DVR Chatter

The whole world seems to bitching about this very thing.  I really don't understand what the big deal is.  You push the My DVR button and you get  to select what you want to do.  It comes up immediately to "My Recordings."  You just need to push the Select/OK button.  It takes about a half a second.  Whoopee...........

I like it too because it gives a nice shortcut to your scheduled recordings, which allows you to easily monitor which shows are going to be recorded each day.  There are worse features of this upgrade than the My DVR issue.

I have found the responsiveness of my 6412 seriously worse, although others have mentioned that they've noticed better performance.  Also, I typically have a two or three second lag between each press of the 30 second skip button, especially in HD recordings.

Frank wrote:

Do you work for Comcast? I ask because "What's the big deal?" appears to be their attitude toward a lot of things they wreck or make more difficult for their customers.

Are you really Brian Roberts in disguise?

Nope, I don't work for Comcast, although I am retired from Pacific Bell, another of those notorious companies.    No I am not Brian Roberts in disguise either.

Although you might have to press one extra button to see what you have recorded, I think it is easier to get to your scheduled recordings this way.  The old way you had to hit menu twice, flip over to DVR, press OK/Select, then flip to scheduled recording and hit OK/Select again.  Now you press MyDVR, one click right and OK/Select.

Bobby wrote:

Although you might have to press one extra button to see what you have recorded, I think it is easier to get to your scheduled recordings this way.  The old way you had to hit menu twice, flip over to DVR, press OK/Select, then flip to scheduled recording and hit OK/Select again.  Now you press MyDVR, one click right and OK/Select.

It's a matter of making the thing you do frequently (get to myDVR to watch recordings) more complicated to make the thing you do less frequently (check to see what you're going to record) less complicated that doesn't make sense (or maybe it does in the Comcastic world).

I'm actually surprised that some folks don't like the change to the My DVR hotkey, but I guess variety is what makes the world go around.     I think that more folks probably share my view and prefer the new configuration (hence why the change was made).   I used to hate having to dig around to find my list of scheduled recordings and to schedule new recordings.   The previous interface just wasn't user friendly or organized when it came to managing recordings.   Now a single key brings all of it to the screen, and your recorded shows are one more click away.

When you factor in that when you press the MENU button, you then have to press as many as 6 times to move the cursor to the DVR selection.    It's personal preference and there is no "right and wrong", but for me, I prefer to have the entire DVR menu available from the hot key.   As I said, I'm assuming I'm not alone or they wouldn't have made the change, and there will be some people who like it, and some people who don't.    You can't please everyone.

To me, the serious bug that causes the program to disappear and the unlock screen (requiring PIN entry) to appear when rewinding from live TV is much more of an issue because it impacts basic functionality of the DVR.    I have yet to see it mentioned by anyone on this forum.    Am I alone in experiencing this problem?

The feature is nice for new users.  For those of us that like to navigate quickly, it's a bit of a hassle.  A reasonable compromise, I think, would be to have a second press of the My DVR button take you to the list of recorded programs.  Would take a fraction of a second longer, but you wouldn't have to locate another button.

-Breddy

I was wondering how you set up the 30 second skip...just kidding Frank!  I honestly want to know if any one has received the new guide and found their 30 second skip disabled?  Mine will now only go in 1 sec increments...not very helpful.  I have recoded the remote a few times now and it still does the same thing.  The code is with the remote itself right?  I have had the same one from day one with my 6412 (analog/digital).

Last edited by GoGyrosWin (12-05-2006 11:53:01 AM)

I noticed this a while back & it is a minor annoyance.

The other annoyance that also appeared at the same time, I find much more annoying:

“Last” functionality now does not work very well for me.

Typically, in the evening, during local news time & network national news time, I am watching something I previously recorded, and “monitoring” the live broadcast in the small “PiP” window – looking for weather or just something \ anything I think I find of interest.  ( PiP window driven through the tuner in my VCR. )

When I decided that I wanted to watch “live”, I’d press “Pause” and then press “Last” and ( with that live channel the last selection, I’d join the “live” broadcast – watch until I was finished – and press “Last” again.  Or, if the last was some other channel, I could press “Pause” and then press the channel number.

Now, pressing the channel number sometimes brings up a 3 channel listing display along the bottom of the screen – shown with the last channel I watched included – and requiring ( apparently ) that I press the same channel I want to watch again ( changing the channels displayed & highlighting the channel number I pressed the first time), and then press OK to actually change to that channel.

And sometimes even then it only shows the program information, without changing the channel.

And pressing “Last” when I was finished with “Live” would previously always bring me back to the recorded program, ‘paused’.  Now it brings me back and starts to play immediately – often at least a few seconds past where I stopped.

Odd.  And annoying.

Any ‘real’ company would have ( at least ) signaled intent to change behavior of the box, on a certain date in the future, specified the changes & their impact or required adjustments in operator behavior.  Sent an addendum to the ( written ) operator guide.  With ‘net and \ or human sources for further information and updates or questions.

It seems to me . . .

- Ray
Annoyed.

I haven't done that, because this garbage "upgrade" hasn't surfaced here yet. From what I've read, though, the way to do it is to use another remote that can do macros and set up a macro to do the key presses you want (I'm guessing MyDVR - Right Arrow - Enter or MyDVR - Enter depending on where you wind up when you press MyDVR) and then use IR learning mode on the harmony website to teach the macro to the harmony.

On my harmony (for the 6412) the 30 second skip is called "30SecSkip".  In the drop-downs, it's among the numbers.  I don't know if that is among the available commands for the 3416 or not. If not, you can possibly use the 6412 commands instead of the 3416 commands to set up your harmony (they should be the same).  The correct profile on the harmony website for the 6412 is called "DCT-6412"

As an update, This post from this thread at Digital Forum describes two other ways to achieve multiple commands from a single key press.

jganyard wrote:

I can confirm the 30sec skip does work on a 3416 with the new menu software.

It works here. The 30-second skip is an option that can be turned on and off when they build a version of the firmware for that area. When some areas are updated, they turn it off, or forget to turn it on.