Comments on: Trouble With Comcast TiVo?

By: Michael Burstin

Michael Burstin — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 02:33:45 +0000

I don’t know that it will be slow. I think the slowness comes from the fact that the Comcast box has pretty weak hardware — slow CPU, not enough memory, slow IO bus. I think that a true Tivo will have better specs, and will also be running on “raw” hardware rather than on top of the Motorola OS and software.

By: Glenn

Glenn — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 02:01:44 +0000

I wonder if this tells us anything about what the OCAP solution for VOD will be like on a Tivo box?

I’m already assuming it’ll run slow, and look weird, and use different conventions than the rest of the Tivo interface, but that’s okay, and maybe to be expected given what a giant kludge its going to be. Rather I worry that the act of loading up the VOD interface will mess up the Tivo as a whole, perhaps risking the recording of current shows, occaisionally requiring a reboot etc…?

Maybe Tivo shouldn’t be very trusting of these guys…

By: Kirby Files

Kirby Files — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 20:19:52 +0000

I’ve had the Comcast Tivo for over a month now. My first one got stuck in endless reboots and had to be replaced (the installer claims to be sure it’s not a signal strength issue). My second one has been OK so far. The Motorola box is definitely a POS, and remote lag, search lag, screen redraw lag, etc. are all commonplace. It also has areas where it’s definitely not quite Tivo-ish, compared to my Series2 boxes: strange video glitches when swapping tuners or switching from guide to live TV; searching for programs and not finding them, despite being able to browse to them; ridiculously slow searching and scheduling response…

That said, it’s the only game in town for HD Tivo with switched video and OnDemand.

On the customer service front, I’ve actually had great customer service. I got the direct extension of a Comcast Tivo service manager in the Boston area, who solicited suggestions for improvement; the technicians came as scheduled *after 5* (so I didn’t have to waste my workday). They were apologetic for their lack of knowledge about the Tivo, and worked hard to fix problems until things worked right. The real shame is that no one in the organization has had any decent training, and a tech expressed frustration that instead of allowing a small group of support folks to become really expert on the issues (like a tiger team), they’re just leaving it to every support person to learn how to cope on the job.

–kirby

By: Michael Burstin

Michael Burstin — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 13:49:22 +0000

I have had the Comcast Tivo for a few weeks now. Overall its been a pretty good experience, but not lacking of problems. First off, my installer was clueless and never received training, which caused a few install issues. The Comcast Tivo box requires a stronger signal than the iGuide software as it takes advantage of the built-in docsis modem, so the installers should be checking signal strength prior to installs. This issue is also a possible cause for the reboot issues that people have been having where the boxes get stuck — from what I’ve read, the boxes need to contact some Comcast (or Tivo) server when they boot, and bad signal may be preventing this.

The software is certainly slower than my Series 2 Tivo, however, these boxes are pretty slow when running iGuide as well, leading to remote lag, etc. I sometimes am not sure if the remote got my previous command or is just lagging behind. While Tivo may be able to tweak this, I fear that the only real solution will be more powerful hardware from Motorola.

I’ve needed to reboot the box twice (2 days in a row earlier this week) because the box has stopped DVR functionality in live TV. I could change channels, but lost the ability to pause/rewind. The Tivo software was still functional and was able to reboot the box via the Tivo menu at least and not a power cycle.

Overall, I’d have to saw that I like the box and the software and hope that Tivo resolves some of the issues, even though I think many of the issues out there are signal and hardware related.

I’m planning on keeping the software until there is a good solution with Tivo hardware for 2-way communication (will the “Tuning Resolver” allow you to do OnDemand as well?) and hopefully prices come down on TivoHD (with larger drives, hopefully).