Here’s a quick complaint entry about the Comcast DVR.
First off, the interface is inelegant, to say the least. There is no way to customize the guide — for instance, you can’t show just the channels you get. This means that you have to scroll and scroll and scroll through dozens and dozens of channels you don’t receive.
The software is very buggy. The box very often freezes up and won’t respond to the remote… until it suddenly catches up with all those remote buttons you pressed, all at once.
Today, the DVR had a new wacky problem: it raised the pitch of the audio such that everyone on screen sounded like a chipmunk. I had to unplug the box to reset it.
Earlier this week, it started recording a half hour show… and kept recording for 13 hours. When I stopped it, it then started recording a 1 minute segment every minute, littering the DVR with 1-minute long recordings. Often I find that recordings are not watchable or won’t play because of some kind of corruption.
The recording schedule software just sucks: it has no intelligence, so if you tell it to record, say, all new episodes of a show, it will record every episode, whether new or old… and if the channel repeats the episode, it records it again. When a cable channel premieres a new show, the DVR records it every time, sometimes multiple times per day (since channels sometimes go in 3 to 4 hour cycles for all time zones). It has no memory of what shows it already recorded, as TiVo does.
You can’t see a simple list of upcoming scheduled recordings, the software puts it into a guide format. So, to see a show set to record a week from now you must scroll to the right 7 times.
The clock on the DVR is not quite right. The TiVo in the bedroom starts recording on time, the Comcast DVR always starts recording nearly a minute late, missing the beginnings of shows.
There are a couple of plusses to this box over TiVo, however. First, it records high definition. Second, it has two tuners, and can record two programs at the same time. TiVo gets 2 thumbs down there.
The rumor is that TiVo software will be deployed on existing Comcast DVRs. One wonders if this is true, and if so, will the entire TiVo user interface be installed? And when?
My DirecTiVo, which I’ve had for a couple of years, has two tuners and can record two programs at the same time. It can’t record HDTV, but I don’t currently have an HDTV tuner or set anyway.
I feel the same way, though my Comcast DVR hasn’t had the glitchy problems yours has had… yet.
It’s just an inceredbly crude and clunky interface, especially after being used to the relatively smart and elegant one with the TiVo. Really makes me appreciate the TiVo controls.
I long for the good ol’ days or Replay TV. I wish they would have made it- they seem to be the most forward thinking of the buch, only they had bad marketing.