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Comcast Drops Microsoft
Frosty Piss writes "Comcast plans to drop Microsoft's television software and on-screen program guide from its digital cable boxes. The cable company will replace the Microsoft technology with GuideWorks software — Comcast is a part owner of GuideWorks. Comcast has been the lone cable company in the US using Microsoft technology for set-top boxes, and only in the state of Washington, Microsoft's back yard." The Microsoft offering has a solid presence in Latin America. The company is no longer trying very hard to market it here at home.
Well, I've got to say I'm surprised, but very pleased at this development. Good job, whoever convinced the management at Comcast to abandon a Microsoft product in a mission-critical application.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Will they ever die? Or are these horribly dated "jokes" going to live on forever, when it BSODs are virtually obsolete on Microsoft products.
It's funny how Microsoft failures live on in the mind of slashbots, but Apple's and Linux's shortcomings are quickly forgotten.
Guideworks sounds better than MS... ...but does it run Linux? If not, what?
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
I had no idea MS was to blame for that god awful cable box software. I thought that was Motorola's doing.
... nuff said
Nevertheless, good riddance
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Everybody is dropping Microsoft.
Recently signed up for Comcast. I wondered why the on screen guide, and the On Demand features were so clumsy to navigate (and just plain ugly to boot) - now I know why.
...I've heard that the COMCAST software sucks. It's more or less an out of the frying pan into the fire situation. And to be honest, given their incredibly lousy customer service, what makes you think they're going to develop reliable software? Or software that will allow you to do anything -more- useful than the Microsoft offering? A quick google search showed as much (if not more) complaining about Guideworks on -current- comcast boxes versus the Microsoft software.
Looking at the Guideworks website, it looks like the same crap that was part of the reason I dropped Comcast months ago. This really isn't a big deal as the Microsoft switch affects a relatively small portion of people compared to how many Comcast serves. The thing is, Guideworks software is a pile of crap, the UI is absolutely horrible, and I had mandatory updates to it remove useful functionality and even lose some of the shows I had saved on the box's hard drive. But really, the user interface is as bad as it gets. It's unresponsive, randomly locking up for seconds and sometimes even a full minute on end, and then all of a sudden all the buttons you pressed during the lockup (thinking maybe you just didn't press that remote button hard enough...) queue up and are executed immediately causing even more problems.
Comcast was supposedly talking to Tivo about replacing their Comcast/Guideworks software with the much loved Tivo software. Where is that?
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
It seemed to have no ability to look forward more than a day or two, failed to understand that when you search for shows, you might be interested in others with the same title, and fried out way too often.
This great news (dumping MSFT on my cable box), combined with the planned rollout of 400 Mbps cable modem service for the same price as I pay today, is fantastic!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
if they drop G4....
This probably has less to do with Microsoft's guide sucking as it has to do with Comcast already having an on-screen guide software suite. For something so critical, one would think that Comcast would have been 100% behind the home-grown option.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Now if we can just get MS software out of our ATMs and voting machines, the country might be safe to watch TV in again.
--
make install -not war
Here Troll,
= Search+Images&gbv=2
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=BSOD&btnG
I was gonna say this is a good thing, but I dislike comcast so much that I actually wish more problems on them so I vote NAY.
hate hate hate hate
Does the fact that Comcast is no longer paying the Microsoft Piper mean that customers can expect a fee reduction? Their profits are already more inflated than Bush's ego.
I wonder what it shows when it's late and between channels...
I'm in WA, and I have Comcast's Motorola DVR boxes with the MS Interface. All the symptoms with the UI that you described are familiar to me with the MS interface. I bet it's just as much the Motorola hardware to blame.
If I had another choice in the market for High-Def DVR, I'd take it. Anything would be better than Comcast. You hear me, nebulous market forces? I said I'd pay for your service if you offered it. Hearken to the pent up demand.
Why don't I have another good option? Why is your pet option not what I need? Well... I can get a good view of any one area of the sky from my roof, but I can't simultaneously from one dish location see all the satellites required for good high-def programming over satellite. I can't get FiOS yet, but it's coming. I can get OTA programming well enough, but neither Tivo nor any PC solution will integrate with digital cable to allow me to tune multiple channels of cable or off-air high-def programming.
Dish Networks offers the closest thing to what I want, but they make you pay through the nose if you have two high def TVs. They optimize multi-TV HD sales packages for one high-def TV and one low-def one, and no other options are affordable. That kind of "we know what you want" mentality is annoying, and I bet it turns off a lot of the geeks on this board. Grrr.
-- Jaborandy
What are you, a Scientologist?
This guy's take on MS-on-Comcast is right on. It's been nothing short of godawful.
i crosoft-enhanced-tm.html
http://wilshipley.com/blog/2006/03/this-post-is-m
God Fucking Damnit
What's wrong with the Tivo series 3, other than the price? It takes cable card (no cable box!), has 2 tuners, records HD, works with Comcast in WA (I'm doing it right now).
