FP…More on the Comcast DVR

A few days ago I wrote a post about how Lura and I came up with a pet name for our Comcast DVR. A friend of ours sent me an email the other day about how his Comcast DVR has other “modes of operation" that are different then ours.  His suggestion was that a blog format is inappropriate for this kind of ‘dynamic’ discussion and maybe a wiki is more in order.

His observations are as follows..

1. While watching a recorded program, the program freezes as if you paused something.  Sometimes it resumes in 3-5 seconds, sometimes 30 seconds, sometimes never.  It depends on the phase of the moon.  Pressing live TV or any other button either does nothing or leads to #2.
2. The DVR doesn't like to be wasteful when executing commands from the remote control.  Therefore, often I try to do something (pause, FF, change channel, whatever), and it waits for 30 or so commands, queues them up, and after 3 minutes, starts executing every one, then usually locks up completely due to overload.
3. Unlike my TV, stereo, and DVD player, the remote must be point directly at the DVR from a distance of no more than 3 feet, otherwise #2 is even more likely.
4. Occasionally, usually after the TV has been off for a bit, but the DVR on, the nice lady that gives previews in the upper right while on the "on demand" screen, appears in two windows, one in the upper right quadrant, and on in the lower left. and the windows are differentsizes.  There's a black background and that's all that appears on the screen, and usually #1 or #2 follows this scenerio.
5. When watching an on demand movie, you must plan your pauses ahead of time, and make sure follow #3... after pressing pause, or rewind/FF, the movie continues to play and ignores you for about 10 seconds, then executes the command(s).
6. Don't even think about using the hdmi out, especially through a stereo.  You either get the black screen of death with sound, or a picture with no sound, but never both... and you can't predict which you'll get upon connecting the unit.  Getting audio and video via hdmi exceeds the capabilities of this unit.
7. When scrolling through the TV "guide," there are two speeds.  First gear is to move one line with every click.  Second gear scrolls through 890 channels in about 2.2 seconds, creating a blur except for the first digit.  I've found neither to be useful.

Comments

[Dock]

When first got my Comcast DVR, I thought it was great to have 2 tuners and be able to record 2 programs while watching a third I had recorded earlier. Unfortunately, I've had constant problems with my Comcast DVR. Comcast even replaced my cable box, and I still have problems with it. After working for about two months my DVR is not working YET AGAIN. None of the DVR functions(pause, rewind record) work, it's as if my cable box "forgot" that it is a DVR! I am about to call the cable company now and see whats up. Comcast's Internet service & cable is pretty decent, but their DVR feature's reliability is DREADFUL.

UPDATE:

Never mind the DVR, my cable TV's been completely out for three days. Oh, and what I said about their Internet service being decent? You can scratch that - my Internet access has been out or extremely slow for about the same length of time, even though it seems to be OK right at this moment, knock on wood.

Thank God, they are sending a technician out Friday. I just hope he knows what the hell he's doing.