Dreadful Penny

We’ve had U-verse for a little more than a week. I’m the main media user in the house and I’m generally happy with the switch. We’re still adjusting to some of the differences, though, and I can’t say we adore everything about the system. Here’s a short review.

We love:

Access to free VOD. Maybe we had the same access to channels like Cinemax on Demand, Showtime on Demand, and HBO on Demand with our former provider, but I never had the patience to find them. The only free VOD menu I found had short clips and previews. Blah. U-verse has a VOD menu that offers a full video store ($), short clips, and the network VOD channels like I mentioned above. It’s easy to navigate; the VOD titles are indexed in the overall search function, as well. Last week I watched all of season 5 of The L Word, the first season of Californication, re-watched several Flight of the Conchords episodes, and saw a few movies, all using free VOD. Enhancement suggestion: Update the VOD menu UI to indicate which items have been added in the past week. I don’t know how often the content refreshes and the lists all look the same. Add a column to the left with an asterisk for items with a publish date of Today-7 days or less. Ta da.

Picture quality on regular stations. It’s undeniably clearer than what we experienced with cable. My husband even asked, “Is that regular or HD?” when we were watching a program, because it looked great.

Speed of channel changing. It’s possible to simply flip stations again! Digital cable has an annoying pause between stations, so I always used the guide or direct entry of the channel number to navigate from program to program. It’s nice to just press the channel up button and see the next program, with almost no delay.

PIP browsing. There are limitations to this that I’ll address below, but a small PIP screen that previews the next channel (when browsing using the central buttons on the remote or using the guide) is nicer than I expected. I often surf for another show to fill in commercial time, and this allows me to avoid changing from one commercial only to see another.

DVR. The DVR has some sweet functionality. The ability to record four shows simultaneously — and even to record anything while watching something else — has given us more freedom. The recording option that allows me to specify “record this program once per day, at or around 11:00 pm” handles recording stations (like Comedy Central) who don’t consistently flag their content as First Run or Repeat.

Range of channels. We’re paying for the 400 tier of channels, so we get just about everything under the sun. Woo! That also includes a load of music channels from Urge; a much wider range than we had before. We like having those on in the background when Kid Dreadful is doing his homework, because they offer non-stop music without DJ or commercial interruption, but you can glance up to find out, “Hey, what’s the name of this song?” in seconds.

However…. things that suck:

Inability to schedule shows for recording that are not currently running. One of the features on TiVo that we really loved was the Season Pass manager. We could slot series to be recorded, then never have to worry about when the new season (or nowadays, second half of the season) began. We’d look at the TiVo and say, “Hey look! There’s a new X. Season must have started. Cool.” If I knew a series was coming up, but TiVo didn’t have any details yet, I could always enter the lead actor’s name or some keywords into a Wish List, and TiVo would catch it (and then I could set a Season Pass). None of that seems to be possible with the U-verse DVR. I can only schedule something to be recorded if it’s available in the next few weeks.

DVR: Inability to browse by channel. I love movies, so every now and then I’d fire up the TiVo and use Browse by Channel to scan the next week’s programming on channels like HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, FLIX, TMC, FMC, AMC, Starz, etc. I’d set any interesting movies to record in the middle of the night and watch them while doing other work in the day. With a DVR that records four channels simultaneously, I would love love LOVE this feature. The only similar thing I can find is to go to the Guide and use the right arrow button to scan forward in time on a channel, but this is far more cumbersome and slow. I think the key is that the U-verse DVR is philosophically tied to watching live TV and handling multiple live streams by recording 2-4 of them. The TiVo mindset is that live TV is input for recording, with the recorded program being the true consumable media. Therefore, TiVo makes it much easier to find and record programming that isn’t currently playing, while that functionality is awkward or unavailable on the U-verse DVR.

Volume settings. The base volume is very low. My husband pored through a manual online to find out how to raise the volume of the receiver box itself, but even with that maxed out at 25, we often have to raise the TV volume so loud that the hiss of the speakers is really distracting. We have better video quality but inferior audio quality compared to what we had before.

Remote control sounds. If you’re used to TiVo, the lack of audible reinforcement that the box has received input from the remote control can be disconcerting, especially when there’s a pause (selecting a program to be recorded, for example). Silence appears to be the default; it can be changed in options, but the enabled sounds are annoying. I suppose that after about 8 years of TiVo use, I have a Pavlovian response to their catalog of sounds and I miss them.

PIP limitations. If I can do PIP browsing, why can’t I do actual PIP? I should be able to watch two programs simultaneously, picture-in-picture, and switch between them with one click.

HD.  I’m not impressed.  While some shows are gorgeous (nature programs on the HD showcase channel, mostly), there’s often a flickering, aggravating white line along the top or bottom of the program when it is letterboxed to display the 16:9 ratio on our 4:3 TV screen.  Also, a few shows just look as though someone tweaked a “Sharpen” filter too high; they’re not actually clearer, but the highlights and edges have been artificially intensified.  We’re paying $10 extra for access to HD and at this point, I’m unsure whether we should keep that feature.  I’m leaning toward dropping it.

Layout of the remote control. There’s a lot crowded onto this little device and it’s not organized very well. There are buttons we can’t completely figure out. “Exit to TV”? When is this supposed to work? Not from VOD, not from Recorded TV. And why are the A, B, C buttons taking up prime real estate in the center of the unit, but FF and REW are up at the top? Pressing those requires a second hand or unbalancing the remote, at least on a hand my size. I’m the primary media user in the house and the primary remote control user, and I really don’t like this one.