Ok, here’s the thing. I’ve been a big Tivo fan for many years now, but my old Tivo2 finally crapped out on me (had one of the fancypants old-schoolers with the built-in dvd burner). When it died, I just couldn’t justify the massive price of the Tivo3 when I could have what *appeared* to be most of the same functionality from my Comcast cable box, practically for free. So I took off to the dump with my old friend Tivo, stopped by Comcast and picked up their DVR cablebox, and decided to give it a whirl.

It literally took less than one day for TV to zoom from fun to frustrating. I guess I’ve been completely spoiled by Tivo over the last few years, but I can’t believe anyone would find their cablebox DVR acceptable. A lot of my gripes below might seem small or insignificant to you if you’ve never used a Tivo, but these "small"complaints pile atop one another until they combine into a singularly annoying experience. I loved watching television until I got my cablebox DVR.

Here are 20 reasons why I ponied up the cash for a new Tivo3 and kicked Comcast’s DVR to the curb: 

1. Let’s start with something small: Comcast DVR has no predictive fast-forward. I’m shocked at how much I missed this, and how much of a pain in the ass it is to fast forward through commercials without it. Tivo’s system takes the human "lag time" into account between the instant you see the footage you’re looking for and the second it takes for you to push the button. The end-result is that you’re constantly rewinding a few seconds to get back to where you really wanted to stop fast-forwarding with the Comcast. SO annoying. 

2. If you are fast-forwarding the Comcast DVR to get to the last few minutes of a show, or past the final set of commercials, it abruptly SKIPS past the final 7 or 8 minutes of the show, and then sits there giving you the option of deleting the whole show or replaying it from the beginning! This was a huge pain in the ass.I did finally find a work-around where I could escape out of the "want to delete the show even though I didn’t show you the ending?" screen, and then back up manually, but this was yet another example of Tivo doing the little things right that Comcast doesn’t seem to notice.

3. In 4 years of using Tivo, I have never once had it not record a show. I generally have around 25 season-passes on there, with anywhere from 7-15 active shows going on a given week, and it’s never missed one. Ever. Comcast decided not to record two episodes in the first month. Again, maybe I’m spoiled by Tivo, but come on. This seems like the most basic function of any DVR!

4. The "search for show" is unbelievably horrible, to the point of being almost unusable. It’s amazingly slow, clunky, and once you click around through the shows, you have to start your search over from scratch if something is wrong (which it usually is). The inputting of the search name even takes forever, as you have to scroll through the entire alphabet to find each letter, one at a time! This one really blew me away. So painful.

5. Finding showings of your favorite shows is far too difficult on the Comcast.

6. If you manually record something, the box’s LCD screen won’t show the time while it’s recording. It’ll only display "rec." Not a big deal, but come on, is this 1985 or something? The Tivo3 has a beautiful display that shows how many shows are being recorded right then, what they are, the time, etc. It’s all these little things that come together to drive you insane while trying to use this thing…

7. If the Comcast DVR has already decided to record something without you knowing it, and you see that it’s on TV and want to record it, and you hit "record", guess what it does? Does it tell you that it’s already being recorded? Does it ask you if you want to change the recording options? Does it ask you if you want to stop the recording? No, it does NOTHING AT ALL, leaving you to sit there hammering away at the record button, wondering why your stupid DVR is ignoring you. You have to actually go into the dense menu system, go to "my dvr," and hunt around until you discover that it’s already being recorded. Jeeeeez.

8. BUTTON LAG. Holy moly. This should have been at the top of the list. It’s CRAZY annoying. It doesn’t happen all the time — maybe only twice a night, but it makes me want to throw the remote through a window. It could be any button, or any number of hits. Maybe you just want to rewind the show a few seconds to relive some great moment, so you hit rewind. Nothing happens, so you hit it again. Still nothing, so you hit it again and again figuring that maybe you just weren’t pointing it at the DVR properly. Then suddenly accept your 5 "rewind" presses and rewind at mega speed back to the beginning of the show. I thought the battery on my remote died and hit a bunch of buttons, inadvertently canceling a recording and changing the channel.

