We've had this Motorola DCT 6412 DVR for a few years now. Had the same box through two different cable companies, Suscom and Comcast, and two way different software systems -- Passport and Comcast.

The Motorola DVR hardware is pretty swell. Two HD tuners with circuitry to support 1080p and decent 120 GB hard drive in a 1U rack-size package with ports for YpbPr, DVI, 1394 (DTV), USB, Ethernet, SPDIF and a Smartcard. There's actually quite a bit of cool stuff packed into this box, all of it programmable and software upgradeable. It has the potential to be the envy of any Tivo owner.

Unfortunately, "potential" is about as far as it gets. Motorola makes the box but they don't make the operating software. That's left up to the cable company to acquire or supply separately.

We had the pleasure of using the "Passport - Echo" software by Aptiv Digital, Inc. for a little over a year. I had only one minor issue with it, really: it didn't provide access to the "forward jump" feature in the box (aka, commercial skip). I thought that I had more, but I was mistaken. It was feature rich and reliable. (I would love to have it back.)

When Comcast took over our branch of Suscom a couple years ago they changed the software in the DVR to their own in house creation: a bizarre lumping of inadequately concieved and mostly untested "features". (Quotes are employed here to emphasize the irony in this use of the word.)

This article, then, aims to be a listing of these "features" (irony again) and how they go astray of any sort of positive path; whether it be good usability, sensible system design, professional programming or adequate quality assurance. The list may not be comprehensive but I will try to make it as complete as possible. In the near future I'll add articles here to expand on the particular qualities of the key features that go into making them so very, very bad.

Here it is then;

Comcast DVR Bugs: The Bottomless List

1. Only records programs that are listed in the program guide. Period.
   • You can't tell it to record from "now" for the next 'n' minutes. It will only spontaneously record the "current program" as it perceives it from the program guide listing.
2. Can't set season recording of one particular showing of a series.
   
   • Every single broadcast of every single episode will be recorded.
   • No way to specify just one episode showing (as is possible in the Passport Echo or Tivo systems)
   
   
   • Can you say "It's Comcastic"?
   
   
3. Start-time / end-time adjustment
   
   • This "feature" restricts the user as to how they can expand the alloted time for a prgram recording.
   • The user can only move start time backward (from :00 to :59 and so on) and the end time can only be adjusted forward (i.e., from :59 to :00 and so on).
   • There is no way to "slide" the time to allow for, say, a Sunday night program that starts arbitrarily because of a ball game earlier in the day.
   • There is no way to slightly adjust a start or end time to avoid a recording conflict.
     
     • When the Comcast DVR confronts a 9:00 show ending at 10:01, then it will automatically cancel the entire 10:00 program scheduled to record on another network.
     • On the Passport Echo version or on Tivo, the user would simply adjust the end time on the early program "in" by one minute. Not possible on the Comcastic software. (By the way; boycott those :01 networks when possible. They're being pesty and should lose viewers for it.)
   
   
   
   

Onward! The FIOS trucks are hanging fiber within a mile of our house. I'm hoping to lose interest in Comcast very soon.