New iPhone App Version 2.3(21)

Started by markb, January 15, 2011, 10:45:52 AM

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markb

Seems pretty good now. All of the bugs I and others have mentioned seem to have been addressed, and some of the features I requested have been added. Thanks heaps for adding the metacritic and rottentomatoes links for movies. These really are useful - would be good to have this feature added to the main ICE web site also!

Daniel Drysdale at IceTV

I'm glad you like it, the road to 2.3(21) has been a little bumpier than we would have liked but I think we're over the hump now.

I saw your suggestion and thought it would be an easy win for us and I find myself using it all the time, thanks for the great feedback.

I've added a bonus month to your subscription for being a long standing valuable member. Enjoy ;)
Cheers,

Dan
Software Manager @ IceTV

benson

Any chance we can get a retina icon for this app now for iPhone 4 users? It's the only app on my phone without a retina icon and it looks strange.  :)

Daniel Drysdale at IceTV

The new iPhone App has had a retina display icon from the start, in fact as per Apple's guidelines we include the standard icon, one for a retina display and one specifically for the iPad.

Our icons were provided by a former employee now the lead designer at bjango.com, a very talented designer and the brains behind some truly outstanding iOS Apps.
Cheers,

Dan
Software Manager @ IceTV

benson

Quote from: Daniel Drysdale at IceTV on January 18, 2011, 02:50:00 PM
The new iPhone App has had a retina display icon from the start, in fact as per Apple's guidelines we include the standard icon, one for a retina display and one specifically for the iPad.

Our icons were provided by a former employee now the lead designer at bjango.com, a very talented designer and the brains behind some truly outstanding iOS Apps.

Thanks for replying Dan. Maybe there is some sort of weird problem with my phones icons, as you can see in my link its not retina quality. I suppose it probably isn't your issue if you have already updated the app.

http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/7320/photoyc.png

p.s  It's great to see you guys are actively developing the app to its full potential, and taking on board user feedback. Keep up the good work.

Daniel Drysdale at IceTV

I see what you mean, it looks like the @2x (retina icon) is being ignored, I can see it on my phone as well so it isn't just you.

See attached image showing the icon from your screenshot, the proper retina icon and what the normal icon scaled up would look like...

I'll look into the issue and try and include it in the next update.

Cheers,

Dan
Software Manager @ IceTV

Daniel Drysdale at IceTV

It looks like I didn't have the icons listed in the apps info.plist file :( I've updated my development build and tested it so it will be fixed in the next release.

Cheers,

Dan
Software Manager @ IceTV

Lisey

Any chance of a link to IMDB as well?
I use quite often as need to go and check episode list guide to see if I have seen the episode referred to, as cannot always trust that the show not marked as a Repeat, as a Repeat.
This would be very handy
Thanks

Daniel Drysdale at IceTV

The current app links to IMDb and Metacritic for all shows and adds Rotten Tomatoes if the show is a movie.

Are you not seeing the IMDb icon in the show detail page?
Cheers,

Dan
Software Manager @ IceTV

mmnpkf

I'm assuming the new iphone app cache's most of the data (EPG, "my week", etc) and downloads updated in the background?  Is there any way to highlight to the end user how old the cached data is and display something that says it's in the process of updating.  I'm asking this because I'm finding the app virtually useless now.  For example, what I'm finding is that I look at the my week screen and wonder why some of the recordings I've scheduled aren't shown as having been downloaded to my PVR.  I then look a few minutes later and then it says that they have been downloaded.  I'm having essentially the same problem with the EPG but since it seems to download full days it's a bit easier to see when you're working from cached data and when you've got reasonably up to date data.  Since it's a real hit and miss affair as to whether I'm looking at cached data or recently updated data, I've come to not use the app and instead just use the safari browser instead.  Bit of a shame really because I like the app's interface on the iphone but functionally it's too frustrating.
Is anyone else finding this frustrating or am I just being too fussy?
Regards,
Patrick

Lisey


Daniel Drysdale at IceTV

Thanks for your feedback Patrick, so far I have not had this concern from anyone else.

I would be interested in your thoughts on how we could improve the experience to remove this area of concern.

I'll give you a quick run down on how the caching works at the moment.

When you launch (or wakeup on a phone with multitasking) the app checks when the last fetch of data occurred. If that fetch was more than say 15 mins ago then it will reload all the info that is likely to have changed since the last launch.

The usual data includes things like lists of series & keyword recordings, shows that should appear in "My Week" etc

EPG is handled separately in that it is only loaded if it has been at least an hour since the last time and then it doesn't load from scratch but rather does an incremental load (i.e. changes since the last load).

Unless you are really low on EPG, less than a day remaining, we perform the loading of data in the background so that you can still browse the existing cached data.

