How to enter special characters in a VOD search

[Hhh]

Hello Experts,

I was trying to find Fast & Furious. (Notice the & sign that was used in part3 of this movie title).

In my VOD search I only see letters, numbers, '.' and '-'.  How can I find the other characters?

 

Thanks

Hh

[Emporium]

With the standard remote that comes with the box, you can't search for special characters.   This is where the ARQ series remotes would come in handy.  They have a keyboard on the back side, which would work.   If you have a computer keyboard (wired or wireless), you can also use that.  I just tried it with a basic dell usb keyboard and the search field DOES accept the "&" or any other character.

https://buzztvglobal.com/en-ca/products/buzztv-arq-200-revolutionary-remote-control

 

[Hhh]

Unfortunately I only have the Buzz remote.

I never needed to use the & when searching a movie until yesterday.

Thanks for the reply but I'll skip on purchasing another remote as of now.  (to be honest I am also facing a lot of slowness on Buzz box.  Every time I delete characters from the VOD search box in an attempt to type a new name - it hangs as it loads movies on left side with every character deletion. I have buzz box hooked via Ethernet so I know my connection is good)

[Emporium]

Maybe try clearing the cache of the BuzzTV5 app.  

But truth is that the 4500 is a last generation box, and many services are exploding in terms of the number of movies and channels they are including.  It's a god thing for the users, but it also needs a little more power to process the extra info.

I have seen many services that have 10k+ channels with all sorts of international offerings, etc... now asking users to choose categories they want, instead of just including everything.   I have seen some services that on some entry level boxes (like the B5) take upwards of 45 seconds to parse the channel list.

 

 

[Hhh]

I hear ya.

I only purchased the XRS less than 2 years ago.  Which box do you recommend?

(I forgot to mention that I am using the BETA 5. Wonder if its better to go back to the FULL 4 version?

[Emporium]

FYI:  BuzzTV 5 is not BETA any more.  Has been out of beta for quite some time.

I understand you only purchased it 2 years ago, but it was not a recent box then either.  The xrs4500 has been around since at least early 2020, so the model is over 3yrs old now.  Not saying it is a bad box (I have one also and still works great), it is just that as services offer more and more content, without any server side filtering, it takes longer for them to process the playlists and load the EPGs.

I have multiple boxes.  I have the X5, the U5, The Classic, etc... Those are the latest gen boxes.    I like the X5, but I often recommend the Classic for most friends and family, since it is the best bang for the buck in my opinion.  Same processor as the X5, comes with USB-C power input (like many of the new boxes), and includes a BT-250 airmouse remote which is similar to the older ones.

BTW: You can't roll back once you upgrade to 5 (not as far as I know).

 

[dishuser]

I only typed in fast and all of them came up

[Emporium]

1 hour ago, dishuser said:

I only typed in fast and all of them came up

True, they do..  But also with 30 other movies

Doesn't bother me, but some people prefer to narrow it down even more.   Maybe in the search, each word could be like and "AND" operator.  So as long as all the words appear, it would match regardless of order and other characters.  

[dishuser]

1 hour ago, Emporium said:

True, they do..  But also with 30 other movies

Doesn't bother me, but some people prefer to narrow it down even more.   Maybe in the search, each word could be like and "AND" operator.  So as long as all the words appear, it would match regardless of order and other characters.  

I don't think I've ever typed in the full name of a movie once

once thumbnails appear I scroll over to them

[Ryu]

yup same here. makes no sense to type full name once thumbnails appear.

[Hhh]

Emporium is the only person on this post who actually understands my problem.  The rest did not get it.

I can provide an example:- The Fast and Furious series has about 10-11 movies.  The 3rd movie is named Fast & Furious.  The '&' character is not something that can be typed in a VOD search using the buzz remote. So this is a product limitation. So browsing by simply typing fast will result in atleast 10 movies.  (But I see 30 as there are these same movies dubbed in different languages with same title - and only end with the language name.  So it is almost impossible to find the movie by just typing a part of it.

I reached out here after doing a lot of trial and error.  I understand that movies show up after typing a few characters.  Been doing it for years. Furthermore,  I have observed that backspacing on VOD search and trying to type again is hanging for my Buzz box.  

While I understand I have listed more than one issue here,  I wanted to clarify my issue so that this can be brought to proper attention.

Emporium - one last question - when I look at my Buzz update - it shows V20220106 and IPTV 5.0.799. Is this not the Beta5?

 

Thanks

Hh

Edited June 29, 2023 by Hhh

[dishuser]

the rest did not get it?lol

I understand that you can't use symbols/characters but it's you who doesn't get it

what is the 3rd movie listed when I searched fast?

[Emporium]

54 minutes ago, Hhh said:

...

Emporium - one last question - when I look at my Buzz update - it shows V20220106 and IPTV 5.0.799. Is this not the Beta5?

 

Thanks

Hh

I think everyone gets it.  But your problem is worse because your provider has the same movie a number of times, which just makes your list that much longer than most of us.  On the image that Dishuser has shown in his post above, the service many of us use, has only 2 additional movies lower down other than the ones shown on the screenshot.  So honestly, just a single screenful, so no big deal for us.

V20220106  is just the firmware version, and no need to update that, unless something in the OS (or something deeper than buzz app) needs changing really.  BuzzTV 5.0.799 is NOT beta.  That is the latest public release on all boxes (Android 9 and Android 11 boxes, including the newer 5 series boxes, like the X5).  Like I mentioned, BuzzTV 5 has been out of beta for ages.

Don't know which specific box you have, but my XRS4500 (not MAX) has firmware V20220919 and BuzzTV 5.0.799.

 

 

[Hhh]

Cool.

Thanks for clarifying.