Comcast Motorola and Microsoft – a miserable combination
What happens when you combine Comcast cable services with hardware from Motorola and software provided by Microsoft?
You get the worst possible implementation of High Definition (HD) TV service available.
This has been bugging me for a long time but after reading John Battelle’s rant about Comcast’s crappy HD box, I felt that I must chime in with my own experiences.
For the most of 2005 I had the pleasure of having my HDTV service provided by the Dish Network. This service was great and I only canceled it when I moved to a new home prewired for Comcast. As it is a rental, I decided to go with Comcast cable rather than ask permission to have a dish installed. What a mistake.
Here is a quick guide chart to some of the main differences between Comcast and DishNetwork HDTV services.
| Comcast HD | DishNetwork HD | |
| DVR? | Y | Y |
| HDTV? | Y | Y |
| On Demand programming? | Y | N |
| Recording of series works correctly? | N | Y |
| Records 2 programs simultaneously? | Y | Y |
| Recording only “New” episodes correctly? | N | Y |
| Intuitive Interface? | N | Y |
| Show year information of program? | N | Y |
| Recognizes previously recorded programs? | N | Y |
| Responsive to input from remote? | N | Y |
| Viewing of recorded program on 2nd TV? | N | Y |
| Forward jump to skip commercials? | N | Y |
| Allows recording of Pay Per View? | N | Y |
Some additional issues that I have related to the Comcast HD service with the Motorola box 6412 include that it randomly and frequently reboots, messing up recordings and generally annoying me. Also, the remote is often unresponsive, and then after about a minute, all of the buttons I previously pressed are executed. This is so very annoying. I have confirmed these problems with several friends and family.
Don’t take my word for it, just do a google search for comcast dvr sucks. 153,000 search results can’t be wrong.
I hope to change back to the Dish Network HD service soon…
