Not enough music. (The Box)

Member Name: daseaford

Product:	The Box
Date:	12/07/01 (38 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good music.

Disadvantages: Not enough music., Not sure how it really works.

During this week I have had a few days leave from work and during the day I have often had the television channel The Box on in the background.

I have always thought of this as a non-stop music channel, but what I have now realised is just how much of the time there just is no music. Between the videos there are commercials and promotions for the station, but also there are quite a number of other features on the channel. I suppose if you are sitting down and watching the TV then some of these may be interesting, but when you just want to hear music these become very annoying.

These features include:

BoxTalk: Interviews with stars of the videos.
BoxFresh: New videos that have joined the playlist.
BoxNew: Interviews with potential stars of the future.
Breaking out of the Box: A list of videos heading towards the top ten.
BoxTops: The top ten videos.

What really annoys me is how often the same feature is repeated in a day.

In total I am convinced that there is more time when videos are not being played, than when they are being played. I assume this is a good money saving ploy, as obviously there are no royalties to pay when videos are not being played.

To ring The Box to request a video costs 60p per minute and by the frequency that numbers appear at the bottom right hand side of the screen there seems no shortage of people ringing for songs. But, what happens to all these requests? During any video there is often 6 – 10 new numbers appearing on the screen as requests, so when do these all get played? I know that during the night the number of requests must be very low, but there does not seem to be enough time to play every request, so is the request list gradually getting longer and longer?

If we assume that the average video is three minutes long, then the maximum number of videos per hour is 20. However, as I said earlier with so much else happening on the channel I suspect that
10 videos per hour is about the practical maximum that are played.

When you read information about The Box on their Teletext page FAQ they say that The Box works like a jukebox and requests join a queue. But, I have often seen the same video requested twice in a row, but I have never heard the same video played twice in a row. I suspect that when a video is played it clears all the requests for that video, which means that it is not a true queuing system and more requests does not necessarily mean more plays.

I would be interested in hearing from anybody that has requested a video on The Box and how long they had to wait for it to be played. Also has anybody ever requested the same video twice in a row?

The Box is advertised as Smash Hits You Control, but I think they are controlling a lot more than is apparent.

I don’t think that The Box is quite what it seems, but when it does play music I like to have it turned on, I just wish it was more music, less chat.

Summary: