My ShitFuck DVR
I alluded to my entertainment device affectionately referred to as ShitFuck DVR in yesterday’s Interview Meme post. I hate this damn thing. It’s quite possibly the worst DVR ever made.
Back in 2002, I was fortunate/spoiled to be living with a roommate who was an early adopter of TiVo. Needless to say, that was a life changing experience. The concept was simple, a VCR that uses a hard drive rather than multiple VHS tapes. Why wasn’t this thought of sooner? At the time, I didn’t realize how much time and energy must have been involved in coming up with such a groundbreaking application.
Years later, I would find out… one day [insert mythical superior being of choice] decided to punish me for my blasphemic mouth and smite down my beautiful and undeserving DirecTiVo box. Truly a sad day…
For several reasons (not wishing to enter into a new DirecTV contract, lack of appropriate line-of-sight for DirecTV HD channels, growing tired of paying for both satellite and cable television services), I decided to scrap DirecTV, thereby scrapping my DirecTiVo, all together. This was quite possibly one of the hardest (and most regretted) decisions of my life.
Since the start of the football season, I had been using the Adelphia HD DVR (from now on known as ShitFuck DVR) for recording/viewing the games in HD. I decided to promote ShitFuck DVR to primetime which in hindsight was about as smart as the Houston Texans passing on Reggie Bush.
With the exception of recording programs (sometimes) for time-shift viewing, the ShitFuck DVR does absolutely nothing TiVo was capable of doing over five years ago.
The graphical interface is hideously ugly.
Season Pass recording? Nope, try these options: 1. Record this show in this time slot only. 2. Record this show regardless of time slot. Uhm… how about, Record new episodes only? TiVo could do it, why can’t you Mr. ShitFuck DVR?
Wishlist? Nope…
Easy to use menus? A, B, and C buttons? What in the hell are those for? Can’t I just highlight the option I want and hit the Select button? Nope… I have to take my eyes off the screen and search the remote for these stupid letter buttons. Is this a case of being different for the sake of being different? Brilliant design technique…
In the middle of watching something and find a buxom beauty is at the door in desperate need of your services? No problem… stop the program, do you business, come back after she’s been taken care of, and finish off the last half of Heroes, right? Nope… you must start the program from the beginning. (Note: To be fair, I have encountered a “Play from current location” menu item before but for the life of me I can’t detect consistency in how that option becomes available nor does it even work when I have been so fortunate to get it.)
Less I be too harsh, let me not forget the new ‘feature’ that was added to the ShitFuck DVR. As any experienced DVR user will tell you, you never watch a program live. You either watch it a couple days after it’s aired or you start watching 15-20 minutes after it’s begun to get that righteous buffer allowing you to fast forward through all the commercials yet still finish the program on time. Well originally with the ShitFuck DVR you had to be pretty good at your timing to accomplish this because if the program you were watching were to end while you still had a buffer, you would be immediately thrown to the live broadcast. This really sucked when watching a football game. There I am, in the midst of the third quarter when, BAM, there’s less than 30 seconds left in the game and major score changes that I completely missed. Crap, right? Adelphia knew this… they had to… I got a card in the mail one day. It touted the new “features” of their ShitFuck DVR service… they actually had the nerve of listing, “Now you can finish watching your program without being royally fucked by getting thrown to the end when the show ends.” This is a NEW feature? This is a massive bug fix if you ask me!
How in the hell did TiVo get it right back in ‘02 yet the countless clones can’t figure out the most basics of DVR programming years later?
I hate the ShitFuck DVR with all the hate there is inside of me. I’m told that one day I’ll get upgraded to the Motorola box and then days later, that box will magically be updated with new software written by the DVR gods themselves, TiVo.
I. cannot. wait.
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May 25th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
DirecTV HD DVR rules…go back to DTV! When our HD Tivo finally kicked the bucket, Tym and I were very frightened of the new magical DirecTV HD DVR that they insisted on sending us instead because they don’t use Tivo’s anymore. We are both big Tivo fans…but the DirecTV one rocks. Must faster and easier to navigate through, one click and something records, two clicks and it makes a season pass for you. And lots more HD space, which is great since we pretty much refuse to watch anything in standard definition anymore. Are you listening NFL network??!!
We still have a Tivo upstairs that refuses to die so we get a little bit of Tivo every once in awhile. DTV rules.
May 26th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
I can’t get a clear line of sight to get HD on DirecTV so I’m pretty much screwed.
May 29th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
I am honestly thinking of plunking down the $600 dollars for a tivo series 3. It will be worth it, with all the crap and screaming I have put up because of comcast’s shitty box.