After being happy DirecTV and TiVo customers for over seven years, we are now Time-Warner Cable subscribers again and I hate it. Why would we switch when we were happy? The short version is that ABM got aggravated with a bad customer service rep at DirecTV and immediately switched us over to Time-Warner. Now we are stuck with a service that I hate for at least a year.
Before I go any further, let me say that we've been using TW for our internet and phone service for at least two years. I've been happy with the service. Never once have we had problems with the phone, and cable internet is much better than the DSL we had before. However, the TV is another story.
My main frustration is with the DVR. We have the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HDC unit. The installer said that it was one of the newer units that they offer. I think they need to go back to the drawing board with it. Why do I hate this DVR? Let me count the ways:
--The interface is clunky. There is little differentiation between the guide for shows that are airing now and the list of on-demand and recorded shows.
--The guide only goes six days ahead, compared to two weeks with TiVo. I finished watching a show on Friday night and wanted to set the DVR to record the next episode (which was airing the next Friday night according to the previews), but the guide only had listings up to Thursday!
--The season pass function is hit-or-miss. Even if you set up a season pass for a show, it doesn't always record the show. I find that we have to double-check every week whether our shows are set to record.
--The TW DVR doesn't warn you when the season pass you are about to set will conflict with other season passes. It warns you if you are setting individual episodes but not season passes.
--There is a delay every time you hit Play, Rewind, or Fast-Forward. ABM is an impatient man; he triple-clicks the mouse if the computer doesn't respond quickly enough. So you know he is a button-masher with this remote. Unfortunately, if you press too many times, it just freezes up.
--I've already had to reboot the DVR four times in the two months since we've had it. The only time the TiVo rebooted was when we had a power outage and then it rebooted itself. The TW DVR just sat there; I didn't even know what was wrong with it and rebooted it out of frustration.
--The last straw is that yesterday we noticed we are starting to get messed-up recordings. A show that we watched live while it was recording looked perfectly fine. When ABM tried to watch the recorded version a few hours' later, the last five minutes was lost. It was all pixelated and the audio was skipping. The same thing happened to me this morning.
All in all, I would not recommend this DVR to anyone. I'm not the only person who feels that way. At the end of episode 133 of TWiT, Jonathan Coulton rants about this DVR, as well. Since we have a one-year contract, I will be doing research this week to see if we can use a TiVo DVR with Time-Warner's service.
6 comments:
Thanks for the info. Haven't had that many problems with mine, but my TW DVR is new. The one it replaced was terrible.
Hellbob & I were also VERY happy DirecTV & DirecTivo customers for several years. We did the switchover probably about the same time you did. Our reason was almost entirely financial: Doing the 3-way bundle plus switchover incentives is going to save us a fair amount of money every month. Since our TiVo box was the DirecTivo it wouldn't work with the cable. (We have Comcast here for our cable) We decided we would try the Comcast DVR. Yeah, that lasted all of about a week before we went to Best Buy and dropped an HD Tivo on the credit card.
I think for someone who has never had DVR capabilities before that the cable company's DVR seems like a wonderful thing, but once you've had Tivo you can't deal with it. It would be like going from high-speed internet back to dial-up. It works perfectly fine until you try the better one!
I was soooooo happy to see the little Tivo dude bouncing on the screen!
~Sharon, aka HellZiggy
Sharon, you make a good point. The kids like the TW DVR because this is the first DVR they have had on their TV. Of course, the fact that the on-screen guide looks like it was designed for an elementary-school kid probably doesn't hurt :-).
I have the same sevice, but was taken over by COMCAST. Doesn't your recorder allow you to tape "all future episodes" or some such title ? I am able to record all future episodes of any program.
This is a comment to "--The guide only goes six days ahead, compared to two weeks with TiVo. I finished watching a show on Friday night and wanted to set the DVR to record the next episode (which was airing the next Friday night according to the previews), but the guide only had listings up to Thursday!"
Yes, the TW DVR does let you record all future episodes on a season pass. However, if I see a commercial for a new show that is showing its first episode a week from today, I can't set it because it isn't on the guide yet.
My TW DVR is terrible. If you try to FF a recorded program, it will skip to the very end. If you try to RW, it will skip to the very beginning. It's maddening. I'm switching to Verizon FIOS when they wire my building next week.
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