About a year ago, I had enough. I was so sick of putting up with Comcast’s ridiculous rates for terrible service that I decided to cancel everything but the Internet. Truth be told, I kept basic cable only because it was cheaper to keep it with my Internet package then to not keep it. But I never watched it. For all intents and purposes I was cable-free. Most importantly, that meant removing the cable box from my life as the filter between me and content on my television. I thought I would miss it. I did not. At all.
Fast forward to now: I recently moved, and luckily enough my apartment isn’t held captive under Comcast’s dominion. So I decided to try cable once again, just to see if it was as bad as I remembered it. My new service is substantially cheaper, so that’s nice, but all in all, the song remains the same. It’s absolute crap from an end user perspective. And yet we put up with it.
The Box
Almost all of us likely have a cable box. Turn it on. Just look at that user interface. Yes, it’s probably more or less the same one you’ve been looking at for the past 10 years, if not longer. It probably has some blue in there, probably some green, maybe a little red if they’re rebellious. The icons look like crap and the text is often hard to read.
I would make a joke about our phones having nicer UIs, except that our phones now have UIs that must be a thousand times nicer. Maybe a million.
In fact, I can’t think of any digital device today that has a worse UI. And this is probably many peoples’ most-used device. And it’s not just that it looks awful, it’s slow. There are delays that simply shouldn’t be there when moving between channels or navigating the menus. We’re talking half-seconds to multiple seconds, but all of that time adds up and severely hampers the experience.
I don’t think I’m going to get much disagreement in saying that Motorola, which makes many of these boxes that cable companies use, should have been fired a long, long time ago for these miserable things. But of course, the cable companies don’t care. Most of them have strangleholds (shhh don’t say “monopoly”) over their communities, and know that consumers have very little choice, and so the cable companies go for these cheapest option boxes.
The Remote
As bad as the cable boxes are, their remotes may be worse.
Most TVs nowadays are slick pieces of hardware, and their accompanying remotes are also pretty slick. I’d love to use one someday, unfortunately they’re all pretty useless because the cable company forces their cable box on you and then makes you use their awful remotes. I’ve seen a lot of cable boxes in my time, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a remote for one of them that doesn’t look like it was developed by Fisher Price.
Those huge, ugly, rubbery buttons. The cable company branding. The absurd number of extra buttons. These things are nightmares. And while there are some nice universal remote solutions, let’s be honest, most people are never going to get those. Others will say, “Get a TiVo.” It does have a great remote, but again, why would people get yet another box for the living room when the DVR through the cable company is cheaper (though much, much worse)? So they are stuck using the Fisher Price variety. Like I am. Look mom, I can use TV too!
The Offerings
I’m not going to go into the various aspects of why cable companies overall content offering are bad. That could be a number of posts all by itself. I will say that it’s an absolutely joke that we still have no a-la-carte options. That is to say, no way to pick just the channels you want to get without being forced to have literally hundreds now that you could care less about.
The Catalysts
If the cable companies had their way, none of this would ever change. Just look at Comcast. We’re in the midst of a horrible recession and yet Comcast’s profits increased by an amazing 53% last quarter. Why? Well a small sliver may be attributed to the fact that in tough times people turn to entertainment to get away, but the real story is that Comcast jacked up prices. Again, because they could.
But I’m going hold out hope that services like Verizon FIOS and others can continue spreading, and put pressure on these cable companies to actually work towards improving their offerings, rather than improving their bottom-lines.
While Apple’s iPhone is not everyone’s cup of tea, there is no denying that it significantly changed the wireless landscape in this country. Just a couple of years ago I was using a RAZR phone, and that was considered fairly high tech for the U.S. Today, that would be considered laughable.
The iPhone and the subsequent smartphones that followed have forced change to improve the state of the industry from an end-user perspective. Before it, the carriers ruled with an iron fist. Now, companies like Apple and Google are starting to have a say.
