Administrator Marc Posted June 13, 2017 Administrator Share Posted June 13, 2017 I thought there would be more love for Fetch here to be honest. After 15+ years of multi-room Foxtel (3 x IQ3 boxes) we finally pulled the plug last last year. Foxtel made no attempt to retain our business despite growing competition (or maybe they didn't realise it at the time). We've now got 3 x Fetch boxes, 1 x Mighty in the main living room and 2 Minis in other areas. Admittedly I don't actually use it that much but it just works. It's not clunky. Has a great interface. I think they got it right and priced it accordingly. Will be interesting to see which channels get on-board as time goes forward. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSmith Posted June 13, 2017 Share Posted June 13, 2017 1 minute ago, Marc said: After 15+ years of multi-room Foxtel (3 x IQ3 boxes) we finally pulled the plug last last year. Good idea, people I know have done the same recently. Two cancelled all together and one was offered such a discount they decided to keep the service for the time being. Many people are starting to realise they don't use the service as much anymore and value wise there are now better options. JSmith Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator Marc Posted June 13, 2017 Author Administrator Share Posted June 13, 2017 Much better options. Obviously the only draw-card Fox has is sports. No one can compete with that for now, but the price just wasn't justified to watch the Pies lose every other week! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Volunteer Kazz Posted June 13, 2017 Volunteer Share Posted June 13, 2017 I tried Fetch after my bedroom Beyonwiz T3 died but it has such weak tuners that fta was virtually impossible to watch and wouldn't record because of the reception droputs. Have now gone back to BW with a T2 for the bedroom (I have a T4 in the main system) and I have no issues at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pgdownload Posted June 14, 2017 Share Posted June 14, 2017 I've generally been spruiking Fetch boxes for a while IMO a very family friendly total solution box that provides cost effective added content as well as Netflix etc. I use one of these for TV and a small media player for my movie library. Regards Peter Gillespie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator Marc Posted June 14, 2017 Author Administrator Share Posted June 14, 2017 Agreed regarding family friendly. My 3yo and 5yo drive it with no problems at all - as much as I would like them not to! I still revert back to an Apple TV for Plex for movies. I did hear a rumour of a Plex app for Fetch in the works which would be absolutely cool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 14, 2017 Share Posted June 14, 2017 We replaced a troublesome BW T3 with a Fetch Mighty and have not looked back ... it's as solid as a rock, is easy to use and works as advertised. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Volunteer Kazz Posted June 14, 2017 Volunteer Share Posted June 14, 2017 24 minutes ago, Marc said: I did hear a rumour of a Plex app for Fetch in the works which would be absolutely cool. That would be cool there was some ok content on fetch itself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 15, 2017 Share Posted June 15, 2017 On 14/06/2017 at 11:19 AM, Kazz said: That would be cool there was some ok content on fetch itself. Plex is more for accessing content on your home server. I use SMB via an Nvidea Shield with Kodi for this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linolad Posted June 16, 2017 Share Posted June 16, 2017 Hi Guys, I have been away for a long time so I am catching up with the forum again. I bought a Fetch through the Tivo offer when the service was formally announced as a dead duck in Australia a few months back. I set it up and it was working well when one of my sons told me he got one supplied by Optus as part of his monthly plan. As I am on the same monthly plan I organised one and disposed of my virtually new Fetch. With the Optus box I also got a couple of free subscription channels thown in as well. Anyway I am very impressed with the performance of this device. PQ is excellent (better than the Tivo) and on a par with my previous device before the Tivo, a Digitalview 810. It can record numerous channels at one time and is generally easy and intuitive to use. The operating system and GUI is second only to the Tivo (the Benchmark for ease of use) and on a par with Foxtel, to my mind anyway. To date I think I have had to restart the device once only (something I always expect with CPU devices) and aprt from that it has worked flawlessly. Previously I used an Apple TV to watch both Netfilx and Stan, but now I use the apps installed on the Fetch to perform the same function and only resort to using the Apple device for the odd download from the Apple store. It doesn't seem to be noisy (4 metres away admittedly) and I control my system via a wireless Harmony remote. I am sure there are other things to talk about, but to answer Marc's initial question I love my Fetch, but more importantly so does my wife, which means by definition it is intuitive and easy to control which is not the case for a number of PVR's I have owned. Cheers Mark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Volunteer Kazz Posted June 16, 2017 Volunteer Share Posted June 16, 2017 18 hours ago, Dr Chopsus said: Plex is more for accessing content on your home server. I use SMB via an Nvidea Shield with Kodi for this. Haha yep just ignore me, been a long hectic week at work and I took the "plex for fetch" completely backwards. Was thinking Plex would have access to fetch instead of there being a plex app for the fetch boxes, I use Plex on my ATV4's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 16, 2017 Share Posted June 16, 2017 I've never persevered with plex ... most like it ... I find just a share and file browser works best for network files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agelessgoodguy Posted June 16, 2017 Share Posted June 16, 2017 I too have the Optus Fetch box set up and running Ok but its menu system isn't anywhere near as Intuitive as that of Foxtel I find, does anyone have or know of a menu update for the Fetch box? I do like its easy catch up TV option except it leaves out channel 31 down here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mixo Posted June 17, 2017 Share Posted June 17, 2017 21 hours ago, Dr Chopsus said: I've never persevered with plex ... most like it ... I find just a share and file browser works best for network files. plex makes it look nice...took me 15 minutes to set it up and other 5 to get the settings right. of course, then you have to setup your device(mobile/tablet).. