Entries Tagged 'Cox' ↓

Why exactly is it everything Cox has OnDemand can’t fast forward? It’s not such a huge deal at the beginning of a show, but if you miss the last four minutes of an hour long show, it’s not on demand, it’s when they let you have it. It’s easier and faster to just pirate the damn show at that point, which I thought was what they were trying to avoid with this system.

When you DO try to do it, you get the “Enjoy this <network> program. FFWD is unavailable during this show.”

Fuck. You. If I want to skip ahead to where I was, I should get to. And don’t give me this condescending “enjoy” bullshit.

Cox Advanced TV-”Because we ignored the basics!”

Okay, here’s an easy enough one, right?

You’re at the record options. You have two options, start and stop time. Now, the guide’s general function is that left moves back in time, right moves forward. Easy, it’s a fairly standard western method of representing time. And in most software, hitting left moves back, hitting right moves forward.

Not this time. At least, half the time.

Smartly, if you hit left on the stop time option, it takes time off the recording. To the right adds time.

This doesn’t apply to the start time. Pressing to the left makes the recording start later, right makes it start earlier. I grasp that they were working under the idea that you’re adding, with the right arrow key, but this is the ONLY time the interface works that way. Every other function, right means forward in time, left means backward. And it just makes even less sense as the other half of the menu is standard.

Then again, this is the same guide that insists everything must be lined up in even half-hour blocks, even if that means totally misrepresenting the runtime of content, or completely ignoring its existence.

I’m not sure what company programmed this software, but I’m willing to bet that they offered to do it for the lowest price thanks to removing their quality control department. The Troika strategy, always a good one.

“If a program doesn’t show up on the Guide, it’s because the network didn’t provide us with the information.”

This seems reasonable, except Cox has always put “No information available” in such cases, and I’m looking at that information right now on the old version of the software. I’ve offered up photographic evidence that they do have the information, and the major flaw in not displaying programming data lies within their precious new software.

They’re also holding quite strongly to the concept that it could NOT be their time that’s run ahead by a small measure, because “We use Greenwich Mean Time.” Which is a statement like saying “The cereal couldn’t possibly have gone stale, I have a spoon.”

Let us apply Occam’s Razor to the situation. Nearly every network, at the same time, began running up to two minutes late at the same time. Now, were this all one network, say, Viacom channels, Turner channels, this would be a bit more likely. It’s not, it’s all of them.

So what’s the more likely scenario. All of those screwed up at once, or Cox’s synchronization missed the mark at some point in September, and hasn’t been corrected? Do we presume the fault lies with one server, or one hundred satellites?

I think I know my answer, or what I want to get an answer about. But when asked specifically “What service do you synchronize with? Is it possible they drifted suddenly, or just the cable boxes?”, the only response is “our boxes have their time synched to the official time zone for our area.” All I can say for sure is something screwed up, and I know where the odds lie. I also know what regional telecom monopoly won’t answer the question.

Well, at least I’ve something to put on coxcommunicationssucks.com now.

The guide function is further reduced. There’s no longer a button to change the viewed date (Edit: Apparently entering a number, 1-7, then pressing the right arrow key goes that far forward. No suggestion or hint of such function anywhere in the software), and no longer a return function. You just have to exit and restart the guide.

Annoying, if not critical. You what IS critical? 15 minute intervals. The new guide doesn’t support them, only full 30 minute blocks. Now 15 minute intervals aren’t a big deal on every station, but on any movie channel or on Adult Swim, they’re critical. Entire shows now go unlisted. HBO first looks, for example, may be skipped entirely, as is the second half of any 2 x 15 Adult Swim block. What’s on after Robot Chicken but before The Boondocks? What’s on after 12 oz Mouse? How about after Children’s Hospital?

Well, you’re not going to find out on THIS guide.

Not only did they shit up the cable boxes, they only sent the update to half the boxes in the house.

I’m actually happy about that for once, because that means at least one set won’t cause me to miss the endings of shows. Or the beginnings for those early networks. Whereas previously if a show was starting early you just hit record on the upcoming show then rapidly set the time back by a minute or two or just up to the end of the show, now there’s a delay in the process because the option isn’t presented immediately. That extra menu crawl means missing time, and missing show.

And the timeframes for show runtimes still aren’t fixed. Cox just can’t be arsed to provide the full service we’re overpaying for, it seems.

