Orange SPV Update: Sorry, we're on a long holiday...

[Guest mantrac]

Whatever happened to that much talked-about second update??

The Danes have had it for a while... We've seen nada of it!

Is it that hard for Orange to take their finger out of their asses and do some work on fixing some serious bugs with this brick they've sold us??

I've had this phone for months now and I can still not count the characters on my text messages. Further more, Orange have broken Windows Media Player since that first update and now it freezes every 10 seconds to rebuffer even though there are plenty of data coming through (Orange have admitted this!).

What's so ironic, is the fact that the very same carrier is conducting a video streaming trial, at a time when EVERY single SPV has a malfunctioning video player...

What a joke these people are... :x

[Guest fixit]

I'm holding off on a screaming hissy fit until they release an update - MS/O at least deserve the chance to get it right, and new service packs have to be carefully specced, written and tested before they leave the door. Not sure what the odds on that are, but hey, innocent until proven guilty.

[Guest ghostface]

Why have you got a problem with your media player after the UK update?

I haven't got that problem and I haven't heard anyone else with this buffering problem so not every single SPV has a malfunctioning video player...as for the sms message counter, So what its not the end of the world, Id rather have a phone that plays divx movies than one that counts characters in a SMS If it bothers you that much go back to using your Nokia and see how bad they really are after using this excellent phone

I know there have been some bugs but I haven't experienced any.…Id put it down to user error..LOL ;)

And as for orange admitting this fault of course they do not one Orange Customer service rep knows anything about the phone half of them are lucky if they can spell there own names!!!!!!

[Guest ghostface]

And if the Danes have had it for ages.........GOOD there just lab rats ;)

When we get ours it should be finely tuned!!!! Hopefully

[Guest Monolithix [MVP]]

I don't remember huge amounts of talk over a second update...a little speculation maybe once the UK1 had settled, but no official info as such.

If you hate the phone so much get a PPC Phone edition or a bland Nokia.

I have no problems with the phone as it stands.

[Guest Ian]

Orange did admit they are aware of the problem with the buffering, in email sent to people on the video trial. "A fix is in development" apparently, so it might be in a forthcoming update.

They didn't say anything about the 1st UK update being the cause of the problem though, but as the update made my phone so much better (completely cured the regular freezing), I'm not too bothered in any case :wink:

[Guest mantrac]

If you hate the phone so much get a PPC Phone edition or a bland Nokia.

That's not the way problems are solved mate...

If someone sold you a faulty product, you wouldn't keep your mouth shut and spend even more money to buy a new one of a different brand, would you? You would either expect the retailer to refund you or provide a solution to the problem.

Orange will do neither of the two.

I can't see why I should fork out 150 quid (or perhaps even more) on upgrade fees and new phone costs so that I can upgrade my brand new phone to another because the product does not do what it is advertised to do...

And it IS a software bug that was introduced after the first update.

Have a look at this extract from an Orange FAQ.

Issue: Buffering. The video clips only play for the first 10 or so seconds in the buffer and then stop to reload.

Response: This is a known SPV fault, it is not a problem with GPRS.  It appears that the handset will stop the video and start buffering somewhere between 10 and 30 seconds into a clip.  This happens regardless of the amount of data the handset has received – i.e. it will even happen on downloaded clips (though won't be as noticeable).  A fix for this is in development.

This e-mail was posted on the 27th of March 2003.

How slow can one be in releasing a patch that simply undoes a bug they themselves introduced...

[Guest madu]

How about comparing registry settings for WMA on UKoriginal and UK1update?? Maybe the fix is there?!

[Guest skimask]

why u all getting aggressive and telling him to get a new phone? The man's got a valid point, if the software's dodgy, they should fix it. Personally, It doesn't bother me cos I dont use it for streaming video, and all the other stuff this thing does makes up for any shortcomings

[Guest ghostface]

What size are the files your playing ??

How are they encoded ??

I have watched the whole of Die another day (on Pocket Divx) on my phone which I encoded using The Main Man ClintEastman's virtual dub settings and South park The Movie which I encoded for media player and I havent had any buffering problems.

At the end of the day you have a phone which is at the forefront of technology and there gonna be some problems which are gonna take a while to fix......s*** happens!!!

