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.

Comments

Good riddance

[Aqua OS X]

I had no idea MS was to blame for that god awful cable box software. I thought that was Motorola's doing.

Nevertheless, good riddance ... nuff said

Re:Good riddance

[cayenne8]

"This issue is no better with Tivo, Tivo just doesn't tell you that 3 minutes of your show is an emergency broadcast. Now all the ads that they keep adding to the guide, and the way they abbreviate show titles while they haven't yet used HALF the length of the guide entry, now that is stupid software problems. Having to press 3 numbers (002) to change the channel, while the "enter" button does nothing, now that is stupid. I liked being able to press "2" and sit and wait for it to change the channel."

Dang!! My tivo series2 has been unplugged and out of the 'stream' since Katrina..almost 2 years. I'm now kinda dreading plugging it in and getting updates like these!! Ads in the guide?? When did they start that?

I guess I may go clone the drive first before plugging it all back in...

Does the 'hidden' 30 second skip feature still work after the select-play-select-3-0-select key sequence?

So that explains it

[joshv]

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.

Guideworks blows

[hansamurai]

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?

Re:Guideworks blows

[Chris Kamel]

It's not the software's problem, I'm a Comcast customer living in WA. Everybody around here complains about the box (including those making the MS software themselves) and nobody is expecting things to get better with the switch because most of the problems are with the firmware of the box, not the software.
That's why your complaints about the box with the Guideworks software are exactly my complaints about the box with the MS software, same locking up, same queuing up of the button presses, same everything.

Bringing it in

[Applekid]

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.

This is bad news for Washington Comcast Customers

[hawks5999]

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. :(

As someone who lives in Washington...

[CloudsSpaz]

I have to say, I didn't mind Microsoft's software at all. It was pretty easy to use, and it seemed far better than the TV Guide software that my out of state friends who have Comcast use. So I'm hoping this switch is an actual improvement, because I was actually quite happy with my current software.

But you know, down with M$!!! rah rah rah...

Re:WRONG!!! MOD FUD DOWN

[dclydew]

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.

Re:opportunity for improvement

[British]

I have a Comcast HD box, and yes, it indeed sucks. Let's add to the list shall we?

- How about have on-screen guides in HD? After all, the box is for HD, why not bring the program data(descriptions, etc) and re-render it in 720 or 1080? C'mon, it's 2007.
- enable the composite in ports in the front? I'd love to have access to those to hook up a video game console, etc.
- enable the Ethernet port so I can watch downloaded videos(okay that's a pipe dream, but that dang Ethernet could be useful).
- make the god damn DVI port work with my HDMI port on my TV? I have one of the HDTV models it's not compatible with.
- USB port: woudln't it be cool if we could put video files on a thumbdrive and it would play them on the television screen?

Yeah, I know. I'm coming up with ideas for ports they for some strange reason decided to include(which costs money) but make absolutely no use of.