At home I have ComCast Digital Cable with Internet.  I’ve had it for about 4 years now, and after some initial problems it’s been pretty good.  Because of the digital cable, I have a Pace Set-Top box that’s connected to my TV, that’s in charge of changing channels and such.  It’s from Time-Warner, but Comcast apparently supports it and it’s worked just fine.  Until last week.

While I was gone to VisWeek last week, Comcast pushed out new Firmware to the set-top boxes.  I didn’t find out about it until I got back, and I have to admit: it’s terrible.  Let me break down what’s wrong with it:

  1. They didn’t save any of my settings (specifically the "Favorite" channels). 
  2. The new interface is easily 3x-5x slower than before.  Hit the "Guide" button and prepare to wait approx 5s for it to appear. Changing channels easily takes 2-3seconds where it used to be instant.
  3. Because the interface is so slow, it’s hard to actually select a channel from the guide because you constantly "overshoot".
  4. The new Guide doesn’t seem to properly cache data.  Routinely throughout the day it will freeze with "Please wait.. Retrieving new data".
  5. You can’t flip through favorites with the Guide up.  Hitting the Favorite button will close the guide and switch to the next Favorite channel.
  6. The new show descriptions lead off with the Actors, not the textual description.. Making the description pretty much useless in Guide view.
  7. In guide view, you can no longer view by Theme or Show title, only time.  After some digging, I found out that you can.. They call it "Changing Search Order".
  8. In guide view, they actually show the 5min "filler" shows on channels like Disney.  I’m sorry, but knowing that "H" comes on in 20 minutes isn’t helpful.
  9. The power-button no longer does Reboot

And many more.. It’s a complete disaster of a User Interface.  Why did they do it?  Presumably because they’ve now consolidated all of their On-Demand channels into a single channel (Channel 1), and they now force you to navigate another nightmare of poorly-named Menus to find shows.  I was a big fan of BBC America On-Demand, and it took me a good 5 minutes to find out where they hid that in the new menus.

I post this in hopes of finding other kindred spirits that feel this firmware is a huge step BACKWARDS in usability and functionality, and maybe together we can get some attention on the matter.  If you similarly feel jaded by this, comment here! [tag:comcast][tag:settop][tag:firmware]

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