DVR adventures

I made the switch to sattelite TV today because cable is getting more expensive and they're slow to add HD channels. One thing I was pretty happy about was that you didn't have to pay any upfront fees for DVRs, and the Scientific Atlantic models they offered are really pretty good, although the hard drive could be a lot bigger.

Now I have Dish Networks top DVR and while the hard drive is certainly bigger, the interface, especially when it comes to setting up recordings, is a disaster. It gives you the feeling that it's very powerful, but it's really just complicated and doesn't work very well at all.

I don't know whether it's because the programmers didn't care or because they didn't feel like working around certain software patents. Whatever it is, I already miss the old interface.

To set up recording with Scientific Atlantic's DVR, you select a show from the timeline or search for it by name (if there is more than one episode for a show with a certain title, the list is collapsed to make scrolling through the result set faster) . With one click, you can then decide to record the item you selected, or all instances of this show on this channel. Very simple and straightforward. Additional options are also easy to set up. You can select to record the show only on the current channel or all channels, only record new or all episodes, only at the currently selected time or all times, etc.

Contrast that with Dish Network. I select a show from the time line. I hit one button to record only the item I selected, another button for a more complicated setup.  I get a new screen, to select frenquency of recording. Another screen from there to select delete protection, start early/end late. If I want more options than that, I have to create the recording as something called Dish Pass, which is basically a custom search. It records everything that matches a set of criteria such as title, channels, frequency and resolution(!). But not time, and that where I get pissed off. You see, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are repeated four times a day, and they are apparently all marked as new. I don't know whose fault that is, but Dish Network and Scientific Atlantic's guides both have the same problem. However, with SA's DVR I can just set it to record only at the time when it show new episodes. Easy enough, with Dish Network, I have to create a custom, time-based recording that I can't even give a title. But that means it's gonna record episodes Monday through Friday, while new episodes are on only Monday through Thurdays. And there's no way around that.

Also, there's more than one menu to do the same thing. I hate it.

Update: Toggling subtitles is a huge pain in the ass now as well. Nice font, though.