You’re so edgy! You link-dropped Perez Hilton!

I’m wondering if Yahoo! will integrate the acquisition of JumpCut into Yahoo! TV. I wrote a little bit about some of the Yahoo! acquisitions and what they’re doing with them on my blog. Feel free to check it out if you get bored:
http://pulse2.com/2006/11/28/t.....7-are-now/

Welcome to TechCrunch, Natali.

I too don’t like the new TV listings and I wrote about that. For the time being I’ve switched to TV Guide’s listings.
http://rushi.wordpress.com/200.....-listings/

Rushi

I wouldn’t go there b/c I barely see TV, but are there any RSS features integrated into it (for listings, the TV News, Recaps). It seems good for RSS, but it’s currently designed w/o it. Did I see that right?

One thing that seems to be missing is the former integration with Yahoo! Calendar. I used to be able to add a show to my calendar as a reminder when it was on. I don’t see it in the new version unless I’m missing something. I DO see the ability to record the show with Tivo, but that doesn’t help me since I don’t have Tivo!

What is it with Yahoo that they still can’t integrate .ics or RSS into these services?

The grid is eerily similar to Zap2it, which has been undergoing an ajax retrofit - difference being they asked users for input every step of the way.

It is a little cleaner and loads quicker imho, will stick with Zap.

I found the new design disappointing. I used to be able to follow a short link (http://tv.yahoo.com/grid/) to a quick-loading page, but now get a bloated screen that doesn’t want to load (on a fast broadband connection) and they’re insisting that users sign in to view localized listings.

They ruined their mail app by bloating it in the same way.

I visited the new TV listings page today about an hour before you posted this, and came to the same conclusions myself before even reading this post. This is defiantly an example of severe AJAX and “web 2.0″ misuse. They managed to make their website drastically less usable. The sole reason I (and many other visitors) visit tv.yahoo.com is to view my local TV listings. Now they have made that function about 10 times more difficult. No longer can you simply enter your zipcode and select your cable provider to view your listings. You now have to create and account and sign in, and that’s provided that you can even find the link to TV Listings from their home page. Now I am forced to look elsewhere for my TV listings… Bravo, Yahoo. Bravo.

When you are on Perez, you might want to do a search. Powered by Searchles!

It’s Yahoo Peanut Butter Time, Yahoo Peanut Butter Time!

I’ll take Yahoo’s offerings over Google’s any day. When investors realize that Google doesn’t have much of anything when its AdSense product starts to falter from smarter competition they’ll abandon the stock in droves.

Yahoo has the vision I need (and the undervalued stock). Google reminds me too much of a 90’s one-hit wonder that, by some strange force of nature, is yet sustained by sheer luck. When the Google Jam hits the fan, people will realize how obviously flawed their operations were.

I think the site looks nice, this looks like it is still in beta imo. I’m on the East Coast and have the proper provider and when I view a show and see when it is next on the times are all 3 hours earlier than they really are. The grid shows it at the right time.

Looks like they store it on east coast time then subtract 3 hours to convert it to my EST time from PST.

The bigger problem is when viewing listings it only loads the first 10 channels. So, to view the 40th channel I scroll down and then at that time it begins loading channels 20-29, then 30-39 and then finally 40-49. No reason it can not backgroudn this to do it every time.

I am a big fan of yahoo, but this appears to be a little premature.

I had to go back to TV Guide after this change - The listings take way too long to show up, and I can’t get my ‘favorites’ to work at all.

I originally left TV Guide when they decided you needed an account, but I guess they got rid of that at some point.

Ugh, the new Yahoo TV listings is buggy as all hell.

For example, I can’t change my provider from its default guess; the box that pops up tells me to enter my zip code, but there’s no box to enter it into.

(Using Firefox.)

I think they are just alienating their core audience. Trying to push design and keep it on edge. I remember when Yahoo kept everything as minimal as possible because they new that their core audience was several years behind the power curve. Yahoo is frantically pursuing it’s seven cities of Cibola (Web 2.0) to the detriment of everything else. They will destroy the company if they try to be too cool. Cool is a small niche, not what the general public is looking for. A couple observations about their TV and Food portals. 1. All the content is pure fluff and a lot of regurgitated warm pablum in a flashy package. 2. I think the unsophisticated user would find the navigation to be disorienting. People don’t want flahy navigation. How would you like flashy navigation on your TV set every time you changed the channel. Save all that cripe, just give me the page I want and don’t go moving stuff around all the time.

Is it just me or can’t you even see what on today anymore only what’s on tomorrow? what is the point of that?

Used Yahoo TV for a long time. Deleted it tonight. Absolute garbage!!! Full of bling and not useful at all. Slow to load and useless once loaded. Garbage!!!

IT’S TV GUIDE FOR ME. And I have used Yahoo for many years. You would think with all that money they would get it right. Well just look at the Zune, I guess money means nothing when you trust the wrong people.