I hope the same thing is possible in the cable industry. It will be harder to initiate this change because various providers do have many areas on lockdown. In wireless, most consumers had a choice of which provider to go with. In cable, most don’t have that choice. Sure, some opt for satellite, but again, that’s not an option for a lot of people.
The Compromise
But forget the service, let’s even just improve the cable boxes. It’s no secret that the Apple TV hasn’t exactly been a big success for Apple. Maybe it’s time for them to stray from the go-it-alone approach and instead talk with cable providers about making boxes for them. Do I believe that will actually ever happen? No, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility as it is a similar idea to what they’ve done with the iPhone in wireless.
Apple could use its box to get a foot into the cable business. The box could have a DVR, full access to a cable company’s content, but also access to iTunes. Would the cable companies ever go for that and give up their pay-per-view business? Probably not, but maybe a smaller one would be willing to take a gamble on it. An maybe that in turn would force others to at the very least improve their rubbish hardware.
It’s a pipe dream, but it’s one that I’m going to keep on dreaming every time I turn on my TV. I look at my cable box’s UI versus the UI on my Apple TV or my Xbox 360 and I just shake my head. Two of them look like modern, sexy services, the other looks like it was designed in the 70s or 80s — probably because it was.
And why on Earth do cable boxes have to be so big? There is technology now to use CableCARD (even though no one suspiciously seems to be using them), and yet we need these gigantic boxes?
Myself and others have ranted about this topic before, with elaborate plans to bring about change, but nothing ever seems to change. That’s why I think now a very simple goal is important — Cable companies: Get decent cable boxes with non-Fischer Price remotes, or get out of my living room, again.
Couldn’t agree more. Cable box UI designers should be shamed by Apple TV.
San Francisco Comcast has a particularly bad interface. Time Warner Cable in NYC is 10x better but still nowhere near Apple TV.
Agreed. Time Warner in general seems to be much better than Comcast. But we’re talking differing degrees of suck.
Great article and you’re absolutely right. Just wanted to point out that this is a classic case in economics where government regulation has stifled innovation by creating local monopolies. The terrible product and bad service is not an accident – it’s a result of consumers having few or no other choices in cable companies where they live.
When you have choices to switch to a new comer, they’ll compete for your business in all sorts of ways. Prices go down, features and UI’s improve, their customer service will be prompt etc for fear of losing you. This is definitely lacking in the cable industry, and for good reason: Nearly every community in the United States allows only a single cable company to operate within its borders.
More info for those interested:
http://www.cato.../pas/pa034.html
I think all y’all are a bunch a crybabies. Just steam your television over the internet like the cool kids do.
Time Warner better? HAH! We’re still using the same channel guide they rolled out into our area in 1999.
Sure they’ve added DVR capacity but their HD service sucks and I still can’t find the HD channels I use daily very quickly and I’ve had the service over a year.
Not to mention they’re STILL not offering NBC in HD here.
You want to talk pain with these cable companies try using them in rural areas like Upstate NY.
haha I have a scientific atlanta box… they still suck, but they’re not near as bad as what I’m hearing :p
Even if there were decent cable boxes and remotes, who cares? TV content is crap. I gave up watching 3 years ago.
Strange! This box DTH service is pretty cool and cheap in India !!
Agree++
Guess we are luckier in the UK, nice looking boxes: http://www.lord.../Sky-HD_box.jpg and good looking, wast to use UI: http://www.radi...s/skyhd_epg.jpg
the box looks nicer (looks like an xbox 360), but that UI still isn’t my cup of tea. nicer though for sure.
That screenshot didn’t really do the Sky EPG much justice. It’s extremely good, has good search capability too. As far as set-top boxes go I think it’s probably the best in the world. That’s not to say it couldn’t get a whole lot better.
Note the remote is excellent as well.
Check out this link to the moxi box from motorola.
http://www.zatz...04/moxi-box.jpg
its great.
In general, you will agree that satellite boxes have a much better UI and generally offer better price.