9. Related to this, there is no option for an audio feedback related to a button-press (a la the classic Tivo "Bucka-Bucka-Bucka!" as you fast forward). This is no big deal, but when combined with lag, you’re really screwed. With some audio-feedback, the above problem wouldn’t really be much of an issue, because you’d hear the button-press get received (ideally).

10. There is nothing intuitive about using the Cablebox DVR. It takes SIX button clicks to delete a show, for example.

11. There are no show recommendations or auto-recorded suggestions. I’m really surprised by how much I miss this and relied on it. Tivo gets to know your likes and dislikes, and finds shows for you accordingly. Sure, sometimes it’s stuff you aren’t interested in, but Tivo hits a lot more than it misses. Comcast doesn’t even swing at the ball.

12. This one drove me bananas. The Comcast DVR records the SAME episode over and over and over. It recorded duplicate shows FIVE TIMES in the first week. Awesome, right? Ugh. It fills your hard drive space up with multiples. In a few cases, I had 3 (and one time FOUR!) of the same exact episode recorded on the DVR.

13. Relatedly, it doesn’t really know what shows are actually "new." And I’m not just talking about some random MTV reality show, I mean popular network shows. It shows 5-year-old Family Guy episodes as "new." I’m sure it’s just a flag that isn’t set up properly for those shows to interact with the DVR properly, but this almost never happened with my Tivo.

14. There are NO recording-quality settings at ALL. Not just for HD content, but for ANY content. This is asinine for all kinds of obvious reasons.

15. I miss how on the Tivo, if you hit play, it pops up a small unobtrusive timeline so you can see where you are currently at in the program. Comcast DVR does this as well, but on the Tivo, if you hit "play" again, the timeline instantly disappears. On the Comcast, you have to hunt around the remote to find the "exit" button to get rid of the giant display that is blocking your screen. Yet another tiny thing that makes the Tivo an infinitely more enjoyable experience.

16. Get this — if you manually record something on a lark that conflicts with a scheduled recording of your favorite show, it DOESN’T WARN YOU! It just decides to NOT RECORD the scheduled recording! This one really blew my mind, and basically scared me away from manually recording anything at all.

17. If you set up a Series Recording, but accidentally chose to record it from the "regular-crappy-resolution" channel instead of HD, you have to completely cancel the series recording, go back through the cumbersome "search really really really effing slowly for your show" screen, and set it all up again from scratch. This wouldn’t be so bad if the menu system wasn’t so horrible.

18. Comcast won’t display all your scheduled recordings on one screen – it breaks them up on a per-day basis. Maybe there was a menu setting I missed, but I’d prefer to see my shows lumped together (3 episodes of Heroes all next to each other, not spread out with tons of shows in between them). A little thing, but annoying.

19. The remote for the Comcast DVR is nowhere near as easy to use as Tivo’s. Tivo has a famously beautiful back-lit remote that fits your hand and has buttons in the most intuitive possible positions. With Comcast I’m constantly hunting around trying to find the buttons I’m looking for… I tried really hard to get used to it, but I never could.

20. No online scheduling. For ages, Tivo has had the ability to allow you to schedule recordings remotely via their website. This comes in really handy sometimes, (if you’re at work and hear about something you’d like to record that night, you just log in and tell it to record!) and just seems like something so basic nowadays.

In all, I would comfortably say that even a Tivo Series 1 blows my cablebox DVR out of the water, let alone a Tivo3 (which I did end up buying and loving like crazy). If you’ve never used Tivo, I’d encourage you to give it a try. You can get great deals on Tivo series 2’s right now (if you don’t need to record HD yet), and their new TivoHD is a pretty great deal as well. You will never go back to regular TV or your cable DVR. There’s just no comparison.

(Note: Comcast DVR will soon be getting some kind of Tivo menu system you can subscribe to for a monthly fee — not sure if this will only give you Tivo’s far-superior UI, or if it’ll actually improve the usability of Comcast’s DVR at all, but it’s probably worth giving a try when it’s available if you just can’t afford a Tivo).

-DogMonster

Filed under: Consumer Products, Technology