Bad button behavior with Fios TV One remotes
PoeticDCCat
Newbie

I just switched to Fios TV One from my old STBs.  I was dismayed to see how much the new remotes are crippled relative to the old remotes, but I was pleased to see that the old remotes still work.  And for the most part, they do, but unfortunately, in adapting the firmware to work with the crippled new remotes (in which the functions of certain buttons have been distorted/overloaded due to the fact that there are so few buttons), the engineers have also broken some of the functionality of the old remotes.

Here are some bad button behaviors I've noticed (some of which are problems with the old remotes specifically and some of which are just bad design with the new system):

- As has been widely reported, the "Prev" button (the one that skips back 30 -- or whatever -- seconds) no longer works.  But the "Next" button (skip forward) does work.  I know these functions are now provided by the right and left directional arrows, but that's not a natural place for those functions on the old remotes.  And why cripple Prev but not Next?  There's evidence to suggest that the Prev button is now interpreted to be equivalent to the back arrow button on the new remote, and provides most but not all of the old Exit button function, which is weird.

- Overloading the Exit button in the new remotes to perform both Exit and Stop functions has consequences.  Exit in the old remote is now interpreted to have the new Exit function.  The most annoying consequence of this is that when you're playing something on the DVR and you're FF-ing or rewinding, you used to be able to hit exit to make the info bar go away so you can see the whole screen.  Now when you hit exit in that situation (or whenever you're playing a DVR program), it brings up the new stop menu asking to go to live TV or the DVR screen.  This menu also provides a Cancel option, and when you select that, it continues the program (still FFing or RWing) with the info bar gone.  So the only way to make the info bar disappear now in that situation is to go through that menu.  Incidentally, I mentioned above that Prev might now be getting mapped to the new back arrow function (in most cases it can be used to make the info bar go away), but this is one case where it doesn't do what Exit used to do, so it looks like maybe they've just disabled that Exit function in this case.  Note that it does work fine when FFing or RWing live TV.

- The Play/Pause button used to have distinct play and pause functions, but now it's just a play/pause toggle like the one in the new remote.  But because the old one used to have distinct functions, it obviously was sending distinct codes when either the top or bottom half was pressed.  Those codes are now interpreted as the same toggle code when they could easily still be interpreted as distinct to provide additional functionality (e.g., you used to be able to hit Play to get the info bar to come up without pausing).

- It's also been fairly widely reported that when you skip forward in live tv when you're already caught up (using both old and new remote), you either get the Genres and Filters sidebar or a warning to enable Genres and Filters.  This frequently happens if you're just hitting the button a few times to get caught up.  If you've got Genres and Filters turned off, the warning is extremely annoying and should just be turned off.

- I won't really go into the widely-reported Last button issues (both old and new remote) because at least there's a workaround by disabling the Last Rail, but this is another case of changed functionality that most people would view as not being for the better.

For the problems here that are specific to the old remotes, I've no doubt that making them work better is a low priority for Verizon, and some of these issues are a consequence of design decisions (bad ones for the most part) for the new remotes, but some of them are just bugs (IMO) and should be fixed.

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Re: Bad button behavior with Fios TV One remotes
CRobGauth
Community Leader
Community Leader

One option to catch up is to hit the FiOS button. It catches up to current.

I have had Quantum for several years. I think the play/pause has always been a toggle.

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Re: Bad button behavior with Fios TV One remotes
PoeticDCCat
Newbie

@CRobGauth wrote:

One option to catch up is to hit the FiOS button. It catches up to current.

I have had Quantum for several years. I think the play/pause has always been a toggle.


Good point on the fios button.

Don't know anything about quantum, but in what I had before, play/pause was never a toggle (pause was, in effect, but play wasn't).  The old IR remote was (and still is) sending distinct codes for play and pause.  The new firmware willfully ignores the distinction, to its detriment.

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Re: Bad button behavior with Fios TV One remotes
CRobGauth
Community Leader
Community Leader

Quantum was the precursor to the Fios One HW.

If I am watching a live show, and I hit play, nothing happens. But when I hit pause it does so.

What model remote do you have? 2 button or 4 button?

Fios TV One - Worst Remote Ever
Chopsmugs
Newbie

Fios TV One has the Worst Remote Control capability that I have ever had to use. Basically need to use the single remote that comes with the box, plus an older remote that came with the previous box. Neither does everything, at least easily/intuitive. Highly cumbersome. Please come out with a better solution.  

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