So entertained by the ads over there ----------->

I just noticed that Comcast ads are, in fact, showing up to the right. I love this because it's just kinda twisted.

it just... ended

Tonight a recording just ended early. Unceremoniously, and without warning. Just, it was at the end of the recording and the show wasn't over yet. I was only 15 minutes into the next hour, so I quickly deleted the recording and went to live TV to see if it was longer than scheduled and was still on or something. I was able to get to the beginning of the hour and the next show started right on the hour, so... it just wasn't there?

I would have gone back and double checked the recording, but there's no "recently deleted" file to look at what you just deleted on the off chance it was an accidental deletion.

Lose/lose. Thanks Comcast. I don't hate you at all. [sarcasm]

Watching a show that's still recording

So tonight I let Destination Truth go for about fifteen minutes before I started watching it. (I'm only fairly certain that anyone with a DVR has done this at some point or another.) Then I started watching the show from the recording, while it was still recording.

Okay, right? Sort of.

When I caught up with the live recording, which is common enough an occurrence when fast forwarding through various sections, the DVR couldn't cope with it. It'd start to act funny within a minute or so of real time. Twitchy and strange, I would say.
Once I caught up to real time the DVR froze and became completely unresponsive. Nothing. Nada. Frozen.

The fix here is to hit the "live" button. Okay, but really? This is just another case of how poorly designed the Comcast DVR is. The thing should smoothly transition into playing from the live portion, or at the very least stop just short of live and play from that point. But going all the way up and freezing? Lame.

Woke up this morning to frozen TV

I woke up this morning to my cable broadcast frozen on a scene of a man and women, in sunglasses, sitting in what looked like a limousine.

The play, pause, and rewind controls were unresponsive. The "LIVE" button had no effect at all.
Changing the channel appears to have fixed the problem. Such a quality piece of equipment [sarcasm].

Studdering DVR

Tonight the DVR got stuck into some weird loop. I've seen it a couple times before.

When I'm done viewing a recording, and delete it, the box automatically goes to "live" tv, which is all well and good. Then it stops about five to ten seconds in for no apparently reason. Hitting the "LIVE" button does no good. If you switch tuners so that it's on the other station, then switch back it plays the same five to ten second segment again, and stops again at the same place.

The only way to get out of the loop is to change channels away from the channel the loop is stuck on, and then change back again. It's easy enough to fix, but I'd hardly call it a feature.

It's just this sort of common, every day glitch that makes their DVR such a piece of junk.

Working!?!?!

I can't believe it's been a whole day or two with no errors? I think that starting this blog was exactly the right thing to do. If I hadn't then the thing would have kept breaking. Right?

Ads on this blog

I went ahead an activated ads on this blog. Not because I think I'm going to get rich off of this blog, but because I think it would be HILARIOUS if a Comcast ad showed up on this blog. Just waiting for it to happen.

Another botched recording

My DVR recording of Craig Ferguson from Wednesday night / Thursday morning is divided into two different recordings. One is 36 minutes long. One is 25 minutes long. That adds up to 61 minutes. The show is only 60 minutes long and I sincerely doubt that there's no break between the two episodes.

personal disclosure

I just think it should be said, I don't work for Comcast, nor any of its competitors. I'm currently working in higher education. I'm just an ordinary person, who is fed up with shoddy product. Since I have essentially two DVR choices, Comcast or TiVo I had to go with the more cost effective.

I used to have a TiVo, but as Comcast digitized the signal on its various channels the TiVo could no longer record those channels. I wouldn't know it was happening until I suddenly had a recording that was an hour of black screen. Nice.

So it was either fork over the money for a new TiVo and upgrade my service (more and more money) or tell them to eff off and give Comcast a try. Comcast is still cheaper, and I'm not wealthy. But the whole point of this blog being that their DVR sucks? I'm never certain that it was the correct choice, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it to my friends and family.

My advice? Avoid the Comcast DVR like the friggin' plague.

Anyway, I don't work for Comcast, nor do I work for any of its competitors. I never have. Ever. The company I work for, to my knowledge, provides no DVR or television services of any kind.

Frustration

Tonight my DVR is supposed to be recording Destination Truth for a few hours, during which Community and Bones were to be recording on the other station.

I watched Community off the DVR, and upon hitting "delete" to remove the recording the DVR locked up and become unresponsive. I waited about five minutes before figuring that it was gone (not the first time this has happened). I knew I'd be losing part of Bones, but I wasn't sure it was recording at this point anyway.

I unplugged the DVR, counted to 15, and then plugged it back in. When it came back on it was recording Bones but not Destination Truth. When I tried to go to the DVR to see why not the screens were all wrong and it was clear something wasn't rebooting correctly.
Upon hitting the DVR button I was sent directly to my current recordings, and not to the DVR options screen.

So I had to call the customer service number. This is where you have to push a million buttons to get a hold of an actual person. The "please tell me how I can help you" voice recognition never works so I don't bother any more. Tonight I learned that "F@ck off!" appears to bypass that crap. Then I want to box support somehow, but it only gave me options for a blue screen, "to be announced" screen, or remote control trouble. None of those were correct so I hit zero. It told me that it wasn't a correct option so I hit zero repeatedly, over and over about ten times. It then said that there was a long wait to talk to a CSR.

The guy was nice and I know the routine already. He asked what the problem was, and I told him. Then I told him that I needed him to reset my DVR and re-load the software remotely. It's not the first time I've had them do this, so I know what has to be done.

They ask for the phone number and address for the account, then the last four of my social security number. I find that sketchy, but whatever. I just want my DVR rebooted.

He then told me to wait 15 to 20 minutes and asked if there was anything else he could do. I said he was very nice but it'd be cool if he could note that their DVRs are a piece of junk and they really need to do something about that.
He suggested that he could schedule a service call and have someone come out and look at it. I'm pretty sure that they charge for those service calls, and what's the guy going to do? Agree with me that their DVRs are pieces of junk? Seriously, this is my second DVR with them and it's the exact same problems.

Why I started this blog...

At this point my experiences with my Comcast DVR have become comical. I thought maybe the first DVR I had from Comcast was the problem. It would spontaneously shut down and cut shows in half. It would lock up and become unresponsive until unplugged. It would try to record stations that I don't even get. It was just plain awful.

One day while on a customer service phone call the nice lady (I should note that the CSRs have always been very pleasant, even if a bit under trained) pointed out that I could take my DVR in for a free replacement since the one I had was clearly malfunctioning.

I now have a new DVR, going on two weeks now with the exact same problems. So I thought I'd create this blog so I could properly log all of the wonderful things that this piece of junk DVR does for me. I honestly sometimes can't believe that I'm paying for this thing