Favorite feature is the live pausing, a great feature when you wanna visit the bathroom.

Another guy said its a feature. A feature for people with slow hand-eye co-ordination. Are you !@#$ kidding me? If its a feature give us people who has nothing wrong with hand-eye co-ordination a feature to skip this feature.

Reading through the forums I find that I can reprogram my remote to do a 30 sec skip. But since this ‘feature’ also affects the rewind function and the time it skips varies, its really annoying. If this is comcast’s idea of copying similar functionality from TiVO DVRs they should double check how TiVO does it (at best, it skips by 8 or so seconds not 30 and 60 at the highest FF speed)

Wish Comcast would roll back this annoying software ‘upgrade’.

I have missed so many programs that mysteriously did not record even though I had plenty of space. BTW, i had plenty of space left on my DVR tonight.

Just one more reason I am switching to FIOS as soon as possible.

Their flaw, is a simply fix, must have “new” to record, and not to look for “repeat”.

50 episodes of Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers, and they are still surprised to hear of my problems.

I have even had their techs out, and they told me to edit the settings. I asked to be shown how, and then they just “umm”ed and “uhhhh”ed their way out my door, promising a resolution.

Cox cable never looked better. If Tivo was not more $, I wpuld have given Comcast back their dumb DVR.

Essentially, Comcast tries to blame the Guide provider as if they have no control over the content they themselves are re-selling. This, of course, is not acceptable.

It’s been a problem for nearly a year now but really went haywire a few weeks ago.

Woe is to anyone who had unwittingly asked the DVR to record new episodes of, say, Law and Order, CSI, or any and everything on the Disney Channel (which, apparently, runs Hannah Montana in a continuous loop).

We had 44 programs scheduled to record last Wednesday alone. On Friday it was set to pick up 60+ programs. In the meantime our TV was rendered useless because attempting to watch it led to “the DVR is currently recording two programs in process.”

All you can do is keep calling 1-800-Comcast and report the issue (they’ll generally claim they know nothing about it). You then ask firmly but politely for a credit on the DVR portion of your bill. You’ll get it and in doing so send a clear message to Comcast that the problem needs repaired or it will begin to impact their bottom line.

Until then, off to watch 400 hours of Hannah Montana!

1. Comcast (3): This is far and away the worst DVR. Their UI is primitive. I have noticed what others are commenting about here and it does suggest that they are not getting “original air dates” nor “episode number” which makes it impossible for them to distinguish between different episodes of the same show. Their help desk would continually tell me that lag and lock-up were caused by the fact that the DVR was like a computer and could not handle quick remote commands. That sound correct but is pure baloney as you’ll see later in my comments.

Their DVR has a low capacity and it cannot record any program that is does not appear on it’s guide. Or at least that has been the case since I stopped using them a few weeks ago. My wife absolutely hates the Comcast DVR experience.

1. DirecTV (4): Our farm had DirecTV, which I thought was superior to Comcast but not by much. It’s User Interface was still somewhat primitive when compared to DISH or TiVo and it had similar Comcast-like issues but not as many.

2. TiVo (9): I tried TiVo in both areas and found it had the best UI of any of the four plus it had other features that none of them have (ie, Wish List). I stopped using TiVo after their DVR froze up on four straight machines sent to me in SF. I felt that they were unable to get me a functioning DVR. This may have been a fluke but four was enough.

3. DISH (8): I had a bias for some unknown reason against DISH. But my electronics expert that I’ve used in both homes said that he preferred DISH. I can now see on their DVR that most of the shows have original air dates and episode numbers plus the movies have star ratings which agree fairly closely with Leonard Maltin (who I Like).

There is NO LAG issue whatsoever. In fact their remote is the only one with a 30 second advance button. Until I used that, I didn’t know what I’m missing. No more commercial time guessing. I either press the button 4 or 6 or 8 quick times and the show continues. Terrific!

The 722 DVR has been written up as far and away the best and most advanced on the market.:

a. Records 350 hours, probably 5-6 times more that the non-TiVo DVRs. In my opinion, that’s a tremendous advantage: no more worrying about shows going away if I didn’t lock them down, etc. This gives us a much wider array of shows to watch, more choices every night (I have about 70 Timers, their name for ongoing programmed favorites).

b. Remarkably, the 722 feeds two TV’s at one time. We have a high def TV in the living room and a non-high def set in the bedroom. We ONLY need one DVR. Both sets draw on the same 350-hour library. The remote in the bedroom operates the DVR in the living room THROUGH THE WALLS. We don’t have to setr up a parallel list of shows on a bedroom DVR.

c. I can record shows that are not currently on the guide: favorite movies, etc. Like TiVo, if I program the DVR for “movies” and “194″, I will get all movies made in 1940 (with a few oddball exceptions), which tend to be film noirs, which we love. I can’t imagine having a DVR which will not allow me to put in movies that I love but are not in the guide. I’d have to keep attempting to record these movie titles every 10-14 days if I didn’t want to miss them. What a waste of time.

Overall, the TiVo, as one would expect for a DVR-dedicated company, offered the best experience. But after their inability to get a functioning DVR in our SF home, DISH is a close second. I have had excellent service with DISH also.

So there you have it. That’s been my experience.

They did teach me something important. Do not load the DVR up to it’s limits since, like a computer, it can begin to malfunction when it’s limit is reached. However, DISH allows an external hard drive to be connected if 350 hours isn’t enough.

1. Like TiVo, I can type in a program that is not on the guide, let’s say a movie, and it will be recorded whenever it comes on in the future