Too bad the on-demand space is never going to work for them through satellite.
AT&T U-verse is a worthy alternative, but bringing their wired solution to you could take forever, literally.
If that picture shows what the Sky EPG is like then this article still holds true.
That is one ugly user-interface, surely Sky can do better?
Everything will change in 3 years. Mark my words.
marked. i hope so. even that seems like a long time.
You forgot to mention how the cable box goes down for 20 minutes at midnight every night and can’t display channel listings because they are “updating”.
yeah, another brilliant feature.
Dumped my Time=Warner hi-end($$$$), crappy, digital tier cable and associated boxes three months ago and bought a Roku for Netflix streaming. Coupled with basic cable and TV Guide on my Sony I couldn’t be happier. I’ll never have one of their boxes in my house again-well, maybe if they had ala carte-no that’s never gonna happen. As I said, I’ll never have one of their boxes again. Go Roku and you’ll never go back!
I asked clearly three times were there any other charges? His reply “no”. About 10 years ago we had competing cable companies. The gov’t decided to have only one back then. Now I just signed my daughter up for cable internet only in her apartment. It took a month to get the install and the bill was 30% higher than I was quoted! I called and after a very long conversation they adjusted the bill. So if you live in the Louisville, KY USA area, check your bill.
By a TiVo HD, get two cable cards from your cable company (I got mine from RCN for about $10), and die happy. You’ll have a nice interface, Netflix, Amazon, and many other online streaming formats, a brilliant DVR, and no more headaches.
Add a tuning adapter in there as well (switched video support), which while free now will be another charge soon. Cable companies hate to support cable cards as well, its nothing but a headache to get them to install them and support them, the whole time they try and push you to their DVR. I love my TiVo and wish they could do better lets hope the Series 4 and Tru2Way actually come, or maybe Cisco will do something with Scientific Atlanta to change this as they make most of the boxes I’ve seen.
My cable guy (RCN) was actually pretty cool and the company responded fairly quickly (for a cable company) with no upsell (I already had their DVR, which I removed). The cable guy said that he had spent the whole day installing cable cards in TiVos and it was the first day he had ever installed them. I made sure to have the TiVo instructions on how to install them right there so he didn’t screw it up. Over all, though, it was a fairly easy process, and completely worth it.
Gotta agree with the TiVo HD option. I immediately added a 1-TB HD for over 1000 hrs of programming. Dual tuners, HD, streaming vid (via the home network option), pics and vid viewing as well as music from my PC, etc. It rocks.
The only downside at this time, is that lack of two way cable cards. I love the elimination of a Comcast box, but occasionally miss the On-Demand features.
BTW, get a decent programmable remote. Well worth the money. I have had the Pronto for years, and just picked up a used color Pronto Pro for a song. Some work programming up front, but HUGE dividends in ease of use and lack of clutter from 5 remotes laying around. My technically disinclined wife loves being able to start up the whole home theater system and be watching in seconds with just a push of a couple buttons.
I agree. I use Logitech Harmony 880 and I love it. It has the form factor of the TiVo remote, but allows you to switch between activities with a single button push.
My cable branded DVR only shows the guide in 4:3, on a 16:9 television. It’s blue and purple, and pretty hideous. But, it works.
Progress is good, but it’s an extra headache. As soon as they start to change them, they’re going to have a lot of people calling for help, and screaming “if it wasn’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Man, this really drives me crazy. As a comcast customer (which I like better than DirecTV), I feel trapped. I was thinking of adding Apple TV to the mix, but I’m miffed that Apples does not offer a browser with that. So then I thought I’d just drop in a Mac mini and go the PVR route, but (and there always seems to be a “but”), I’m waiting to see if the new mini has surround sound and maybe a Blue-ray.
