Okay, it doesn't really suck, but my DVR has some really annoying bugs. It has a lot of great features that work perfectly, and if you've never owned a DVR, and watch any TV at all, you're really missing out. I don't think I'm exaggerating at all when I say it will completely change the way you watch TV. You may watch more or less, record shows more or less, use the more advanced features or not, but it WILL change you in some way or another.

When DVR's first came out, there were some interesting marketing choices. It was originally pitched to the VCR crowd, the type that tape things a lot (like daily soap operas), the housewives and couch potatoes who live and breathe by their TV shows. This was somewhat effective, but the fact is that those people already knew how to work their VCR very well (after lots of practice and learning the quirks of their particular box), and didn't see a need for some new gadget they'd have to learn. They know how to start recording at 8:58 and end at 11:02, and they read their TVGuide and know when new shows are coming on, or when their old ones are on hiatus. Sure, it's a better device to record stuff, but mine works just fine, right?

Where DVR's really started to shine is when people who don't watch TV discovered them. Counterintuitive, right? These are the business types who have more important things to do than read the TVGuide (and probably don't get one anyway). The types that get fed up watching a 42 minute show and 18 minutes of stupid commercials. They hear great things about TV shows, but they're not always home at that time, or are already in bed, or don't know if they get that channel. Set up the VCR to record them? Why bother? That's something the kids know how to do, I'd have to get out the instruction manual to even turn the thing on.

But with a DVR, it sets its own time and downloads the TVGuide. It "reads" through the guide and finds your show, whenever it's on, whatever channel. It can record two shows at once, and even a few minutes extra if it needs to. It uses a hard drive, so there's no need to keep track of and mark your tapes (or the kids' tape, or the wife's, etc.) How many times did I have this conversation: "Hey can I use this tape?" "Only the first two hours, I've still got that movie on it that I haven't watched." It was the Dark Ages! And this is just the basic functionality that you can find in any DVR, it doesn't even address the more advanced features. The TiVo boxes even go so far as to predict your taste in programming and record things it thinks you'll enjoy. To give you an example, I recently started watching House. I asked the DVR to record all instances of House, and a few days later I had a backlog of primetime, late night, on- and off-channel repeats that had appeared.

My first experience with a DVR was during the second half of my M.Eng year. Rob, Dave and I had a sweet setup with a projector and Dave's stereo and DVD player running a basic HD cable package. Only problem was we were paying about $55/month but were hardly getting any use out of it. I was downloading TV shows from the Internet or watching DVD's most of the time. We had gotten into LOST and a few other current TV shows, but it was difficult to keep up cause we were all pretty busy and didn't live very close to campus. We discussed getting a VCR, but nobody really wanted to put out money for one of those. We finally settled on renting the Time Warner Cable DVR, which would run about $10/month (about $60 total, same as a VCR would have cost). To look at it another way, we could spend $55/month and hardly utitlize the gorgeous HD features, or pay $65 and get a better bang for our buck. Well, we opted for the DVR and were immediately hooked. It was quickly apparent that we could never go back to being DVR-less (I have one at my place, so does Rob in NYC, and I think Dave might even have one.)

You can imagine my disappointment, though, when I moved to PA and got a Comcast DVR (It's Comcastic!) and discovered tons of little bugs and quirks with it. (I think Comcastic may mean "bad user experience" but I'm not sure.) Since then, my opinion of the Time Warner DVR has only gone up, now that I realize how incredibly intuitive and easy to use it was. It should be noted that the CC DVR is a Motorola box, so I find it hard to believe that the fault is with them. It's more likely that whatever operating software Comcast loads onto its machines is badly designed (similar to some of the issues with Verizon's software on the Motorola RAZR).

Picture in Picture
On both the Time Warner and Comcast boxes, you can watch one channel while you record another. You would think this would easily translate to a PIP functionality. It certainly did on the TW box, which would normally come up with a message that said your program was about to start, and your PIP would switch to the recording (leaving you to continue watching your current program). The CC box has PIP buttons on the remote, but they don't actually do anything.

Start up Channel
This refers to the channel that comes up when you turn on the cable box. On the really old boxes (like 10 years ago) the box always reverted to channel 2 when you powered down. This made some sense because it was the first channel in the lineup. It usually just contained scrolling pictures of houses or information on last week's school board election or something, but it was harmless. The TW box had some preset channel that it tuned in, but it was customizable. You could program it to always start up on the same channel you turned off, or you could have it revert to a specific channel (we programmed in ESPN). The CC box, however, is set to tune to channel 8 aka CN8, aka Comcast's original programming channel. There is no setting to change this, it's either channel 8 or you leave the box on all the time. (But by golly, I can change the colors and font sizes on my onscreen menus!! Spanish anyone?) I find this offensive. CN8 is a channel that probably no one in the world would turn on if it wasn't for the fact that millions of Comcast subscribers are forced to. Although I've occasionally caught the end of a good interview with Steve Adubato or Lynn Doyle (and that lady with the sandwich maker gets me every time on Saturday morning, I love that infomercial!), my life would be perfectly complete if I never ever looked at this channel. Why can't I choose to put on Spike, or Discovery, or Noggin, or any other channel on the menu, I don't care, I'll even take the Golf Channel.