[Guest Hax]

ghostface - the problem is with streamed media (radio and video from the internet) and it *was* introduced (or at least made more noticeable!) with the 1st UK update. Before this update streamed radio worked a treat, since the update, for every 10 seconds of media you want to listen to or watch, you have to spend at least 20 seconds waiting for it to be buffered. i.e., a 1 minute clip takes about 4 to 5 minutes to watch/listen to... This problem has been discussed on here several times before.

Funny thing is that O started a "mobile video" trial for the SPV *after* this problem was introduced and that is where mantrac's quote comes from. The buffering issue makes the trial all but useless - only good thing to come from it is that O pay for the cost of your GPRS! ;)

Hax

[Guest Monolithix [MVP]]

[quote="mantracThat's not the way problems are solved mate...

If someone sold you a faulty product, you wouldn't keep your mouth shut and spend even more money to buy a new one of a different brand, would you? You would either expect the retailer to refund you or provide a solution to the problem.

As far as i am concerned i don't have a faulty product. I don't use streaming media and at the current GPRS costs i won't be for a while.

Other than that i have no issues with the phone.

[Guest Hax]

As far as i am concerned i don't have a faulty product.  I don't use streaming media and at the current GPRS costs i won't be for a while.

Other than that i have no issues with the phone.

The problem is though Mono, if at a later point you wanted to use streaming media in the future, then you won't be able to use it as you should. From that point of view, it *is* faulty - you just don't notice that fault as you don't use that feature. Remember, this phone has been sold as a "business" phone and as such, the costs of GPRS are not likely to be so much of an issue to "business" users as to use "mere" mortals ;)

It's like buying that nice new car, only using it for pootling around your local town at 30 mph for a few months, then when you finally want to make a long trip using motorways, you find that the 5th gear doesn't work! Before you went to use 5th gear, you thought that your car was fine with no faults, but now you want to use 5th, you *do* have a fault.

So, you will have owned a faulty product all along - the same is true with the SPV. Just because you haven't used a feature before, doesn't mean that the product wasn't faulty in that feature area all along.

Hax

[Guest mantrac]

I have watched the whole of Die another day (on Pocket Divx) on my phone...

Yes you have. You have watched it on PocketDIVX!

The problem however is with Windows Media Player which is an entirely different application.

The cost of GPRS will come down and streaming mobile video services will almost certainly become a commodity. It's a matter of time and competition (which has been already spiced up with Three's video clip packages).

It may not appear to be very important right now but the fact alone that Orange are spending so much money on trials and customer surveys, indicates the importance of this feature.

MMS might end up being just another turkey but I can think of a number of people who will gladly pay for mobile video content, much more than say for mobile web access.

And then, there's streaming audio too... That ain't working either.

The fact that a feature isn't used as often as another, makes no difference to me.

I paid for a phone that does A+B+C and I expect all of those features to work reasonably well.

A continuous 10 second delay (even on local files!!) regardless of encoding, connection quality and free memory is unjustifiable.

And I'm not even going to touch the issue of the missing character counter in SMS (and the number of times I ended up sending multiple text messages - and getting charged for them - because I went over the 160 character limit by one character!).

[Guest Monolithix [MVP]]

Hax: ok, point taken. In the end it comes down to personal use (my wreak of a car only has a 4 gear 'box, so i'd not use 5th on a new one anyway ;p)

Does anyone know if this is the fault of Orange or MS btw?

[Guest ghostface]

You have watched it on PocketDIVX!  

The problem however is with Windows Media Player which is an entirely different application.

Yes thats why I said I hadn't had a problem watching South Park on win media player .

All Im trying to say is I dont have the problem streaming anything or playing local files and I have the same update as everyone else. Yes I agree that it's annoying but its also annoying when I have to download endless updates for Windows XP. I thought that when everyone bought a Windows phone that they would be prepared for and realise thats how they work, put out a product thats not finished which requires constant tweaks after they have used us to test it!!!!!!

:cry:

[Guest aj]

hi, need some help with the first update, won't workon me

[Guest paradox ewan]

i have to agree with the buffering issues. Mine worked fine with audio, and video before the update, and now is un-usable.

Orange are going to be find that people will be put off these services if they dont get them working right as people will lose interest.

I run an internet radio station, and wanted to sort out a spv page for my site, but i have lost all interest at the moment, as if i can't use it, how do i expect anyone else to.

As for the gprs charges in the future, i doubt ill be streaming anything.