It’s been about three years since I’ve had cable. Have I missed it? Not in the least. I get a few whines from the wife every now and then, but that’s about it. I got an Apple TV box about two and a half years ago, and to be honest, it has been all that I really need. Well, along with Netflix, that is. Overall, I’m perfectly happy. If I ever really need a fix for a TV show, and if Netflix doesn’t have what I’m looking for, and if I don’t want to purchase it through Apple TV, all I usually have to do is go and visit the network site for the show and I’m good to go.
In defence of cable boxes…
At least the channel number is legible. That’s all I really need to see. My new Samsung BluRay has a digital display that you would need to be within 6 feet to see.
They’ve also upped the functionality significantly, even while the industrial design is pretty much unchanged.
Ten years ago, my cable box showed one channel at a time. I felt I was pretty smart because I used a cable splitter to bypass the cable box, meaning I could watch one channel (broadcast-only) while taping another.
Now, not only do I not need the splitter to watch two channels (thanks to Fios dual-tuner), I don’t even need the VCR. I can even tape two channels at one time.
Digital signals are also neat – I used to get ghosting on some cable channels!
I’m not going to defend everything about the industry, but I think if we’re focusing our attention on how the box *looks*, we must be pretty happy with how it *works*.
I am a Comcast customer and the box doesn’t even work well. It has a horrible UI, but I could get over that if the thing worked well. I can’t customize the channels that show up in my guide ( I have to scroll through hundreds of channels I can’t even access. This drives me insane.), and every time Comcast changes the channel line up all of my DVR settings are messed up. I am really close to getting a Tivo, but I just don’t want to spend any more money than I am already tossing over to Comcast.
On FiOS, there’s a search UI for Guide+DVR. You wanna DVR Curb Your Enthusiasm? Grab the remote, press DVR, click search, click “C-U-R”. Highlight selection, press record. Done.
Typing is done the same way we used to enter our names on the old skool nintendo hi-score boards.
Dish Network has boxes that are waaaaay better than anything I’ve seen from cable. Two examples:
1. The channel guide is fully customizable. With one button you can cycle through the following:
All channels, subscribed channels ONLY (this is killer), HD channels only, and multiple custom lists. I made my custom list and leave the guide on this setting 95% of the time. I can go “around the channels” in 4 pages instead of about 40 pages. It’s absolutely incredible how much better this is than the static channel guide you get with TW or Charter in my area.
2. Text can be entered on a phone-style keyboard so you don’t have to use the on-screen keyboard at all if you don’t want to. It’s much faster this way.
I miss my days with Dish Network. They do have a great DVR.
Where can I get am Elmo remote like the kid has above that will work with my cable box?
i’m sure you can find it on amazon or the like
Over the past four years I have moved quite a bit around CT and MA…. I have had Comcast, Cablevision, Charter, AT&T U-Verse, and now RCN.
They all have their downfalls but the best UI and smallest (nicest) cable box was AT&T. They have a small remote and the best cable UI I have seen… but they’re only in a few (small) markets.
AT&T U-Verse has came a long way from when it was first introduced in my market area. They are getting ready to add streaming support to view media from your PC. Hope it works as well as I think it should.
I could write pages on this. I work for a small cable/broadband/telco. We would love to offer better tech at a reasonable price. Smaller boxes, netword DVR, etc. I’m on the road and can comment more intelligently and completely this afternoon, but the just of it is Moto and SA/Cisco control over 90% of the US market. Europe has over 200 cable box choices. How? Essentially the FCC allows it.
agreed. this needs to change. hopefully people won’t stop bitching about it until it does.
But to say the it’s the fault of the cable companies is a little misleading. Sure Comcast and TW have a lot to do with the lack of innovation, but it’s really not their fault that cablecard technology is crippled by the duopoly of Cisco (which purchased Scientific Atlanta a few years ago) and Motorola. They don’t allow anyone else to connect to their headend equipment and the FCC hasn’t licensed other box manufacturers to compete with them. One company I’ve talked to that’s giving it a shot is evolution broadband (http://www.evolutionbb.com). They gave a private demo of their tech at a conference a few weeks ago…boxes the size of a blackberry that hang on the back of an HD. DVRs are a little bigger, but still much smaller. They are fighting the duopoly but it’s a major investment for a cable company to update the headend equipment to work with a next generation set top.
