboard BACK button didn't do it, and neither did Fn-BACK/DEL), so I couldn't stop playback from the keyboard. However, sometimes when I was trying to scroll with a two-finger gesture (no, not that one, but sometimes I felt like using it), the BACK action would be triggered. I eventually worked out that a two-fingered tap (right mouse click) would operate as BACK, and if I didn't sweep enough in the gesture, it would do a BACK instead of scrolling. The right mouse button on the keyboard also worked as BACK. It was still far too easy to generate a right mouse click when trying to scrol.
  • In the Catch Up page, there wasn't any problem with the need to scroll left/right to see all the programs, the programs were all in a single scrollable column, but they almost all seemed to be News In Languages I Don't Understand.
  • I couldn't find any sort of index of programs, as on the SBS app on our HT system.
  • I couldn't find any catchups of Transfer by browsing, but doing a search worked.
  • In the search text box there didn't seem to be a keyboard button to start the search. The obvious ones, like OK or ENTER just selected a character from the on-screen keyboard. Mousing to the -> "button" in the virtual keyboard and left-clicking worked.
The problems seem to be a combination of a not particularly user-friendly app, non-existent documentation and obscure mappings between remote buttons and keyboard actions with the same effect. The experience dosn't attract me to trying other catchup apps on the WizTV dongle.
Peter
T4 HDMI
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Paul_oz53
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Joined: Sat Jun 13, 2009 02:34
Location: Melbourne

Re: Trying to view catchup on SBS - not a good experience

Post by Paul_oz53 » Sat Sep 01, 2018 00:47

I'm not a great fan of the dongle navigation but my experience wasn't that bad when using the keyboard. The remote ìs difficult though.

I used search in the SBS on demand app. Found the series and scrolled down to the list of episodes.

Its not intuitive but double tapping worķed to select when I searched.Enter and OK did not. The only commercial channel app I haven't removed is TenPlay. The others were infuriatingly difficult to use with sign in and also ads galore.
__________________________________
Paul
Beyonwiz T4, 2 x U4: FW - 19.3 20211010
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Samsung QA65Q80TAWXXY 4K TV
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