You may notice the spinning network activity indicator in the menu bar while data is loading and you can see some information about the last load and how much EPG is available by looking in "Settings" -> "Application Information"

The hardest part of designing this app has been trying to get as much of the important information in front of the user as possible without making the interface too complex.

With the above in mind could you give me an idea of your ideal experience with respect to caching?
Cheers,

Dan
Software Manager @ IceTV

mmnpkf

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your response.  I'm not really that worried about the EPG and I did notice that in the settings one can see when the EPG was last fetched.  It's the 'my week' that I really find frustrating.  For example, not long after my last post I had a look at my week.  I've got four series set to record that all occur on a Saturday.  When I looked at "my week" it showed two of them so I assume that the series must have finished on the other two.  However, when I looked a few minutes later, the other two were showing.  So, I'm guessing when I first look I was looking at cached data and then by the second look it had downloaded an update.

I've also noticed the spinning network activity indicator but I've found this to be somewhat unreliable insofar as if I'm in an area of patchy network connectivity then just because the spinning indicator isn't spinning doesn't mean that it's finished just that it's having connectivity issues.  However, I'm sure this is an iphone thing and nothing you can do anything about.

So, after all that rambling, what I'd like is some sort of indication of whether I'm (a) looking at 'old' cached data, (b) the app is in the middle of a download or (c) I'm looking at fairly fresh data.  My initial thought is two fold:

1. as well as putting the date and time that the EPG was last updated in the settings screen, put the date and time that other data was last updated there too - this would be more useful for trouble shooting than anything.

2. in the screen title line put an icon that indicates the three states that I mention above, for example, show the yellow triangle with the exclamation mark if the data being shown is 'old', a red doughnut if the app is currently downloading data and a red dot if it is showing 'fresh' data.  In fact, as I'm typing this I'm thinking that you could even forget about the third state as no icon could simply mean that the data has been recently updated.  This is just one idea.  Alternatively you could use different colours for the screen heading.  I'm sure that there are lots of options and your interface design people would have some good ideas.

The way that I would find this useful is that if I saw some indicator that said that I'm looking at cached data then I know to wait until the app has downloaded fresh data.  If after a few minutes it's still saying that the data is 'old' then I know there is potentially a problem and I need to check a few things (some way of forcing an update without doing a complete reset would probably be handy here).

If I see an indicator that says it's in the middle of updating then again I know to wait until it's finished.

The same thing could apply to the EPG but is less of a concern because I'm assuming that EPG updates tend to affect days further from "today" rather than closer to "today".

Having the cached data is good if I'm in a area of poor or no network connectivity but it's frustrating when I'm assuming that I'm looking at up to date data but in reality I'm not.

I'm sorry if I sound like a whinger.  I really do like the app (and the IceTV service overall) but I'm just finding the app unusable with this quirk.  Thankfully, I can use safari to view the web site directly but the app interface is so much nicer on a small iphone screen.  I'm also probably fussy about the 'my week' screen because of the lengthy time it take my Topfield to update recordings (just over an hour for a single cycle), which I know is a Topfield issue rather than an IceTV issue but it means that I tend to rely quite heavily on the 'my week' screen to tell me what the current status of my recordings are.

I hope that this makes some sense.  Please let me know if I can provide more info or clarification.

Thanks,

Patrick

timaa

#13
Im having a problem with the app. The yellow triangles that show next to recordings that have failed to be sent to pvr do not appear in the app, which has caused me some problems not knowing about timer clashes unless I go to the website. The recordings show as closed circles, indicating they have been sent to the pvr, which is not the case.

mmnpkf

Hi Dan,

I've been thinking more about the "my week" matter.  Whilst checking Facebook on my iphone, I wanted to check when it last update and so "pulled down" the news feed which shows when it was last updated and also can initiate a refresh.  It then occurred to me that this might be a neat way to check when "my week" was updated and manually initiate a refresh.  Do you know what I mean? What do you think?

Talking about "my week", I have another problem to raise.  Yesterday on the way home on the train I decided to check "my week".  It showed 4 days (Thursday, Friday, Saturday Sunday) with the last few days with red doughnuts - presumably because it had been several days since I had checked it and so it was showing me old cached data.  The network activity spinner was merrily spinning away - stopping and starting several times.  It was quite a number of minutes though before the doughnuts changed to solid dots (and I had to go in and out of the "my week" screen several times before I saw this).  However, even after it had apparently refreshed it still only showed me 4 days.  I checked a few minutes ago and it was still only showing me up to Sunday.  It did, however, say that there were only a few days EPG left and that it was going to do an update.  So, I've now checked again and sure enough, the EPG appears to be updated but "my week" is showing Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Thursday - even though I know I've scheduled shows for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (confirmed by checking the web site).

Regards,

Patrick