Mar 2, 2007
Things I hate most about my Motorola HD DVR
I was just extolling the virtues of time-shifted HD on select popular, somewhat boring programming (see also: Super Bowl). But I’m really, really fed up with what’s become my most hated of all the gadgets in my possession: my crap ass Motorola DCT3416 HD DVR. I’ve gone through three already, and while yes, it does have live FireWire and HDMI out and dual HD tuners, it’s an evil, evil little machine. Here are my most hated things about this most crap-ass of DVRs (in order of least to most hated):
- No fast-forward jumpback. I know that no one else has emulated this TiVo feature, but it’s truly one of the best. At least do it like Media Center and give us a 30-second jump in addition to the instant replay.
- The remote. Yes, I know it’s a Comcast special, but it’s awful. And the DVR itself doesn’t pick up the signals half the time.
- The interface. Obviously, but man, this interface is so terrible it’s just sad. Even a seasoned gadget dork such as myself has a difficult time navigating the UI. And let’s not even speak of the sluggish responsiveness during use.
- No shows, yet no free space. Delete shows, and you get more space, right? Wrong. My favorite feature is when I clear out a few shows from the not-even-full DVR, it lets me know that 100% of its capacity is used. Deleting even more shows doesn’t help, you have to do a hard power cycle.
- The program guide. Inaccurate data? Sure. No data? Why not. Inability to view program listings in the last few hours to see if you missed anything? No, hell no. Who would need to do such a silly thing as that?
- Not recording shows (on time). I guess it really doesn’t matter when your season pass is top priority, it’s totally cool to start recording shows 15 minutes late. Who cares about that first fifteen? Users like me should be grateful it records at all, right?
- AV signal constantly dies. During fast forward, rewind, or instant replay, it’s not uncommon (say, about 40% of the time) for the screen and audio signals to totally drop for about 7 seconds, and then come back. Doesn’t sound that bad, but it’s enough to drive a person nuts. Kind of like this unit in general.
- Update: Extremely high defect rate. Guess I’m moving on to unit four.
Waiting for that TiVo S3 upgrade any day now, Comcast. Any day now.
I'm an editor and technology critic in the midst of founding a new web startup: 
TiVo has spoiled us all. They are the Apple of the PVR world. It just works and it works beautifully. The flaws in the Motorola box are so obvious that I can’t believe they can’t at least make even small improvements. The thing I hated the most when I had my generic box was the delay on the fast forward, it makes watching football quickly next to impossible. The thing I hated the 2nd most was that I only got 7 days of guide data. If I watched a pilot and liked it, I couldn’t just schedule a season pass, I had to remember to go back later when the guide updated. The limited hard drive is also pretty weak. You couldn’t save more then a week’s worth of programming without running out of space. I’ve upgraded my S3 with a 750GB and I know have more content then time to watch.
Ryan – I’ve told you before, you have a defective unit and need to call Comcast!! That said, it’s still a fairly bad product. Here’s some points for you:
1 – you can “add” the 30-second skip button into the remote: http://www.tvsnob.com/archives/003479.php
2 – agreed, terrible. worst of all is how the unit sometimes caches remote buttons then sends them en masse. Get thyself a Harmony 880!
3 – its not as bad as the TV Guide one from about 3 years ago, but its certainly up there.
4 – DEFECTIVE UNIT
5 – I completely agree, I also miss TiVo’s feature to show you the “recording history” so you can see why it chose not to record some shows…
6 – dunno, haven’t seen that one… sounds like… DEFECTIVE UNIT
7 – yup, this one is apparently just a systematic problem
Ultimately what amazes me the most is that this thing has shipped in the state it’s in. As a guy who was responsible for shipping quite a few TV-oriented products, I can’t understand how this could get out the door in such a sorry state.
I guess this was a long enough comment I shoulda just blogged it myself, eh? ;)
Yeah, I did! You told me that about my last defective unit. In fact, I’m going to add my MOST hated thing about these DVRs: high defect rate.