That’s really cool….

————–
Wanna get the most out of your mac?
Visit:http://www.mostofmymac.com

It takes too long to see what’s on with that every-ten-page deal. Back to tvguide.com for me; for now, it’s the better grid.

Oh, I’m so disappointed.

I have (had) tv.yahoo.com/grid bookmarked for the longest time as it became my primary way of getting TV listings for my area. Not any more.

Yahoo has lost it. The company should spend some frackin time and money on usability testing before sending crap like this into the wild. Sure, their pages look great, but they’re losing function. Why?!?

I wish Google had an alternative. At least it would be fast loading and less obtuse than this offering. Thanks for screwing me, Yahoo.

I don’t know where you got the idea that it needed a makeover. Because it worked before. Now it’s trash.

This isn’t peanut butter even. This is the disgusting mold that creeps into the fridge. You are being waaay too kind to yahoo here. BTW, I stop making them the homepage on everyones computer now. Thanks Yahoo!!!!

Yeah, I just wrote my own diatribe against Yahoo’s stupid redesign.

http://weblog.ceicher.com/arch.....web_2.html

This sort of Web 2.0 insanity is the way to make your site unusable and will make your customers vanish overnight.

Mmm…I don’t use Yahoo! TV. I don’t intend to until they begin offering episodes on it.

Ugly. Slow slow slow. Very broken. Blech!

http://img227.imageshack.us/my.....ytvmz5.png

Based on all the other responses, it’s apparent that many of us are disappointed with the redesign.

From where do these services obtain their listings? Perhaps there’s an opportunity for someone to compete using a leaner-and-meaner approach, much like Google originally did with its search engine.

Google would probably do a good job with this but if they won’t, maybe someone else should.

I’d used Yahoo TV as my default tv listings guide for years, but I ditched it as soon as they made the switch. I wasn’t able to get their ajaxified tv listings to work on my Mac, after trying it on several different browsers. It would just show a big, blank box with no data in it. It just wasn’t worth it. I thought I’d switch to TVGuide.com, but that was even worse - it took more than five minutes for it to open the customized listings. I guess I’ll be using zap2it from now on….

How can you ask if they are trying to be cool? Their new email client has a break dancer as the wait screen.

Who do you think has the best TV grid/listings out there? What are the top listings sites?

Yahoo! is limiting their audience to those with Windows or OSX by using the Microsoft media player or Quicktime.

Yes, we could install mplayer and set our browser. With the resources Yahoo! has at its disposal they should consider using Flash video. It can’t be too terribly difficult and look at all the Linux eyes that could view your advertising.

Linux has Flash 9 now so we’re good to go.

OMG, I’m not alone. Found this by accident but share the same frustrations as so many of you. The new Yahoo TV page is buggy and less functional than before. I’ve called them, written them and hope others do too.

The correct email is experience@yahoo-inc.com

Does anyone know of any listing pagethat allows a user to save a favorite show in .pst, .ical/.vcal, or .csv format?

The makeover is a nightmare. The listings page takes forever to load (in fact the listings are built as you page down which is rediculous). It went from lightning fast loads to built-as-you-pagedown and is a hassle to get any good information compared to the way it was.

Ajax is ruining good websites.

I found Zap2It and it loads fast, its configurable and quick loading with a nice clean interface. Bye-bye YahooTV.

You are all being too kind tp Yahoo. The new listings are just horrible!..and slooooow! By the rime you find out what’s on TV - it’s over!

I think they must be feeling a little foolish with nobody coming to that site anymore, but not foolish enough to switch back, I’ll bet.

I’d love to buy their old system - anybody wanna go partners?

Rebuilds as you scroll down and then rebuilds AGAIN moving up an hour.

Yahoo ruined the stock message boards too a few months ago.

What the hell is wrong with those people????

I used to use evoke.tv, which had a nice, simple, very functional grid. Unfortunately the site was taken down back in October, and I have been relying on Yahoo for my listings since (I was scarred by TV Guide’s site years ago). I agree with the poster about the tv listings going the way of Yahoo mail. I haven’t changed to the new interface yet, but my husband has. While it can do cool things, it mostly just makes me want to run screaming to gmail. I hope Google will do tv listings - at least we know that they’d keep the interface simple and uncluttered.

Yahoo reduced functionality, reduce intuitiveness all to make more money. The only way to get to YOUR listings is to go to the major networks’ advertising page, sift through crap and finally see your listings, which are clumsy. I’ve switched to TV guide which still isn’t what I expect but at least it meets my basic needs.

Why did Yahoo have to throw us to the wolves of Madison Avenue, because I guarantee you the placement of all those pretty publicity shots are there at no cost.

Just found this and could not agree more. Yahoo TV is the worst. I can not even save shows to my calendar anymore. I do not own a TIVO but looks like TIVO paid Yahoo for some sponorship which is crap. The best TV listing site, Gist TV listing, closed a few years back and I have been stuck with Yahoo TV since then but no longer. Let’s hope Google sees this need and fills it.

