Telus Home Assistant Problems

[FloppyDrive]

Roughly a couple of weeks ago, my ability to use Telus Home Assistant to voice control our PVR stopped working properly. I tried unlinking and relinking the account. I tried power cycling everything. I added Alexa to the mix which didn't help. I am able to turn the PVR on and off by voice, but nothing else. I really need to change channels by voice. It's an old 4k PVR that we have had for about two years. Perhaps there was a bad update? Do I need a new PVR box?

[Robby]

Same thing here.  I am not able to change channels, but I can ask it to open the guide, turn the box on/off, launch Youtube.  When I ask it to change channels, its says "Ok, turning to 106 on Kitchen TV" but nothing happens.  I have called Telus several times and nobody seems to know whats wrong.  I even went as far as getting a new Telus Evolution box with Google integrated into the remote.  The new boxes do not seems to be compatible with Alexa/Google. 

[FloppyDrive]

I phoned Telus and the person I talked to created a ticket for some other techs to look into it. He followed up a few days later with me, but nothing has been done. Maybe Google changed the underlying coding for home control and Telus didn't update their code? 

The new boxes aren't integrated with Google? Can you change channel by voice? The 5 day recording limitation is what prevented me from getting the new box. 

[Robby]

There is a google button on the center of the remote.  If you hold it down, you can just say Channel 104 and it will change to that channel.  When you try to link your Telus account with Google, it will not show the new boxes.  I am not sure if this is because I am in a transition period, or if the new boxes don't have that capability.  I believe you get unlimited cloud storage for 45 days, then everything is wiped after that.

From my understanding, they are slowly transitioning everyone over to the new Evolution Android boxes.  I am trying to get them to cancel the new boxes and revert back to the legacy 4k wireless boxes/pvr.  The new remote is also a pita.  They removed a lot of the buttons and integrated into the Home menu. 

[jkl]

I still have the old PVR box and Alexa will not work with it. I seem to have the same problem as everyone else. I can turn on the PVR, go forward and backwards in recordings, change the volume and mute the TV, but when I request a channel either by number or name, Alexa will say the channel and the program but nothing happens. There used to be a small spinning circle in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, but that no longer happens. I spoke to Amazon who said it might be their software update. They were supposed to get back to me, but nothing has happened

[FloppyDrive]

The same problem exists with Google Home and Amazon Alexa, so it's not specific to one vendor. I'm guessing the ability to change channels by name conflicted with Telus's home security offerings, so they disabled that ability. I have not received a clear answer from Telus about this. They don't seem to care about this functionality. 

[Robby]

I spoke to Telus technical support over a month ago and they said they opened a ticket for their engineering team but I have not heard anything.  I am losing hope that this problem will be fixed.  Its sad that such a big company does not care about their Mobility challenged customers.  It may be seen as a convenience feature for some, but its a necessity for us customers who cannot use their hands.  Hoping a moderator on this forum could forward this to the appropriate department to get this fixed.  

[jkl]

I agree completely. As a quadriplegic, I rely on that feature to operate television. Nobody seems very concerned.

[Optik-Kate]

Hi, thank you for everyone's feedback, we were able to locate the issue and a fix is being tested currently. I will update you when we have a confirmed launch date after we complete the testing. Thank you! 

[Robby]

thank you for the update.  It appears to be working this morning on both Alexa and Google devices. 😊

[Optik-Kate · Accepted solution]

Thanks for confirming. It looks like the fix went in already last night!