It is pricey, but it was worth the cost just to ditch the lame ass Comcast DVR
God Fucking Damnit
Hey, I can hate on Microsoft with the best of them, but having been on a DirecTiVo and having to switch to Comcast, I can tell you that the Microsoft product was at least usable. I was fearing that I'd end up with the home grown OSD when we switched, having seen it at relatives in other states. I was relieved to see the Microsoft label when we turned on the new STB. Teh suck is now I'm in a place that can get DirecTV, but they've ditched TiVo so that's not a much better option. I guess it's time to start reading books. :(
Does that mean my On-Demand may actually work when they change it over? heh... yeah right...
Atari007.
Lack of "on demand" is the serious issue.
I'm in WA, and I have Comcast's Motorola DVR boxes with the MS Interface. All the symptoms with the UI that you described are familiar to me with the MS interface. I bet it's just as much the Motorola hardware to blame.
Not surprisingly, I sometimes encounter similar issues with Windows MCE. Thankfully I only use that for watching TV in HD or for watching the occasional downloaded video, so it's not like I deal with it on a daily basis. My TiVo doesn't do this, though...
This guy's the limit!
Oh. I don't personally care about that, but I can see your point. It isn't a tivo problem, it's a cable card problem and when (if?) they introduce 2-way cards, Tivo will support them
God Fucking Damnit
Few questions for using your Tivo 3 with Comcast...
Do you get ESPN HD? Can you record it? Is there a way to get ESPN HD and other HD channels that are not OTA without the Comcast cable box?
Honestly, the initial price for a Tivo Series 3 is very high for me, and is simply not worth it for the amount I watch.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Well, I hope the transition to the new software enables comcast to not make the same mistakes as most other digital set top boxes. Let's see if I can remember all my complaints.
- widescreen support somewhere between zero and none
- menu tree overly deep and wide, with a bad bad case of feature creep
- distracting ad banners in every corner of the screen
- video-on-demand jerky and unresponsive to ff/rew/pause buttons
- huge fonts means you can only see listings for 1 hour and 5 channels on the screen at once
- huge overscan margins which is not required for LCD or plasmas anyway
- horrible play-skool color choices for the buttons, lists, menus, overlays.
- cheesy 3-D looking buttons that look like windows 3.1 or motif 1.0 at best
- showing channel number and station ID in pop-up or overlays instead of spending $5 to display it in LED's on the front of the box
- button only remotes--how about a jog/shuttle scroll wheel like VCR's used to have
- remotes with 60 buttons of which you only use 8 most of the time
- the 1/4 size live picture when you pull up the menus or the guide is cute, except for those rare occasions when you're trying to read the menus or the guide
- the box that supports DD5.1 or component video costs way more than it should...you can get the same outputs on a $30 DVD player at wal-mart, why should it cost so much more on a STB
- how about an open protocol so i can access the cable feed from myth tv directly instead of having to use an IR emitter or cable card
- maybe not charge so much for PPV movies since they're $1/day to rent at Kroger
- when you do the triple-play, how about not sending me two or three boxes, how about just one box with a telephone jack, an ethernet port, and component video jacks?
- why do you have to have some guy come out to "install" this thing when I can connect cables together just fine myself
- how about HD actually being the same bandwidth as what I can get for FREE from rabbit ears instead of compressing the living daylights out of it
- set top box can't actually set on top anymore if you have a flat panel TV, how about some brackets or let it look decent mounted in a vertical position
- record button should be able to start my VCR (or should have 10 years ago) like directv receivers can, not just change the channel
- even if the STB was flawless and seamless to use, the actual content is crap. i swear i spend more time using the cable modem to view stuff on youtube than i do watching TV.
They haven't ditched it... but new boxes are a bit scarce. Find one, and they'll let you have the service no problems. Worst case is they would make you buy new access cards.
on-demand is the biggest joke out there.
if you already pay for movies, geeze, man; how impatient do you have to get? your movie channels will get all your OD movies, sooner or later.
I fail to see how this money-grab called OD is worth anything. mostly, it seems like you pay for movies and then pay AGAIN to get some of them sooner.
what a racket!
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
But you know, down with M$!!! rah rah rah...
Cancel or Allow?
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
That, and 'no box' isn't really a feature when to get the cablecards you have to pay the same (or MORE, in Insight territory) that you would have to pay to get a box.
NOT wrong! I had to reinstall my copy of XP (that I paid good money for) just last month. It got the "reboot blues". My PC dual-boots between Mandriva and XP, and whenever I run Linux (and very often after I've been running Windows), booting XP results in a BSOD.
