Program Guide Issues

prlaba · 01-21-2009, 10:38 AM

I wanted to start a new thread to highlight some of deficiencies found in the Comcast TiVo channel guide.

I'll start by pointing out a few thing I like about the Comcast TiVo guide:

Programs are color coded in the guide, making it easier to find movies, sports, kids shows, etc.
Programs broadcast in HD have the 'HD' logo displayed in their entry, making it easy to find HD programs and moves.
A picture-in-picture box on the upper right lets you continue viewing your current feed while viewing the guide.
The 'A' button on the Comcast TiVo remote lets you quickly filter the guide by All, HD, Movies, Children, Sports and News.
The 'B' button lets you quickly switch between 'All Channels' and 'Received Channels'.

There may be other some other "pros" that I've left out, but I want to get to the most significant issue I've discovered.

The Comcast TiVo guide offers far less information about a program than the standard TiVo guide. This is, I'm sure, partially because Comcast and TiVo use different program guide sources, but the problem goes even deeper than that.

With standard TiVo, here are some of the details available for a movie listed in the guide:

Title
Description (includes Year)
Rating
Content Rating
Stars
Country
Actors
Directors
Producers
Writers
Categories
Color Mode
Date & Time
Duration
Channel

For Comcast TiVo, here's what's available:

Title
Description
Movie Year
MPAA Rating
Star Rating
Categories
Date & Time
Duration
Channel

The most glaring omission for Comcast TiVo is the lack of Actors detail. When you highlight a movie in the guide, the movie's description that appears above the guide does not include the movie's main actors(!).

This baffled me. Comcast TiVo lets me create a wishlist based on the name of a person, so it must somehow "know" the names of persons associated with each movie or program in its guide.

To test my assumption, I created a wishlist with the person "Tom Hanks" and sure enough, the resulting wishlist displayed a long list of movies starring Tom Hanks. But surprisingly, the description of each of those movies did not list Tom Hanks' name nor any of the movie's other actors. Clearly, Comcast TiVo has access to more program details than it displays.

I then tried using the Search feature to see what information was displayed for programs matching my search criteria. I entered the title "Cast Away" (a Tom Hanks movie) and highlighted that entry in the match list. To my surprise, the description appearing above the search window did include the movie's main actors (Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, Nick Searcy, Lari White). But if I pressed the Select button to bring up that movie's Upcoming Program screen, that screen actually removed the actors list from the movie's description!

It appears the only way you can learn the list of main actors for a movie (forget directors, producers, etc.) is to use the Search feature and highlight it in the match list.

Comcast and TiVo has, for unknown reasons, conspired to design a guide that makes life miserable for movie lovers like me, a giant step backward from the standard TiVo guide.

So far, the most straightforward solution to this problem appears to be returning your Comcast TiVo DVR and purchasing a new TiVo HD box.

ajwees41 · 01-21-2009, 09:46 PM

the most likely reason for the difference is the comcast tivo's amount of memory.

prlaba · 01-21-2009, 10:23 PM

I noticed that, before I added the TiVo service to my Comcast DVR, if I powered off the box, all of the program guide information was erased and had to be re-collected when the box was powered back on.

With the TiVo software added, program guide information is now retained across shutdowns.

That suggests to me that program guide data is being stored on the disk, not in memory.

In the case of movie actors, we know that the box is in fact storing actor information; that information is required for Person type wishlists. Also, you can view the list of actors in the description of a highlighted movie on the Search screen.

So while it may be true that limited memory is the reason for the paltry amount of program guide data being stored compared to standard TiVo, it doesn't explain why a movie's list of actors (which is being stored) isn't displayed in the movie's description.

prlaba · 01-21-2009, 10:51 PM

Here's another program guide annoyance I want to point out. This one applies to both Comcast TiVo and standard TiVo.

If you're viewing the program guide for shows currently being broadcast, there's no easy way to get additional details about a highlighted show; the Info button doesn't work in this context. (If you press the Select button here, TiVo will immediately switch to the highlighted channel.

