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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.
BSODs are virtually obsolete on Microsoft products.
Not sure what you mean when you call them "obsolete", but they still keep happening, Mr. Ballmer.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Actually, it seems that the MS version is used in Washington only. I am in IL, so I guess I don't have MS to blame for my poor user experience.
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.
Perhaps if you cared more about customers than promoting your anti-Microsoft agenda, you'd realize that the Comcast software is, without reservations, worse in every way that the Microsoft software. This is a bad thing for consumers all around. Comcast will now have one less input on how the system might be improved for consumers. You may consider the evil of Microsoft absolute, but Comcast is even more evil when it comes to "serving" their customers.
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.
Mission crticial? It's a set-top box for christ sake.
What would you consider mission-critical for a cable TV company?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."