Recording two programs at once
Both boxes allow you to record two programs at once, as long as you're actually watching one of those programs. (You can also watch a third option if it's saved on your DVR already.) On the TW box, a message would come up saying the channel was about to change, and it would switch to one of the recording programs at the start time. If you tried to change the channel, a message would come up saying, "Would you like to (a) stop recording, or (b) switch to your other program" so you could easily flip back and forth between the two programs you're recording. On the CC box, it (seemingly randomly) chooses one of the channels you're recording and doesn't let you change over. If you try to change the channel a message comes up saying, "Would you like to (a) continue recording, do not change channel or (b) stop recording, change channel." Not only is that annoying, but I've often hit (b) by accident because the wording is so confusing! If I want to watch the other program I'm recording, I'm forced to go to the DVR menu and pull it up that way, with only the option of watching it from the beginning, and not from the current time.

One more thing on that subject, there's a very strange bug that prevents you from recording two programs at once because it seems to think you're trying to record 3! It's hard to describe, but this is how it usually happens: I try to record WB/CW from 8-9, ABC from 8-9:02, and Comedy Central from 9:00-9:30. Look closely, there is never a time when more than two programs are supposed to record. However, the Comcast DVR will refuse to record Comedy Central. If it started recording at 9:02, I'd be okay with that, but no, it just cancels it. I have to manually sit there and tell it to record after 9:02 to make it happen. The TW box would simply record as much as it could if there was a conflict, including a partial program if it couldn't do better.

Power On/Off
There's really three issues here. First, if the CC box is recording, I can't turn off the cable box. If I try to, I get a variation on the recording message above: "Would you like to (a) continue recording, do not power off or (b) stop recording, power off." RETARDED!!! Why does displaying the images on the screen have anything to do with recording? Even VCR's have a better interface than that. As you may have guessed, the TW box handled this just fine. When I clicked the power button it would... wait for it... POWER OFF!!! Not ask me if I was sure, or give me an ultimatum, just freakin turn off the display.

Another issue is, of course, power on. If the CC box is recording it automatically comes on (since it apparently can't record while off). Inexplicably, it also mutes the sound. I guess this is because if your TV happened to be on and a recording started, it would immediately flicker to life. Of course it does this anyway, but at least the sound doesn't come on too. The only problem with this is that the universal remote is only set to control your TV's volume (not the DVR's). To change this, you have to go into the setup mode on the remote and "unlock" the volume so you can control it. I had to go to the internet and download the instructions to figure out what the secret code was!

The adventure doesn't end there. If I go through all that trouble, and actually get the sound back so I can watch a program, the DVR still shuts off when it's done recording. So if I turn on the DVR at 9:15 and start watching a program, the box will shut off when it's finished recording (say, at 10), despite the fact that I've been pushing buttons and viewing a program for the last 45 minutes and clearly want to continue!

Priority List
The DVR has a priority list that it uses to resolve conflicts. For instance, if I try to record too many programs at once (and I don't resolve the conflict myself), it will only record the higher-ranked programs. The actual function of this list has been okay, I don't think it's ever tried to record something with the wrong priority. However, after one year of use, this is what the ordered list looked like:

1 2 3 4 4 5 6 8 9 10 11 12 13 15

DOES THAT LOOK LIKE A UNIQUE LIST OF ORDERED VALUES, COMCAST?! DUPLICATE VALUES? MISSING VALUES? THIS IS A BASIC DATABASE FUNCTION THAT ANY PROGRAM SHOULD BE ABLE TO HANDLE!!!1! I couldn't figure out how to fix it, so I just deleted all my favorite programs and reprogrammed them in.

Blank Screen
This is perhaps the strangest bug in the CC box. Sometimes, for weeks or months on end, for no apparent reason, the TV picture will simply not come on. You just get a black screen. You can pull up the onscreen guide, and access the DVR, even change the channel, but all you get is a black screen. It's only when you play something on the DVR (just for a second, then you can exit out) that the screen comes back. This was very frustrating the first time it happened! I thought there was something wrong with the cable, and came back a few hours later to discover the problem was still there. In an effort to watch something, I switched on a recorded program from the DVR, and when it was done, lo and behold, the picture was back. I switched the box off and then on again, and once again the picture was gone. Access the DVR, exit, the picture is back. What makes this even stranger, is that a few months later, it magically reverted back to normal! And a few months after that, it was back to the bug.

I did a little test and started just leaving the box on (as long as I turn off the TV, it doesn't matter, right? This also helps with the Power On/Off issue above.) A few weeks ago, I came home to find the picture out again. When I performed the fix (by accessing the DVR), the picture came back. What really boggles my mind is that I could then rewind back and view the program that was playing during the "blackout." Let me put it this way... even though the little bug meant that the box was not displaying live TV, it was still recording live TV (as it always does). This proves that there is no direct link (as I knew all along from my experience with the TW box) between displaying and recording a program, as the issues above would lead you to believe! So this "bug" is actually an accepted mode of operation, it's just behaving very erratically.

Beyond these issues, I also have complaints about the quality of the box. I think the hard drive is too small, and I'm pretty sure it has some dead spots on it that always result in skips or jumps in my recordings. (It's also weird that when I record anything, even a minute of a show, the DVR jumps from 0% to 15% full. The rest of it seems to fill at the appropriate rate, though.) A couple of times it's literally just rebooted itself for no apparent reason. These I can attibute to just normal wear and tear. I'm sure it's been in a few homes, and I would expect that from a cable company DVR (though I wish quality control was a little better). But the above issues have no excuse. They're simply bad programming and bad design due to Comcast using some crappy third-party software so they can display their name on screen. And that's what grinds my gears.