Go get Verizon FiOS and all your complaints for the most part will be absolved. Their FiOS TV Guide GUI is the sleekest I’ve seen for a cable box and price is cheaper than other cable providers here in Hampton Roads VA area.
I switched to AT&T’s U-Verse the week it was first available in my neighborhood (knowing there were going to be some glitches early on) simply because I had to get away from TWC of the Carolinas. I don’t think its a coincidence that the first month U-Verse was available in the Raleigh market, TWC announced they were adding 15-20 more HD channels (we’ve had one of the lowest HD offerings of any major market in the country and this still doesn’t bring them up to par with AT&T’s offerings) plus started trying to lock customers into 2-year contracts.
Has anyone checked out the GUI with the At&t U-Verse systems? These were recently upgraded and are very nice and slick. The boxes themselves are very nice looking. Mind you, it’s still just a box, but at least it is a DVR that is about 3/5 the size of the Moto boxes.
Most cable company’s have a GUI that looks like it was built in the 80’s. And a box that looks like a recycled VCR. I don’t know why they don’t go with a smaller box like the Apple TV or what U-Verse uses.
Here’s hoping that we will get better designed boxes in the very near feature!
Couldn’t agree more, here in Westchester NY it’s Cablevision who has (had) the stranglehold, and the service was absolutely unacceptable (internet outages almost daily during humid months, with no tech that could figure out why.)
I absolutely loathed Cablevision.
Then, one day in the summer of 07, I saw Verizon bucket trucks quietly stringing new cables across the poles up and down our neighborhood.
It took me at least 12 months before I finally made the switch – don’t know what took me so long. Still thrilled with the service: slick onsceen display, multi-room DVR, crisp HD, rewind *any* channel live (seriously, they must be streaming from master DVRs at the hub)
Motorola makes the FiOS hardware – and they obviously know what they’re doing… its a great product. All boxes/modems talk to each other over wireless, including their “widgets”: onscreen TV overlays display of real-time weather, news, sports, traffic, twitter, facebook streams. So the cable boxes now talk to the web (imagine that. Wild.)
And the techs that come to your house actually know what they’re talking about. Unlike the boneheaded cable drones.
And… wait for it… month over month, yes — it’s cheaper than cable for the same package.
FiOS is a great product that is light years ahead of cable. (I swear I don’t work for Verizon)
Actually the boxes communicate over the Coax, not wireless.
Verizon FIOS has the best UI experience from any cable provider. I have never used my crappy remote they give you though. Get a Logitech Harmony remote and all your problems will be solved. You can even get an RF remote if you want to hide the ugly box in a cabinet. Works great, problem solved.
More shilling for Apple by MG.
I have Cablevision. My cable box is fine, my DVR works fine, and I don’t think my remote is ugly. Just because it doesn’t look like “Apple stuff” doesn’t mean it’s ugly.
Also, clearly, you know nothing about the set-top box hardware development, software certification process, or even the cable industry itself. Apple has no desire to get into the set-top box business and they won’t.
Not every perceived problem in the technology world can be solved by Apple–please realize this.
a) okay then you must be right and everyone else here is wrong
b) apple is in set top box business – just not the cable box business.
This has probably been said before but where I live the box is 2x as big as a laptop with 10000x less power, and the update takes forever… and is done on the same wire that my Internet connection is using where I can download full movies in only a couple of minutes…
That just doesn’t make sense to me.
wow comcast must really suck…I have time warner and I think it could not get any worse!
We wrote this report on cable box UIs in 2003 (http://www.teeh.../PVR_Report.pdf). 6 years later it’s all still true because the UIs HAVEN’T CHANGED.
The technological hurdle for the average person is too great but if you are willing to invest the time, there are many great solutions out there (Boxee/XBMC I’m looking at you).
