A “calamity of problems and bugs” has meant O-NET is spending roughly half-a-million dollars to replace television hardware and software given to its customers.Nathan Kusiek, O-NET's director of accounts, said customers who have signed up for the community-owned service provider's television service will receive new set top boxes— or receivers— remote controls and program guides after it was determined that such hardware and software previously distributed to customers were troublesome to the point of being “hugely annoying.”“The remote was tiny, it was light. It was flimsy, it felt cheap. It wasn't universally programmable which meant you couldn't turn your TV on with it, you couldn't adjust your volume with it,” he said, adding the receiver boxes were small, cheap, not powerful and not capable of closed captioning.At the same time, people sometimes weren't able to record shows using the service's personal video recorder (PVR) function and the program guide, or interface, was “way too different from what people were used to” since it was from Europe, Kusiek said.Some people have abandoned O-NET's television service because of the problem, he added.“It's not what people expected, it's not what people deserve. We have the fastest Internet in Canada, we need a TV that matches it. The old one didn't.”The replacement hardware includes remote controls that can control a television's power and volume and the new receiver boxes are larger and can run off a home's existing coaxial cable.Kusiek said the cost of the replacements is coming out of the $8 million loan O-NET has received and the replacement program was included in the service provider's business plan for 2014.O-NET is in the process of replacing 350 receiver boxes for 150 customers at no cost, he added, and 2,000 boxes are expected to go out this [email protected]
