BT Vision arrived today in shrink-wrapped boxes. First I junked my old and trusty NetGear router and replaced it with the new BT Hub. So much junk on their installation CD - they are STILL trying to force you into their ghastly BT-Yahoo mail and various rubbish toolbars. Surely they must now be rueing that ill-fated tie-up.
After having my hard driver cluttered with God-knows-how-many Megabytes of unwanted "extra features", I was eventually released from screen-thrall to discover how to configure the hub itself (not easy to find, BT!) and thus set the password to what I wanted.
The Powerline devices were easy. This is how BT trucks the Video-on-Demand from the HomeHub to the TV set - through the mains cabling. The two Powerline devices simply plug into the wall and connect via Ethernet cabling to their clients (HomeHub and Vision box respectively).
The Vision Box itself was relatively easy to wire up, but erratic to make work. Too many minutes staring at blank screens wondering if anything was actually happening. Sometimes I thought it was on, but it was on standby ... purple and blue look rather similar, BT. That wasted half an hour.
The Sky viewing card failed to work. After an hour I called technical support in India, and they confirmed a fault and have escalated to 'back office'. I await developments.
So far though, the basic Vision functionality looks good. I did a quick 'catch-up TV' experiment and the programme - streamed over the Internet - looked just fine. We were late with dinner and as Clare nursed a burned hand (retrieving something way too hot from the oven) we daudled and were late for the cricket on Channel 5. No problem! I just paused it, and then resumed it at 7.30 pm when Clare and Adrian were ready to watch.
And someone has to do the washing up ...