In the UK the Sky boxes are pretty cedent looking, the interface, is pretty quick and the design, while having not changed for a while, has evolved into something that is easy to use. even the remote is easy to use, and fairly good quality. Luckily as market leaders they set the standard for others to follow also. http://www.sky....cts/skytv/skyhd
sorry decent looking*
I have AT&T Uverse and internet but I’m planning on removing it and just keeping my internet service. I anxiously waiting for my Roku box so I can stream Netflix movies and shows. This is the story that convinced me to to the Netflix way: http://www.wire...7-10/ff_netflix
Now I’ll be left with just my local digital channels which apparently are now more in number than the choices I had with the previous local analog channels. The only thing is that I still haven’t bought an HDTV so I need to get a digital-to-analog converter.
I still need a DVR to record my local channels because my wife likes to catch up on her soaps later in the evening and I don’t always have time to watch the local news at the time it is broadcasted.
So I’m searching for a DVR with a built-in TV tuner so that I will only need to buy one box instead of two boxes: a converter and a DVR. The most promising one so far is the DTV Pal made by DishNetwork that does not require a service plan. It has a dual TV tuner to watch and record another channel simultaneously. It also converts to analog. http://www.dish...tvpal/dvr.shtml
Here are some other possibilities that might work for you:
1. Archos TV+ http://www.arch...=au&lang=en
2. Freeview available in UK and hoping it some to US soon http://www.freeview.co.uk/
3. Sky Box available in UK. http://www.sky....s/skytv/skyplus
4. EchoStar TR-50 OTA DVR, http://ces.cnet...9840910-67.html
Good luck!
Dude, if you think Comcast in SF is bad, check out the crap they’ve got in Washington, DC. I’ve literally never hated watching TV as much as I did out there. (I’ve lived in both places).
I agree 100% with MG here. Maybe it’s time for IPTV to make a comeback? Perhaps it was too early for the market to accept it a few years ago, but what about now?
When they tried to rent me one 8 years ago.
I called it an insult to everybody working in the tech industry and voted with my wallet. Seems that didn’t help.
Dude,
I have Comcast and you’re right. But check out Sezmi http://www.sezmi.com if want all that stuff corrected, and Internet surfing as well.
First we need more competition between the different cable company! Right now I only have one cable company that has very limited options. I thought monopolies were illegal.
When I was on cable I only used one box, from Comcast, and the only time I saw the menu was finding on demand stuff for the kids, but it was terrible. All my other sets had a Tivo hooked up and I was happy with that. But last year we switched over to FIOS TV, and now we are stuck with converter boxes (at least until I upgrade the Tivo setups). I usually use a Tivo to control the box, but I have to do into them occasionally for on demand shows, and I find them hideous – at least as bad as the Comcast setup.
The remotes are absolutely terrible. The boxes are slow. The interface is ugly. And that’s the not part that pisses me off the most about them.
As I said, I only go into the On Demand area for kids shows. When you are in the On Demand section, Verizon has a promo trailer thing running in the upper corner showing what’s great that you should rent. Now I have no objection to that in general, but when you click into the “Browse Kids Shows” part of the menu, don’t you think that you could tone that one back a bit so that my 4 year olds aren’t being bombarded with scenes and sounds from Saw or Friday the 13th part 800? What the hell people – it shouldn’t be that hard to fix.
Then again, you’d probably have to hire a UI designer and a coder who actually know what they are doing. But that seems cheap to me for what you’d get out of it.
And don’t bash on Fisher Price. That Sesame Street remote you have the picture of looks way more usable and user friendly than the POS that Verizon hands out. I thought it would be hard to top the Comcast remote for bad design, until we got the FIOS remotes. We have a new winner!
I agree, don’t bash Fisher-Price. I used to work there and they do an amazing amount of user testing in their Play Lab. They design products so that two and three-year-olds can figure them out.
okay sorry, didn’t realize there were so many fisher price fans above the age of 5
It’s the content that really sucks on cable (and satellite too.) Occasionally I can find something good, but frequently, it’s 200 channels and there’s nothing on.