Next step in shitting up the new guide-overcomplicate the recording editing. Now longer do you get to set the recording times as you tell the box to record, now you tell it to record, then have to go back into the guide or DVR list and set the recording times over as needed in the recording edit menu (Edit: It can be done, though still in a roundabout manner, rather than the time options simply popping up to begin with). And by to a specific start and stop time, only by a limited amount of pre-determined options. You can imagine this is lots of fun with networks that tend to run early (like CBS) and late (like Fox). And the cable company is still running things off by several minutes, you’re going to lose part of a show if you record two in a row. Either miss a piece of the end of the first show, or miss the end of the second show. Whereas previously one could record, say, from 1:00 to 2:01, now it’s 1:30/gap/1:30-2:01, or 1:00-2:00. You lose a piece either way.

Oh, and they’re traffic shaping so hard now that if any amount of peer to peer content is running or a significant FTP volume  is uploading one’s modem is turned off, requiring a power cycle. Of course there’s no discrimination with content. The way they see it it doesn’t matter if you’re spreading your book, helping to keep Geocities alive, speeding up the World of Warcraft patch distribution, sharing public domain or creative commons works. You’re probably a criminal and they want the bandwith for something else.

Great fucking policy, guys. Way to make things work better by breaking them.

I’ve complained here in the past that the Cox has a habit of fucking everything up. They’ve had tremendously unresponsive software laden with mysterious bugs for ages on the DVRs, now. Last night, they surprise launched new software. No warning it was coming when it did, just a sudden shutoff of the TV, combined with a hex countdown in seconds from 6F0 that made me think the whole thing just broke.

Well, I suppose some parts of it did. All the added functionality, which is to say a slightly faster response time and a search option balanced out to ensure an overall rating of “dogshit.” The rewind and fast forward speeds are gimped horribly unless you use the fifteen minute skip, and half of the remote buttons have lost basic functions. No longer does pressing the arrow keys present the info banner/quick scroll option to set a recording. Now if you want to set the next program to record, or one running parallel, you’ll need to muck about in the guide, still prone to going non-responsive as ever. Edit:There’s a manual recording option I’ve found when you hit record, but it’s still extra time and steps that serve no function.

There’s a multitude of other complaints, mostly the fact that they key issues haven’t changed, but hey, maybe they’ve fixed the time again, so the whole of Phoenix doesn’t need to schedule a recording to run two minutes after the set time to avoid missing the end.

Ha! I actually thought, for a moment,  Cox might genuinely fix something. No, they’ll just do what they always do and screw the customer. Traffic shaping via modem disconnects, dropped features, drifting times, and more self-promotion by calling themselves, I shit you not, “Cox Advanced TV.” Nice name, but it doesn’t count until they can get rudimentary things right.

Cable companies are trying to convince me OnDemand is better than Netflix, because I can rent, say, Sherlock Holmes right now.

It’s true, I can. I have to wait a month for Netflix. I also don’t have to pay 7 dollars for the movie when it comes out, fight through the awful OnDemand interface, tiling, and every other problem the cable company can throw at me.

You know what else is shitty about OnDemand? EVERYTHING.

In my attempts to watch The Ricky Gervais Show on it, the episode listing is as such.

The Ricky Gervais Show: Episo…

The Ricky Gervais Show: Episo…

The Ricky Gervais Show: Episo…

The Ricky Gervais Show: Episo…

The Ricky Gervais Show: Episo…

The Ricky Gervais Show: Episo…

Seeing the problem here? No? That’s because you use common sense. You presume the episode listing is number one at the top and six at the bottom, or reverse depending on how they sort. But you, sir, are wrong.

The current order is 4, 3, 6, 5, 2, 1. You can’t tell, however, without another menu dive, and then backing out of it, which takes you back to the HBO series menu, then back to Ricky Gervais, then down to the next episode. God forbid OnDemand actually remember where you were in a menu. Or work. Episode six is actually episode four right now. And for some reason there’s no HD option for HBO. There’s no HD option for a lot of things, but as HBO costs good money, I’d expect it.

But this is the same company who’s DVRs forget to record all the time, and whose buffer is randomly deleted. For those not in the know, the DVRs are supposed to record the last hour of TV on the channel you’re on, so you can rewind or replay. Great idea, right? Doesn’t work. Cox sends out a signal bump three or four times a day that deletes the buffer. If you’re behind you’ll be shot up to the live signal, and what you were watching is gone. Hopefully you didn’t start recording late, because if you did, the end of it just got cut off. For some reason, the software acts like its copying from VHS rather than a digital source, committing information to the drive in real time. If you start recording at 7, you’re done at 8. If you start recording at 7:05, however, even if you’re watching live, the recording ends at 8:05. It’s the same data was was from 7 to 8, but it’s off  by that amount of time. And if the data gets reset at 8, you just lost the last five minutes. It’s one of the many, many things brought to you by shitty Scientific Atlanta programming and Cox’s insistence that the box they’re charging you $12 a month for is high quality.

I’ll have more examples of how this is the opposite of truth soon, I’ve got a nice notepad file of notes growing.