Of course, they (excuse me mr. microsoft employee, YOU) changed it so that the BSOD is on-screen for less than a second, then the PC reboots itself.
But the damned thing is still there. Anyone who says Windows never BSODs is either ignorant or lying.
Yes, it's more stable than 98 was, but I have yet to see the Linux side crash.
-mcgrew
Our company installed the PGP Universal Client and it caused a BSOD on about 40% of the systems. They all failed to recover and had to be reinstalled. This was less that 3 months ago on up to date builds of XP.
No matter what app I've installed on Linux, at worst I've only had to boot to single user mode and clean up the mess.
Get a life, not a lifestyle. - Hikem Bey
...I'm anxiously awaiting CableCards so I can dump the sh*tty Comcast guide and replace it with my Windows Media Center guide on the MCPC connected to my HDTV.
On Demand for channels that you have a subscription to is free. It's only the newest movies that aren't on the premium channels that cost extra.
Mess not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
While AT&T is not a cable company, their uverse TV system is using Microsoft's Software here "at home". It is not to shabby really, and I do like it more then the Comcast box I just kicked out of the house.
He won't say exactly what patents they are, but they probably include things like "Method and apparatus for sitting on your couch eating cheesy poofs while watching television" and "Method and apparatus for displaying television programs which contain blocks of programming separated by commercials."
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Yesterday my Comcast provided cable modem died. I stopped by the local office after work and exchanged it for a new one.
It did not just plug-and-play with my router, I had to plug it directly into a computer first and run their configuration. So, I plugged it into my powerbook. I expected trouble when the Comcast website came up telling me I would have to download some software, but when I clicked the button, the file it downloaded was actually a mac file--wow.
After unpacking the install program a warning message popped up telling me I needed to use Internet explorer to continue the configuration. It then installed IE 5.something, which promptly froze up and died.
1) You either messed up the bootloader, or you partitioned incorrectly. My money is on bad partitioning. If XP booted before you installed Linux, how is this XPs fault? Oh yeah, probably because you're mounting your NTFS drives and writing to them. Hint: change your windows mount to 'ro' in your etc/fstab file.
2) Control Panel --> System --> Advanced --> Startup & Recovery Settings --> Automatically restart. Welcome to the default of Windows NT for the past 10 years.
According to the summary (you didn't even have to read the article on this one), the MS system is only deployed in the state of Washington. That means that everyone complaining about how much Comcast's interface sucks that does not live in Washington has nothing to cheer about. So far on the page, LordPhantom seems to be about the only one that caught that distinction.
Comcast's software does indeed suck. It is clumsy, slow, and not terribly user friendly. Our cable box stops responding entirely on a regular basis, and the only way we've found to reset it is to physically pull the plug (after which it takes a good 2 hours to repopulate the on-screen guide).
I don't have any firsthand experience with it, but I'd wager even the defunct MS software would be a step up from what non-WA Comcast "customers" have now.
Then Microsoft shut down the UTV group, transfering the people off to, I think, the XBox group, apparently planning to someday integrate games and set-top boxes.
The only problem UTV had was that the interface was a little slow. But they overcame much of that with good interface design. E.g., the buttons on a page might have been slower than the equivalent on my current Comcast box, but the UTV interface only required a couple button presses to accomplish the task, whereas the Comcast box requires about 5 times as many. Two slow buttons are a lot faster than 10 moderately responsive buttons!
I've got a brilliant idea: let us choose which boxes we want. Here's a better one: Let us choose which software we want as well. I'm sure they'd gain a lot of goodwill and credit amongst customers if they allowed us to use MythTV with a cable card and 2-way communication with said cable card.
Or perhaps someone could make an adblock addon for these cableboxes?
Will they ever die?
No. It caused too many of us too much grief over too many years. It is a permanent scar on our collective psyche.
Now shut up and go away.
The Guideworks software is terrible enough. The problems that TFA mentions of unresponsiveness doesn't just affect the Microsoft boxes. It happens just as frequently using Guideworks. I can't think of a time where my set top box from Comcast ever operated how it was supposed to. It constantly freezes, forgets to record things, or locks up when it is recording. Had my set top replaced 3 times, and it still does it.
Killer chairs from outer space!
IT came from Redmond.
The blue screen of DOOM!
How to be EVIL.
Did Microsoft get hurt?
"Let's face it, it's a good story. Accuracy would kill it."
Liberate made set-top-box software that competed with Microsoft but they seem to have fallen on hard times. When I interviewed there back in 2001 it looked like they had a chance of actually competing.
Today their web site is basically an e-tombstone.
Anybody out there know what led to their demise?
-S
Since ESPN has decided that hockey doesn't exist, I have no use for them, so I don't know if I get it or not.
I'm not sure I understand your question, but I can record, for example, Discovery HD without the use of a cable box.