Endless Spongebob Squarepants marathons just make me wish Steel Angel Kurumi would come and destroy the cable company’s headquarters. Or maybe the crew of the Serenity would blow their satellites out of the sky, it’s really that bad.
We’ve got like 60 years of Television, but the truth is that Flintstones are better than 95% of the cartoons made since then and that Get Smart is still one of the best sitcoms ever made. Yes, some really excellent TV is being made today (Mad Men) but the endless stream of “get poor fast” stock market advice, “get fat fast” infomercials, hyperreality shows and other garbage betrays the power of television to tell big stories and create engrossing worlds and characters.
It’s downloads and optical disks for me.
I’m sure other people have already said it here but Verizon’s UI is MUCH better than any cable companies’ cable box UI I’ve seen. I cringe everytime I visit family and see Time Warner’s absolutely horrible UI on their 40″+ TV. Unfortanately I’m in the military so I’m dreading the day when I have to move somewhere that’s dominated by Comcast.
Out of curiosity, why single out cable? Cable is currently the only video provider that DOESN’T require a set-top box. With most cable providers you can get basic analog service without a digital package. Granted, that is changing as cable migrates its content to digital to make more space for broadband and other services.
However, two different satellite options are available nationwide and serve more than 30% of the country (what monopoly?). Yet those satellite companies require a set-top box. Verizon’s FiOS is growing every day, yet it requires a set-top box. In both cases, the set-top boxes are often built by the same companies that build cable’s.
We actually just covered this exact topic on our blog. I encourage you to take a look.
http://www.cabl...-about-the-box/
We get that people have issues with the STB, which is why we have developed tru2way standards that will allow CE manufacturers to bring you cable without them. That’s why we also support an all-MVPD solution that will allow any video device to work with any TV, regardless of the video provider (just as we did with cable modems).
What I don’t get, is why you take the easy out and blame cable for something that applies equally to all digital video providers.
because their experience sucks. satellite, in my experience is leaps and bounds better.
I don’t know what planet you other Fios people are on.
I have Fios Internet (which is awesome) along with the HD television package and guess what I have to use? One of those wonderful Motorola boxes.
I experience the same user interface problems (slow, not that easy to use) as I did with Comcast’s service. My roommate can’t figure out how to set House on the DVR – it should be easy enough for ANYONE to do it, shouldn’t it?
I’m with MG – Motorola needs a swift kick in the ass or they need fired. Their boxes aren’t cutting it anymore.
good to know, i heard relatively good experiences with FIOS, but maybe they mainly meant the internet. why all these companies use these shitty boxes is beyond me, their service can be great, but it’s all filtered through that crap.
Ahhh stop whinging and get Media Center set up. Yes, it’s an epic PITA to get configured and they’ve only just recently let you hook premium cable up to it but at least you’ve got the option with CableCard of WMC, TiVO or the crappy supplied box. Once WMC (on 7 at least) is set up it’s amazingly reliable and has a slick-as-hell interface. Chuck in a couple of 360’s as extenders and your good to go.
Here in the UK if you want subscription TV by satellite or cable there are no legal requirements for open standards. I *can* get Sky (premium satellite) into MCE without doing any lame D-A-D conversion but it’s a hell of a hack and totally unsupported by Sky and they’d have a duck fit if they knew.
Mr. Siegler says:
“Others will say, “Get a TiVo.” It does have a great remote, but again, why would people get yet another box for the living room when the DVR through the cable company is cheaper (though much, much worse)?”
In my personal experience this was not the case. My TiVo replaced my cablebox, so no box was added. Furthermore, the price was a wash. Renting the HD box from Comcast was about $10 a month. When that was returned and replaced with a TiVo, that cost was replaced by renting CableCARD at about $3 a month. I bought a 3 year package for TiVo (lifetime was not offered at the time) for about $300, coming out to about $8.33 a month. That plus CableCARD rental comes to $11.33/month, or $1.33/month more than box rental.
