babyblog

Comcast

Comcast, our cable provider, have recently "upgraded" the software on our DVR, rendering it pretty much unuseable.

Prior to the "upgrade" the EPG and menu's were apparentl provided by Microsoft. (I didn't know this until recently and I'm only saying so because I don't want anyone to think I'm defending MS :-). While not perfect, it was easy to use, the interface was attractive, and despite being occasionally slow it pretty much worked fine.

The new interface is provided by 'TV Guide' and it absolutely stinks. It is ugly and hard to read, there is difficulty viewing any info about a programme, it is colourless and square, and the DVR menu almost unfathomable.

It also lost all of the recordings that I had set to go, so I missed a couple of things that I had wanted to see. More baffling is that it randomly records a programme on Discovery called "Survivorman" every day or so. I have checked thoroughly and there is absolutely nothing set to record at all, so quite why it does this I don't know but I can't seem to stop it.

Finally, you can no longer easily fast forward or rewind through a recording. It used to be that you had 4 options.

Slow FF.
Quicker FF.
Quick FF.
Fast FF.

'Quicker FF' was the perfect speed to zoom through ad breaks. Now, you have 3 options.
Slow FF for 30 seconds and then freeze.
Fucking Fast FF.
Really Fucking Fast FF.

So you can't actually FF through any ads without accidentally going 5 minutes into your programme. Nor can you rewind back without going back to the beginning of the ads again by the time you've hit play. Irritating.

It has to go. We're getting a TiVo.