Well, it is finally happening. I’m ditching Comcast, specifically the Comcast DVR in favor of Directv’s version. But allow me to tell you why. I picked up the Comcast DVR a little over a year ago. I needed a way to pipe in HD content into my new, HD TV. I looked at Directv at time but, unfortunately, their options were limited, and the cost was prohibitive. I reluctantly went with Comcast. Their install tech was solid and got the system up and running without issue.
The first HD DVR box I got was a little buggy, and did not have an HDMI output. What do I mean by buggy? Well, the biggest complaint I had was the remote not interacting with the receiver on a consistent basis. I would hit the pause button … nothing. I would hit it again … still nothing. After three or fifteen presses of the pause button, the system would ‘catch up’ with all my commands and pause, un-pause repeatedly. Bah. When fast-forwarding through commercial content, I would hit the play button but nothing would happen. TiVo, something I grew to love, responds instantly to such commands, but not the Comcast DVR. On a frequent basis, better than once a day, the DVR/remote would freeze up, or just become completely useless. Add to this the cumbersome interface, the hit and miss recording of scheduled programs, and the other glitches, and I’m glad to get it gone.
Hah! Just two days ago the DVR recorded 17 hours, 54 minutes of a single show. No, not combined. Somehow, somewhere in its little brain, the Comcast DVR thought the show “Ninja Warriors� was on for 17 hours, 54 minutes, when, in fact, it was only on for 30 minutes. Uh, yeah. Glitches like that have happened, consistently, for the entire time I owned the DVR. I swapped out boxes twice, even upgraded to the most recent box a few months back but no resolution. The only reason I kept the Comcast DVR was because Directv didn’t quite have their act together (and didn’t have local channels in HD). But I’m finally over that. I will sacrifice a little inconvenience, for better pricing (about one-third better) and a more functional DVR (oh, with about 40 more hours of HD room than the hit-or-miss Comcast DVR.