Now I don’t know if Comcast charges more for DVR on a monthly rate these days, but at the time I was very surprised that TiVo only cost me an extra $1.33/month.
My only device with slower response and suckier remote than my cable box is my Blu-Ray player. HD has robbed me of all the advancements of the last 20 years.
I have Cox RI and their UI is TERRIBLE. The UI looks like something from the mid nineties and likely is. I don’t fully blame the box manufactures, it’s the software put on them. We have the same Motorola box that our friends with FiOS have, and their UI is pretty slick, much nicer than ours.
Has anyone used Boxee or Hulu desktop? These are decent UI’s and offer access to pretty decent content (excluding live content). If you have an old PC laying around it could be converted to your TV source for free.
Has anybody else used the Motorola Moxi? When we lived in a Charter Cable area we were given a Moxi box as our rental DVR. It had a good, responsive remote, user friendly UI, and FF/RW functionality that actually worked like a TIVO. It was great. Now we live in Comcast’s domain and we barely use the DVR features anymore because FFing through commercials takes as much time as just watching the commercials.
nope, haven’t had charter, sounds nice though.
You should try the MOXI box from Motorola. UI is great. The cable company tried to make me change my box out ( probably because it is cheaper for them) and I threw a shit fit. So they let me keep it. You should be able to go buy one and use it with your service. It even has a cool ticker feature that lets you see the live scores on all the sports games and news. Here is a pic of the UI.
http://www.zatz...04/moxi-box.jpg
Nobody seems to remember back in the 80’s when everything became cable ready! What a great time that was! You didn’t need a cable box and you could buy a VCR or TV that didn’t need any assistance from the cable company.
I realize cable has come a long way since then. I want cable to be a utility just like my phone, gas, water. Give me the cable so I can hook it up to what I want where ever I want and let me handle it from there.
Imagine your TIVO without cable cards, and that nice little charge for them.
Comcast DOES have a monopoly. I’ve seen that the biggest problem is that since digital cable came out, quality become crappy (squaring up, wait’s on channels, etc.) than when we never even heard of digital cable. Not to mention that when digital cable came out, all the premium channels moved to digital, then gradually all the pay per view channels. After they were done with them the took channels like scifi and ifc off of basic cable. I’m to the point right now that due to the crappy cable service and the degrading quality of shows the networks put out, I will rely on the internet and netflix for what shows I do watch.
More true words have never been spoken.
In my opinion, the problem is part box, part provider.
There are basically only 2 main box producers for the US Market: Motorola and RCA. The hardware is basically unchanged over recent years.
But each provider has their own UI and utilizes the hardware features in different ways. We could have 20 different companies competing to make boxes and it wouldn’t mean jack if the providers didn’t change their UI.
I am a FiOS user and though I love the price and channel line up, the box still sucks and the UI is different than Comcast but not any better, in my opinion.
good stuff.
on the East Coast AT&T customers have it lucky with u-verse (based on MediaRoom from MS I think, and very similar interface to the Windows Media Center you get in non-basic versions of Windows Vista/7)
I would love to be able to rely on Media Center with a pair of OCUR tuners at home and do away with the cable box, but Comcast crippled OCUR so it’s one-way only, so you can’t request on-demand content … once again creating a sub-standard experience.
Ironically here in Washington we used to have a Microsoft designed interface that was very similar to the Media Center Guide on the Comcast set top boxes but a couple of years ago they swapped back to something that looked (and performed) like it had been designed by an intern in 1972
We watch more Netflix and Hulu now than Craptastic Cable … I would love to see a la carte channel selection (heck, a la carte programming even) delivered via IPTV…. hmmm… isn’t that called BitTorrent
If the CrunchPad actually happens, maybe it could have a sibling, the CunchBox?
sounds good.
Monopoly means never having to say you’re sorry.
SageTV. That’s all I have to say.