God Fucking Damnit
As TFA notes, MS certainly isn't getting out of the TV and STB business, only the relatively trivial software that just shows you guides and changes the channel for you. Their software is being used by a disturbingly high number of IPTV installations, so the chances that MS software will be ruining your (wired) TV experience is only going up.
People who think that the Microsoft Foundation software is far worse than the IGUIDE software must be doing a pretty careful job of picking which features to assess. I've used both, and although each has many negatives I'd say that overall the Microsoft system is slightly better. (And neither comes anywhere close to TIVO.) Also, keep in mind that some of the problems customarily attributed to the software by civilians are actually Motorola 6412 firmware problems. (Although I have heard it claimed that Microsoft contributes to its problems by having its software be somewhat incompatible with the latest version of the firmware.) One caveat: I haven't used the latest version of the IGUIDE software, which reportedly fixes several annoying bugs, but which some Comcast systems inexplicable refuse to roll out.
The cablecards cost half as much as the box (same price then, when you get 2) for me
But not everything is about using the cheapest solution.
God Fucking Damnit
I've never paid for a single thing on OnDemand... not sure what you're complaining about, the majority of content (full length shows and movies minus the commercials) is free.
How many fulltime jobs can one man have?
This is sort of like trying to decide who to root for in an Alien vs. Predator duel. My preference is to toss them both into the Thunderdome and then nuke it from orbit.
>The cable company will replace the Microsoft technology with GuideWorks software -- Comcast is a part owner of GuideWorks.
The issue is not that Comcast is particularly unhappy with Microsoft. It is more that they are going with software they own a piece of. In my experience, that usually turns out badly.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
For the life of me I couldn't figure out why we'd occasionally get XXX porn showing up when we'd try to put on OnDemand children's programming for the kids. Now that I know it's Microsoft software in the box, I can relax. It really was just buggy software.
I am not sure the article is correct Comcast being the only MS customer. Recently a friend of mine had AT&T's cable installed and it does use Motorola chip with MS software. It worked and looked great.
Do you even have a premium channel like HBO? If you do, all the HBO movies, shows, specials, etc are 100% free and you can watch them whenever you want. Also, if I want to buy a payperview movie-- I really don't want to WAIT for it to start. I hated that when I had satellite.
That simply hasn't been true since 2000, and you are flat out lying.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if vehement denial was all it took to fix bugs?
Now that I've utterly and completely owned you,
In your dreams, monkey-boy.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I've got a charter set top box that is powered by Microsoft and doesn't AT&T also use Microsoft's IPTV product?
hahahahahah! so you admit that windows continues to bluescreen, but hand-wave it aside by saying you can change for how long it gets displayed?! awesome!
Dear Comcast Marketing:
The other day, my son finished his homework and sat down for his favorite show: Heros. The show had started 20 minutes ago, so flicked on the TV, saw the start of a key scene (live), reach for the remote and hit the DVR button to start from the beginning, and BOOM - the box decided to reboot. He was in a complete panic, because he knew he just missed that key scene forever. My daughter noticed his frustration, and yelled out "It's Comcastic," which is what we always say when there's a reboot.
The next day my daughter saw a Comcast ad, and said, "Geez, dad, why are they so excited about the Comcastic thing?" I was confused, and asked her what she meant... she said "I mean, Comcastic means broken, right?"
Sincerely,
The future generation
The boxes they were using in Texas before the time warner buy out were bad. After Time Warner switched over to their software they became unusable. Pushing the fast forward button on the remote usually resulted in the system becoming stuck for 5 to 10 minutes as it zipped forward an hour or two through the program. We finally had to kick them to the curb, it was just unwatchable.
Microsoft TV was never used extensively on Comcast anyway. The i-Guide software (Guideworks) is indeed pretty bad, as is the Microsoft software. Consensus seems to be that the Microsoft software was slower and buggier, while i-Guide was harder to use, had fewer features, and was more annoying.
One more reason to use Dish Network. Their software has crappy UI, but it's stable (at least on my 625 DVR), has all the features you could want, and responds quickly.
Does anyone know why Microsoft is doing well in South America but not in North America? What's the difference between the two markets?
The article says that the MS software was only used in Washington. So, what software is running these boxes everywhere else in the country? I've been using the horrid Comcast guide (and their horrid DVR) since about 2004, and never really even thought about the fact that it wasn't something horrible they created...
Is GuideWorks what I've got as the guide now?
I'm not sure what article everyone else is reading, but I doubt if MSFT cares about this. Comcast just became our local cable provider (I'm not living in Washington) and DirectTV and DSL sales have spiked. It has to be the worst cable company I have ever seen.
Verizon FiOS TV also uses the same MS guide and is also planning to drop it soon for their own guide. They had to hire developers to fix the lousey bloatware from Redmond!