When will TELUS improve the Optik TV platform?

Hello again! Our dev team had some information for you regarding your original post.

* no Exit button on the remote, or easy way to exit watching a recording or when streaming

The back/exit button (reverse arrow under/to the left of the d-pad) should return you to the last place in the user interface that you were; usually it's the home screen overlay. You can also configure the PREV button in settings to bring up your last 4 channels/apps. If you're watching a recording and press the PREV button, you can get back to your last channel with 2 button presses. Video will be playing in the background while you navigate, so shows will continue to play while you choose something else. If the show ends, it'll return you to the last live channel.

* provide a Trash Can for recently deleted recordings with capability to undelete

We're looking at an emergency recovery feature, but for now there is unlimited capacity which mitigates that somewhat.

* improved voice search capability on the remote: e.g. saying "FBI" should pull up FBI, FBI: Most Wanted and FBI: International...instead of YouTube videos

There are 2 implementations of voice search on the TELUS remote. Google Assistant, which searches across all installed apps incl. TELUS TV On Demand results. Secondly, voice to text which searches Live and On Demand results (as well as some 3rd party streamers such as Netflix, Prime Video, etc.) Voice to text is accessed via the magnifying glass on the Home screen.

* text search capability on the remote

A full keyboard on the remote would present significant accessibility challenges. The on-screen keyboard search can be found via the magnifying glass mentioned above.

* only 1 Stingray channel compared to Rogers Xfinity which has 60

You should have access to the following: Vibe (580), Loud (581), Retro (582), Country (583), Classica (585), Festival 4K (591), Now 4K (593), HITS (2045), Palmares ADISQ (2046) as well as Naturescapes (727) which is more of a screensaver than music videos. Your Optik TV subscription also incl. access to the Stingray app available for download in the Google Play Store, which has many different channels and genres.

* it's difficult to determine future sporting events by type

Usually the program info in the details page or in the guide has descriptors like 'NHL Hockey'. Also of note, program titles are determined by the broadcasters themselves.

* marking of recordings as watched

We recently introduced a progress bar to show whether a recording has been partially or fully watched in the recordings manager, recent recordings lane, and resume lane. This is currently available on iOS, tvOS and the web browser version, and is coming soon to Android TV and mobile, Fire TV and the set-top box.

* automatically extend recordings of live events (e.g. sports)

First-run sports are actually already extended for 60 min (90 min for tennis). While this doesn't help with rare games that go past even that point, we do have Restart capabilities, and always recommend recording subsequent programs just in case.

* manually extend timed recordings

Looking to add this in the near future.

* ability to keep recordings longer than 90 days compared to Rogers Xfinity which has no expiry

Already looking at this as well, though customer feedback and usage data indicated that unlimited capacity was more valuable than storage duration. While we can't speak directly to competitors' offerings, the Rogers website itself indicates that Xfinity actually only allows 200 hours for one year.

Hope that helps!