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 17, 2017 Share Posted June 17, 2017 16 minutes ago, mixo said: plex makes it look nice...took me 15 minutes to set it up and other 5 to get the settings right. of course, then you have to setup your device(mobile/tablet).. I did that once long ago, but I have TBs of files and the scraping and file name requirements would have required many hours of input, so I gave up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator Marc Posted June 17, 2017 Author Administrator Share Posted June 17, 2017 17 hours ago, agelessgoodguy said: I too have the Optus Fetch box set up and running Ok but its menu system isn't anywhere near as Intuitive as that of Foxtel I find, does anyone have or know of a menu update for the Fetch box? I do like its easy catch up TV option except it leaves out channel 31 down here. I've always found Foxtel's interface unbelievably bad. I guess I am referring mostly to IQ3 however which is laggy and buggy. Almost unusable. Fetch on the other hand is snappy! I couldn't however live without Plex. It's awesome for managing TV Shows and Movies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
betty boop Posted June 28, 2017 Share Posted June 28, 2017 we have two fetch units. one i got for free by updating our optus plan - it actually went down in monthly charge and came with a fetch for free the other we got by handing in one of our TivoHD units to harvey norman. its been a great replacement for the TivoHD so far. and we are overall very pleased. it is actually a step up form the tivo in pure PQ. its very good in interface. and expsically the app i find is really quite good and dependable... when am travelling and realise going to miss something wanted to watch. have had no dramas with its series tags and such either. I do miss the Tivo suggestions though... where it would record stuff it would think you like...based on what else you tend to like and record. there are some glitches i have found with the fetch. there seems no way i can program its remote to do power on for our kuro and use its volume up down for our marantz av processor...the tivo glo remote did this easily. I cant even seem to find a code for the fetch remote to work the marantz volume. another glitch I had confirmed by the head qualifi(D&M) tech that the fetch was never ever designed for passing signal via an avr to a display... and hence why it has hdcp hiccups ... even flags non compliance to a non hdmi 2.0 device when instead it should just down scale on the run. an easy fix for this is a office works comsol branded hdmi splitter ... that just happens to have a hdcp stripper by accident... pop that before an avr and problem solved can also use the hdmi splitter from jay car. does the same. you are not using this as a splitter in this case... just inline and it just strips the hdcp ! note there might be the odd other hdmi/hdcp gremlin. possible due to the mis design of the hdmi side of the unit. one other oddity because of its number of tuners there is no guarantee you will switch on your TV and can then rewind back on a show that just happens to be on(tivo could do this). since it is quite possible the fetch is not recording the channel on air.... otherwise a great unit compact works well.... ps I am still awaiting the amazon prime app for it fetch head man announced some while back... though quite possibly its amazon thats the hold up here... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linolad Posted June 28, 2017 Share Posted June 28, 2017 6 minutes ago, al said: we have two fetch units. one i got for free by updating our optus plan - it actually went down in monthly charge and came with a fetch for free the other we got by handing in one of our TivoHD units to harvey norman. its been a great replacement for the TivoHD so far. and we are overall very pleased. it is actually a step up form the tivo in pure PQ. its very good in interface. and expsically the app i find is really quite good and dependable... when am travelling and realise going to miss something wanted to watch. have had no dramas with its series tags and such either. I do miss the Tivo suggestions though... where it would record stuff it would think you like...based on what else you tend to like and record. there are some glitches i have found with the fetch. there seems no way i can program its remote to do power on for our kuro and use its volume up down for our marantz av processor...the tivo glo remote did this easily. I cant even seem to find a code for the fetch remote to work the marantz volume. another glitch I had confirmed by the head qualifi(D&M) tech that the fetch was never ever designed for passing signal via an avr to a display... and hence why it has hdcp hiccups ... even flags non compliance to a non hdmi 2.0 device when instead it should just down scale on the run. an easy fix for this is a office works comsol branded hdmi splitter ... that just happens to have a hdcp stripper by accident... pop that before an avr and problem solved can also use the hdmi splitter from jay car. does the same. you are not using this as a splitter in this case... just inline and it just strips the hdcp ! note there might be the odd other hdmi/hdcp gremlin. possible due to the mis design of the hdmi side of the unit. one other oddity because of its number of tuners there is no guarantee you will switch on your TV and can then rewind back on a show that just happens to be on(tivo could do this). since it is quite possible the fetch is not recording the channel on air.... otherwise a great unit compact works well.... ps I am still awaiting the amazon prime app for it fetch head man announced some while back... though quite possibly its amazon thats the hold up here... Hi Al, I diidn't even realise there was an HDMI handshake issue as I already had a splitter in place for both the projector and the Plasma. The unfortunate thing for me (other than all the positive stuff i posted earlier is that in line with the current HDMI worldwide agreement it only has HDMI out. The previous model Fetch had a composite outpout that could be streamed simultaneously with the HDMI output. Currently this means i cannot send my Fetch TV (or Netflix or Stan) signal to the other TV's in my house. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
betty boop Posted June 28, 2017 Share Posted June 28, 2017 3 minutes ago, Linolad said: Hi Al, I diidn't even realise there was an HDMI handshake issue as I already had a splitter in place for both the projector and the Plasma. The unfortunate thing for me (other than all the positive stuff i posted earlier is that in line with the current HDMI worldwide agreement it only has HDMI out. The previous model Fetch had a composite outpout that could be streamed simultaneously with the HDMI output. Currently this means i cannot send my Fetch TV (or Netflix or Stan) signal to the other TV's in my house. hi linolad, there are devices can get to get around this hurdle jay car has the below, https://www.jaycar.com.au/hdmi-to-av-composite-converter/p/AC1720 not tried it, and a bit pricey, there might be other more affordable units also known to work. that said jay car has always had a good return policy so if down find does what you want can always return for something else get a refund ps one other thing i am getting with our bedroom setup is the occasional black screen/ screen flashing. in this setup it is just plugged into a lcd tv so would think straight forward issue. no amount of rebooting tv/fetch putting to sleep etc has solved. i might try a replacement cable incase is source of issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSmith Posted June 28, 2017 Share Posted June 28, 2017 53 minutes ago, Linolad said: HDMI output. Currently this means i cannot send my Fetch TV (or Netflix or Stan) signal to the other TV's in my house. Any HDMI output can be sent to another TV in numerous ways from a wireless HDMI sender to HDMI over CAT4/5... can even control the remote functions from the other room. JSmith Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pgdownload Posted June 28, 2017 Share Posted June 28, 2017 1 hour ago, al said: we have two fetch units. one i got for free by updating our optus plan - it actually went down in monthly charge and came with a fetch for free the other we got by handing in one of our TivoHD units to harvey norman... Sorry to say the unit isn't free. Optus might be subsidising it during this contract (and maybe in perpetuity) but if you ever want to leave Optus you'll need to give it back. Regards Peter Gillespie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
betty boop Posted June 28, 2017 Share Posted June 28, 2017 1 minute ago, pgdownload said: Sorry to say the unit isn't free. Optus might be subsidising it during this contract (and maybe in perpetuity) but if you ever want to leave Optus you'll need to give it back. Regards Peter Gillespie I got in prior to the current deal where there is a monthly charge... infact I received a discount over my previous plan to have the fetch... so yes I did receive it for free... infact they are effectively discounting me to have it vs what i was on prior. as to any return or whatever. i have no plans to change from optus. and will happily send back to them if when time comes. on other hand i do understand if my unit does go kaput at any time if i contact optus they will send me out another in replacement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MLXXX Posted June 28, 2017 Share Posted June 28, 2017 We terminated our Fetch plan a few months ago (as we found we could get most of what we wanted through Netflix). I asked Optus whether we'd have to return the Fetch box and was told no, "you have paid for it and can keep it". [I think this was because we had completed the compulsory contract period.] So we still have it, but of course it can no longer get a validation through the internet, so is just taking up space... We found it very easy to use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linolad Posted June 28, 2017 Share Posted June 28, 2017 Hi Guys, Thanks for all your helpful advice. I may have confused you as I do actually understand all the possible options my "complaint" was only that they had changed to the new model (Optus that is) so it wouldn't be as simple as it was previously with my Tivo. My Family room system is a standalone home theatre system (both plasma & projector) which breaks out when switched to the 4 room four zone system we use for music & video throughout the rest of the house. The control matrix system I use for that is the now defunct Australian made and designed Leaf audio. Brilliant system and reliable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
betty boop Posted June 29, 2017 Share Posted June 29, 2017 by the way all, if not getting one through optus. good guys have 20% off through which buys both mighty and mini fetch units quite cheaply Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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