LIVE Services, HD Traffic and other Services

[j_roger_new]

Personally what I want is for it to calculate the whole route and show delays WHEN I FIRST SELECT my route then I can decide my route.  (Like the Honiton example above)   If it then drops back after say 15 minutes after selection I could accept the compromise.

The current situation means I have to always check the Highways Agency website and the DirectGov website before any long-run for apparent road closures and delays at a distance i.e., doing the job in my time  I'm also paying TomTom to do for me but which they don't do thoroughly enough now. 

As the area is fairly rural most of my route options are like choosing from one of a pair of brackets ( | ) as rarely is the | option any good.  If the left hand one is blocked at 100+ miles away I should be routed from the start onto the right hand alternative but with the reduced distance horizon the two options are only compared by TT based on IQ routes historic data not current status.  This situation is true for most long runs from anywhere in the UK which is why we are all so brassed off about this

Just two examples Birmingham to London M40 -v- M6 and M1  London to Exeter M4 & M5 -v- M3 and A303/A30 etc., etc.

We should not have to make those checks ourselves.  HD Traffic is still good but was much better.

[mj2012]

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j_roger_new wrote:

We should not have to make those checks ourselves.  HD Traffic is still good but was much better.

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That is the nub of the issue - it used to be much better, and TomTom seem unable to restore it to that state. Somewhere here I analysed the possible reasons, and the only viable reason is that TomTom have a cellular data contract that has a limited amount of data it can handle, and if they go over that amount, the system stops completely. Thus with more devices and more traffic, they have to trim the data to fit their cap. I can only assume that they have talked to the network, and asked for more, but the network want more money than is reasonable, and thus we are stuck. This is the only thing I can see that is external to TomTom's ability to fix it themselves, and of course they don't want to state this publicly. 

[philce]

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mj2012 wrote:

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j_roger_new wrote:

We should not have to make those checks ourselves.  HD Traffic is still good but was much better.

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That is the nub of the issue - it used to be much better, and TomTom seem unable to restore it to that state. Somewhere here I analysed the possible reasons, and the only viable reason is that TomTom have a cellular data contract that has a limited amount of data it can handle, and if they go over that amount, the system stops completely. Thus with more devices and more traffic, they have to trim the data to fit their cap. I can only assume that they have talked to the network, and asked for more, but the network want more money than is reasonable, and thus we are stuck. This is the only thing I can see that is external to TomTom's ability to fix it themselves, and of course they don't want to state this publicly. 

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Seems that only the UK is affected by this too.

Can anyone with Euro maps confirm that the range is indeed extended when out of UK?

[Carminat]

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philce wrote:

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Seems that only the UK is affected by this too.

Can anyone with Euro maps confirm that the range is indeed extended when out of UK?

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Hmm. I'll be in Greece in a couple of months - they haven't got HD Traffic, but do you suppose it would indicate delays in France if I planned a route homewards? Am I that bothered that I'll give TomTom even more cash to buy a Europe map to try this out? One thing seems highly likely, that this range business will still be ongoing, unresolved, in June.

Kenneth, are you even watching this thread now? - it's coming up to 12 weeks since your last contribution.

I mean, if this is the traffic I can see in London today, what's it going to be like during the Olympics?

[Carminat]

Hallo? Knock, knock? Kenneth? It's thirteen weeks since you last promised to keep us up to date on the progress of the daily meetings.

I see the system is still downloading and discarding the useful information...

[Henry-Root]

Well that's an interesting screenshot Carminat! I am not usually in map view when I connect my 1005 but have tried many times to see what traffic there is in London travelling from Leeds and NONE shows up. Don't know why I upgraded from my 720 with normal RDS really and even worse I went for the new ver 2 for the Tripadvisor services which shows one, yes one hotel in Leeds. Ye Gods I always thought we were out in the sticks but that is ridiculous

[mj2012]

I think it is safe to say that the system is how it will be. TomTom top people do not think this is an issue. It was brought up on a webinar yesterday, and the general thinking is that anything three hours away will be long gone by the time you get there, so can be ignored. Perhaps if they spent more time on the UK motorways on a bank holiday they'd think otherwise, but perhaps the statistics show that "on average" it is all okay.

Automotive World webinar

[Carminat]

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Henry-Root wrote:

Well that's an interesting screenshot Carminat! I am not usually in map view when I connect my 1005 but have tried many times to see what traffic there is in London travelling from Leeds and NONE shows up. Don't know why I upgraded from my 720 with normal RDS really and even worse I went for the new ver 2 for the Tripadvisor services which shows one, yes one hotel in Leeds. Ye Gods I always thought we were out in the sticks but that is ridiculous

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You're in God's Own County, don't knock it - just feel grateful you don't have to put up with all the southerners!

I'll be coming up to Leeds (note "UP", which makes south "down") a week tomorrow and I already know my GO550 will not advise me whether to come the M1 or M6 route because it only shows traffic up to Birmingham (on a good day). I haven't got a 1005, so I don't know how they are getting along, but last I heard their (and all other Nav3 devices) traffic horizon is 40 minutes away - Doncaster, Sheffield, York, for you??? The distance you see in my screenshots is for GO550 et al (Nav2) devices. I do wish TomTom would dump all these smartypants gimmicks like Tripadvisor, Twitter and so on and concentrate on getting right the features which are appropriate to satnav navigation. I don't use their GPSFix, MapShare, Speed cameras and Fuel prices downloads, because none of them do my navigation any good.

[Henry-Root]

Couldn't agree with you more, so are the Nav 2 devices better than nav3 then in your opinion?

[Carminat]

Sorry, Henry, but I'm not competent to offer opinion on the relative values of Nav2 and Nav3 devices, because I haven't got a Nav3 device and have never tried one, so I can only go by what I read here and elsewhere. I have not been tempted to buy a Nav3 device, but I wish I had.

To turn your question round, I've not been persuaded that the Nav3 devices are better than the Nav2s.

I've been a totally committed TomTom user since 2005 and have owned about 20 since my first GO300 (I've just sat trying to think and have lost count, x00, x10, x20, x30, x50, ONE, XL Live, Carminat, that's including several in each of the earlier ranges). I currently run three different ones side by side in my daily driving (60,000 miles a year) - GO 520 (RDS-TMC), GO550 Live and Carminat (RDS-TMC). Each one does something better than the others - if the 550 did everything right, I'd only run that one. And I gave up on hands free phone calls through TT devices after the GO700.