Living in the Scoot Utopia

When I got my notice last month that my neighborhood was next in line to get their Time-Warner DVR's "upgraded" from Passport to Navigator, I was worried. I'd heard plenty of horror stories from those further south who had already received the "upgrade". Tales about how all of their recordings were erased. All of their scheduled recordings wiped out. Boxes constantly rebooting. Being unable to record anything. Having to drive 10-20 miles to one of the poorly-located stores (why isn't there one anywhere near the Plaza or Downtown??) to wait in line and exchange their DVRs for new ones that might work better.

Fortunately they got those issues worked out before the "upgrade" came to my neighborhood. When it came to my box, everything went smoothly.

Or so I thought.

After a few weeks, my saved recordings started randomly disappearing for no reason. Including one irreplaceable saved recording of a live broadcast.

Then it randomly started deciding it no longer wanted to record various series. No warning, no error in the log, scheduled recordings just up and vanish from time to time.

Then this week it started flagging programs as NEW when in fact theey were reruns that it had recorded before.

The interface is ugly. The white letters on blue backgrounds are difficult to read, especially on standard televisions.

It is also poorly designed from a usability standpoint. For instance, when searching for a show in the old Passport system, you would be taken immediately to the alphabet keypad. Now under Navigator you are taken to a scrolling list of every show title that no one in their right mind would ever want to use, and you must navigate to a second screen to get to the more useful alphabet menu.

The system is S....L....O....W. Last night I added two new series to my recording schedule. Under the old Passport system, this would have taken about a minute, maybe two tops. Last night, under Navigator? It took just over twenty minutes. No joke. This includes time that it had to sit and think and process my scheduling requests... for multiple minutes... with all buttons on my remote frozen and unusable until it was done.

Good grief.

To paraphrase my best friend, it's like being used to using OSX and then being forced to "upgrade" to Windows 98.

Time Warner Cable has reduced the features and services they have given us by dumping this clearly not-ready-for-market software on us, yet has not lowered our rates to compensate for this reduced service. It's time for TWC to own up to their mistake and either lower their rates or switch back to the old software until they are capable of developing a product that is actually usable.