BT Vision Youview Box Running Very Slow

As I’m a full time aerial and satellite dish/ AV installer I regularly come across things in my day to day activities which people would not otherwise have the benefit of coming across. One of these things is roughly how long a piece of AV equipment should take to power up when switched on and I have noticed in particular that BT Vision boxes and Youview boxes, which TalkTalk TV also uses are painfully slow when you turn them on, even slower than the early Sky+HD boxes which seemed to take an eternity when powered up.Please don’t think that I’m criticising the service, as I’m not. I really like the Youview platform which paved the way for services like Freetime and it’s great that Sky finally have some competition in the market.

When you turn on a BT Vision box it will go to a Youview screen, then to a BT Vision. You will then get a couple of on screen messages. One of them says “nearly ready”. I think that they must have been having a joke when they put that on there as they must have been aware how long the boxes take to power up. When you finally do finally get a TV picture up the TV remote and Youview box are both very unresponsive for the next couple of minutes when the box will start will stat to behave as expected. I know this isn’t the biggest the deal in the world but this is often like 5 minutes from turning it on.

Is My BT Vision/ Youview Box Faulty?

Please be assure that the box is not faulty if it is doing what I have described above. Well it could be but it’s normal if it is quite slow to come on at first. The reason it does this is because the box goes into a very deep sleep to avoid energy wastage when it get’s going again it’s not immediately ready and has to warm up first. Think of it like stretching before a long run.

How To Speed Up BT Vision & Youview Boxes

If you want to speed up your BT Vision or Youview box when you first switch it on, fortunately there is something that you can do. You will need to navigate into the ECO settings within the menu and set to Smart Standby or Always Ready mode. Always ready mode means as it sounds it’s always ready to come on as quick as possible. The downside is that this will consume more energy then the ‘Energy Saver Mode’. Smart Standby is a mix of the two, the box will be ready to quickly turn on when powered during the day and when will go into a deep sleep at night time when no one is likely to be watching.

To Change Energy Settings:

1-     Go to ‘Settings’

2-     In ‘Box & Management’, select ‘Power &Standby’

3-     Select either ‘Energy Saver Mode’, ‘Always Ready’or ‘Smart Standby’

If you’re choosing the ‘Smart Standby’ mode which Youview recommends, you can actually configure the hours where the box goes into a deep energy saving sleep. On the same menu simply put in your desired hours and the box will do the rest for you. Perfect if you’re a Night Owl, an Early Bird or working nights. Please note that for Youview+ boxes scheduled recordings will fail when the box is in a deep sleep.

Others Things To Try

I would also check to make sure you have the latest software on your set top box as new software to improve the performance of the services is constantly being release, missing software updates can cause the box to run slow. To update the software:

1-     Select ‘Settings’

2-     Navigate to ‘Information & Reset’ and select‘Software Information’.

3-     Select ‘Software Update’.

Faulty Box

It is possible that you do just have a faulty box which is causing the box to run slow which unfortunately does happen from time to time.I would first try everything mentioned in this blog first to try and speed things up. If these don’t won’t you may want to report the fault to BT or TalkTalk, who ever your service provider is.

Very short blog post here. Please LEAVE A COMMENT in the blog comments section below if you have any questions. Please DO NOT CALL our telephone lines, unless you’re in our coverage area of East Sussex.