OK, lets say TiVo paid Yahoo! for adding their DVR codes. Why can’t they still allow a user to save to their own damn Yahoo calendar? It just doesn’t seem to be mutually exclusive.
We got Yahosed!

I used Yahoo for many years but just deleted them because the new channel lineup stinks - Google fet another customer…

Who are the “Certain bloggers”?

In your opening paragraph, the link to “bloggers” is broken.

Regarding: “Certain bloggers have expressed their displeasure with the makeover. I think it looks good but certainly could be more functional.”

Natalie,
I concur with your design comments regarding Yahoo TV. Doing a redesign and pleasing the masses is not an easy task. It is much more complex than what meets the eye. I agree that what is important to the user should reside above the fold. I am glad to see that they are getting feedback from the blogosphere.

They should have floated some design concepts out to the blogosphere first to get feedback from potential users.

We are going through this exact process right now and we are lettting the blog reading community have total input as to how we design our site, everything from colors, to layout to icons. User feedback is critical and the best time to incorporate feedback is DURING the design process and not AFTER it is complete. They have had some great ideas that our team never considered and the end result is a page design that will be much more pleasant and effective for users.

Cheers.

Rodney Rumford
MojoPages.com

yahoo tv listings was one of the few yahoo pages i still used (i still like yahoo sports) but i’m going to have to find something else.

who makes the decision to turn these things live? my god, the new tv listings are terrible. the old one was not fancy…and by all means go ahead and have an intern or two spruce it up, but the new tv listing page is an abomination. it’s like someone looked at the old one and said, “yeah it works, but it’s just not ajax’ey enough”.

most of the time it doesn’t even load, even on broadband…and when it does it’s slow, doesn’t seem to know my local time and toggling through multiple times is just too much to bare.

Wow. Can you imagine google releasing a service like that? This is not even alpha-quality. The ads in between the listings make it look like a terrible link farm. What happened to the search function?

I think this is a good example of all the bad engineering and product decisions made at Yahoo.

If you look at the bottom of tv.yahoo.com, you’ll see that Yahoo gets their TV listings information from Tribune Media Services, which owns Zap2it.com. They have a clean, basic grid at http://tvlistings5.zap2it.com. There’s also episode info within the grid, which is what I look for — and it loads quickly, which is a plus.

I too have written a blog about this travesty. Something good has become totally unusable, in order to look cool. Try AOL’s TV Listings. It works just as well (in some ways better) than the old Yahoo TV listing page. And it looks pretty “cool.”

A couple of years ago, Direct TV took their NFL Sunday Ticket page and made it totally useless. It was so small you could not see it…but it looked cool.

This blog provides an accurate, objective critique of the new Yahoo! TV…
http://deepthoughts.orsomethin.....-tv-guide/

Ok, so it has been 2 1/2 months since I signed up for Direct TV. Long story short, I have been on the phone with Direct TV at least 12 times. I have had the technician at my house 4 times(1 was the initial install). And guess what, my Direct TV STILL DOES NOT WORK!!! My HD channels some in and out, mostly out. And on top of all that, I have to wait TWO MORE WEEKS for another technician to come and visit my house to make yet another attempt to fix my Direct TV. I keep telling my self that Direct TV is the WORST EXPERIENCE that anyone has ever had with any company, and then it gets worse. STAY AWAY FROM DIRECT TV AT ALL COSTS!!!

The new Yahoo TV listings are horrible!!! Yahoo has been my start page for years now, and I have my favorite channels in a grid on my front page. My main complaints:

1) The channel name on the left side of the grid used to be clickable to instantly see a list of all shows on that day on that channel from morning to night, with a drop-down menu of dates a week in advance to quickly look through that particular channel for upcoming shows. No click, no more.

2) The search box actually used to WORK. You’d see any shows with a certain word, actor or show/movie title scheduled to air in the next 14 days, with channel, time and date - sorted either by date or relevance. Each was clickable for more info. Now, it gives you a vague huge assortment of crapola. Such as, figure skating. Instead of seeing what is on in the next 2 weeks, there’s a plethora of tons of shows and movies which aired several years ago and there’s no sorting through to actually see… I don’t know… upcoming listings?

3) Going to the actual Yahoo TV page to see the entire grid and try to find sense there is even worse, because even on a fast computer it takes forever to load every single section with every scroll down or right. No one has that kind of patience.

This is just trash. Please someone post a good, reliable TV site with decent search features.

i used Yahoo TV Listings for a long time and liked the simple layout (plus i could change colors) I don’t like the new layout, too much stuff i’m not interested in. I am now using msn tv listings, please put it back the way it was, thanks.

I used Yahoo for many years but just deleted them because the new channel lineup stinks - Google fet another customer…

i m gonna try..