However, if you highlight an upcoming program (one that is not currently being broadcast), you can get additional details about the program by first pressing Select, which brings up the Upcoming Program screen, then pressing Info.

There is a clumsy workaround to this restriction: To display additional details about a highlighted program, first press the Record button (indicating that you want to record the show or stop recording the show if it's currently being recorded). In either case, pressing Record will display the Program in Progress screen. At this point you can press Info to display additional details about the program.

There's no reason I can think of why the Info button shouldn't be active any time you highlight a program in the program guide.

Of course, this is but a minor annoyance for Comcast TiVo, since there's very little additional information displayed by the Info button above and beyond a program's description at the top of the program guide. But for standard TiVo, which can display many more details about a program, this is a bigger headache.

prlaba · 01-23-2009, 11:14 PM

I wanted to point out some differences between standard TiVo and Comcast TiVo when you filter the channel guide (such as Movies).

With standard TiVo, when you filter the guide to display, say, Movies, you see the same general guide layout, but with channels that are not showing any moves deleted from the guide. Channels that are showing or will show a movie are still included in the guide, but non-movie programs are grayed out.

With Comcast TiVo, when your filter the guide, the guide's format changes. Instead of showing channels along the left side of the guide and time slots along the top, Comcast TiVo simply presents a 3-column list of programs that match your filter (e.g., Movies), with the first column listing the time, the second column listing the program's title, and the third column listing the channel number and name. The list is sorted in increasing order by date/time (the date appears above the list).

If you get a lot of movie channels like I do, the filtered list can be quite long and tedious to navigate (you move through the list like any other TiVo list, using the up/down arrow keys or channel up/down keys; however the right/left arrow keys and the Advance key do nothing when viewing the filtered guide list). You can press the Enter key and change the date and/or time to go to a different starting point in the list.

I haven't decided yet if I like Comcast TiVo's filtered list format better than standard TiVo's. I would like it better if used the same format and options as a wishlist: each entry in the list includes both the program's time and date, and you can sort the list by either title or air date. (For this reason I have just such a Movies wishlist set up, and typically use that wishlist to browse upcoming movies.)

One thing I definitely like with Comcast TiVo is having a defined key (the "A" key) to cycle through the various filter options. With standard TiVo, I have to bring up the Channel Guide Options screen, select the filter mode I want, enable filtering, etc.

On the down side, the "A" button cycles in one direction only through the different filter options: All > HD > Movies > Children > Sports > News > All > ... So if your guide is currently filtered to list only HD broadcasts, and you want to turn off that filter, you have to press the "A" button five times to get back to All. And we all know how fast Comcast TiVo responds to those key presses!

Better would be to define two buttons to control filtering: the "A" button to select the filter mode (HD, Movies, Children, Sports or News) and the "B" button (currently unused) to enable/disable the current filter. That way I could set my filter mode to, say, Movies, and then only have to press the "B" button whenever I want to toggle the Movies filter on or off.

I'd like to hear other users' opinion of Comcast TiVo's channel guide filtering format and ease of use.

polcanboy · 01-25-2009, 10:54 AM

To give you an answer on

"I then tried using the Search feature to see what information was displayed for programs matching my search criteria. I entered the title "Cast Away" (a Tom Hanks movie) and highlighted that entry in the match list. To my surprise, the description appearing above the search window did include the movie's main actors (Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, Nick Searcy, Lari White). But if I pressed the Select button to bring up that movie's Upcoming Program screen, that screen actually removed the actors list from the movie's description!"

Search data results are not coming from the same source as the program information in the guide screens. The search results are interactive requests to a Tivo database, they store more information on programs like actors info. Guide screen program information comes from the hard drive on the box and it doesn't contain actor information.

For fun, just try this. Search for "Cast Away", using only 2 letters "Ca" and then do the same search using 3 letters "Cas". Do you notice any difference about the movie description...