I have a blueray player that has netflix on it. I find that the user interface is a big pain in the butt on the blueray player and I just connect my laptop to the TV for netflix because it is much easier to navigate that way. Both my laptop and blueray player are connected over the wifi in my house with no issues.
So I hear. The big TV providers are penny-wise and pound foolish. Any one of them could buy TiVo and have a great interface, but…penny-wise and pound foolish. They’d rather have a bug-ridden, hard-to-use interface written by underpaid, marginally-competent software people who couldn’t get better software jobs.
Although the cable companies practically deny their existence because they hate them, modern TiVos use a CableCARD, which is a conplete set-top cable box in a PCMCIA card whcih you insert into the TiVo. Only thing it won’t do is PPV (which, on a networked TiVo you can just get from Amazon!)
Yeah, and because none of the big cable or satellite providers will license TiVo’s software TiVo is still struggling financially. DirecTV only used it for a couple years, just long enough to develop their own, really shitty DVR software. Everyone I’ve talked to who had a ‘DirecTiVo’ receiver absolutely hates that they made them exchange it for their POS DVR…
I was pissed enough that I left DirecTV. Nothing worked as well as TiVo. My FiOS system from Verizon is pretty good, but not half as good as TiVo was.
You guys have me wondering how good TiVo could have possibly been. I have a Dish Network DVR and can’t imagine anything much better.
TiVo is a case of trying to put a meter on something that can’t be metered and billed for except by hoodwinking a market into believing that they can’t possibly do it without paying for expert help.
I think it may be a case of getting used to one thing and then getting frustrated when you use another DVR. I have a Directv DVR that, in my opinion, works very well. My parents have a Dish Network DVR that makes no sense to me, but I only get to play around with it a few times a year and never figure it out. I would guess you would have the same experience if you tried a Directv DVR. I’ll bet they have the same functionality, but the user interfaces are completely different.
For me the DirecTV DVR just did a lot of little things less well than the TiVo. My folks still have one so I know that they have fixed some of that stuff (like bounce back time after fast forwarding, the DirecTV DVR didn’t used to have any, which was the final straw for me) but as much as I like my current set up, and I do, it isn’t nearly as smooth or easy to use as the TiVo was.
Note that TiVo wasn’t good enough for me to buy a dedicated TiVo box, but I do still miss how well it worked.
No doubt. Whenever I go to my in-laws and try to use their Directv, I can’t work the remote, the dvr, can never find the channel I want, etc, etc.
Even today and for products shipped by the millions, user interfaces tend to be designed by the most junior assistant tech or programmer in the shop. Who, these days, tends to be Asian and thus capable of creating something even less understandable by western users.
It’s like archtecture: the parking lot layout is done by a junior intern, and in many cases I am convinced that his goal was to spell out his girlfriend’s name with the berms.
Not really. TiVo predated broad availability of inbuilt DVR or media center PCs.
I am so intrigued by the reference to junior programmers having responsibility for user interfaces, etc. I’m an old and out-of-it guy. One of the things that makes me feel most marginalized is the sense that people writing programs that consumers interact with appear to have failed - or not taken - courses in English, grammar, communications, arts, design, or anything that could even be remotely considered under the aegis of Humanities. The pages, or whatever, don’t make sense, are thumby, hard to navigate, make all sorts of self-contradictory statements and force us into impossible choices or ridiculous decisions. Occasionally, the messages shown could only be understood by another programmer, although they’re shown to the average consumer, who is lost to begin with. I always figured that these guys were computer dweebs who knew and were interested only in programming, and/or the workings of the machines - often (in my stereotyped thinking) as a reaction to their less than stellar aptitude in social interactions, which would explain their lack of deftness in designing things that are essentially means of communication with others. Nothing in the thread above disabuses me of these notions. xo, C.
Could you give an example of these “ridiculous decisions” as they apply to TV tuning devices?
I can’t think of one offhand and I’m not going to sit down and navigate the system to find one. However, one minor (most of these are minor) one exists - admittedly not terribly egregious - within the U-verse system. You are given the opportunity to select your “favorite” channels from the gazillion that are sent through and to make a working list of them. But to get to that list of favorites, you must first access a different menu before you can surf those channels. You can surf ALL the channels quite easily, despite the fact that there are hundreds of them, but you can’t surf the channels you most frequently watch without having to go through the extra steps, every time you want to go through the channels. Why isn’t there a button that you can use to enter the “favorites” and then just use the up and down buttons to navigate through them? Not a communications issues, per se, but typical of the systems that don’t seem to take into account the fact that they’ll be used by human beings.
I’m referring to the fact that you have to keep paying a subscription to keep the box working.
It would be a huge hijack of the thread to follow up properly, but you’ve hit the gist of it in your thinking. The designers of the guts are NOT the best people to design the user interface. Ever, in my experience. Programmers in particular tend to document and UI software based on the internal architecture - every “module” gets a set of controls. This leads to a chaotic, complicated UI that has a knob for every possible setting but is difficult to actually accomplish the app’s intended goals with.
A UI designer works from functionality downwards, designing an interface that does the job the user needs and hooks into the machinery below to enable it.
Utterly diametric concept, but you still see a lot of products that showcase how brilliant the programmer is.
Not to hijack :), but I ended up hardwiring the connection ($49 at a B&M for 50 feet of Cat 6, $15 for 50 feet of Cat 7 from Amazon, got it from Amazon).
It works beautifully; thanks to all who led me down the righteous path.
mmm