I switched from Directv Tivo to Time Warner’s Scientific Atlanta HD DVR a couple of months ago. It’s been surprisingly good; not Tivo but it generally does what I want. It does have the FF jump back, no 30 second skip of course. The remote is not great, the search is difficult to use, and I miss wish lists, but otherwise it’s ok. At $14/month vs. $$$ for a Tivo S3 I’ll stick with it for now. Plus I get on Demand programming.
I guess my DCT3416 is fried too. It was my first. It’s been showing 12:00 on the display for days now, and every channel in the guide shows TBA.
Also, the DVR is “currently unavailable.” I’ve unplugged/replugged the unit, and I also did a DVR HDD reset as described here. Ugh.
Anyone know how to access the lan portion of the dct3416? I’ve got it hooked up in my network, but can’t browse to it. HELP?
[...] already paying for service on a Series2 for all our standard def recording needs — the Comcast box we have, as I’ve said in the past, is godawful, and we use it as little as possible. But with [...]
I can’t believe we can’t find a decent DVR(PVR) out there. Tivo, Motorola, 2Wire, Apple, Sony, Panasonic, and anyone else, LISTEN UP, and sell me a device like this:
If its a settop box, then I want a 250GB (minimum) HDD, with a direct network connection (wired or wireless) to easily transfer my recorded content for achiving on my media server’s larger HDD, and allows me to connect to, and play it back from there as well.
I want 3 cable tuners, to record 2 shows simultaneously, while watching a 3rd.
Or, if not a settop box, give me a PC interface device/tuners with cable cards that enable all services, including PPV and OnDemand and allows me to record and store the content indefinitely on my media server HDD.
And, while we’re at it, how about a FREE, advertising-free, web-based programming guide, with remote access via the web for setting up and controlling the device, that DOES NOT go through the cable company who charges me extra for it. No ads on the MAIN MENU, please.
Why is this so hard to do?
MHKitchen – Aptos CA
Sounds like you want something good. These guys don’t do “good”, they do cheap, or fast, or easy to get out the door, but not really “good”.
Ryan:
Yes, too bad. I also think the original Replay TV and TiVo business models killed the market for those of us who just want to buy a nice HDD storage and playback device.
And, while I inadvertently omitted it from my comment above, the obvious assumption here is that its all HDTV capable.
MHKitchen – Aptos
Also, no video pass-through option. You must choose 720p or 1080i, so I must constently switch between these two options depending on which HD station I am watching to avoid the cheap Motorola scalers from ruining the picture. If Motorola is going to use cheap scalers, then they should at least give us a pass-through option like every other cable box I have ever owned.
Hello!
If anyone gets on here, I was just wondering if our unit was defective. Well we have 2 of these boxes, we just got them about 2 weeks ago. And now we are having a problem with one of them, when we press the DVR button it says “Service is Unavailable”, we called Insight and they said it should be working. It is on one of them but not the other. We tried to reset it by unplugging it but it didnt help. They even turned the box off while talking to them on the phone and it didnt help then either. So does this mean the box is defective or is it something else? If anyone can help we’d appreciate it. Thanks!
Hi Guy’s,
I am Comcast customer but I never got the comcast DVR. I have been using an old model Panasonic Replay TV. The design is about 5 years old at this point. It has served me well up until my recent HDTV service. Based on all the reviews I can’t downgrade to this box.
It just shows how bad monopolies can be. When you don’t have any real competition then you deploy shitty products. Just look at what the US Auto Manufacturers were putting out in th 70’s and 80’s and 90’s until Japan absolutly kicked their asses. Now we can finally find well made cars by Ford, and GM.
Comcast will never deploy a good working DVR because there is no biz case to support it. Only a mass drop out in thier subscriber base will wake them up.
I am very curious as to how they will handle to transition to digital. If they try to shove a crummy box on me then I will do local broadcast and more Netflix. Heck at $18 a month for 3 movies at a time, why do I need cable? Oh yeah, I like their internet service.
I was interested to read your comments. I have recently moved to North America from the UK. I purchased a Motorola pvr as we had been using a satellite pvr in the UK from Sky.
I have to say as much as I despise Sky television the pvr they supply (manufactured by Thompson a French company I believe) is vastly superior to the Motorola unit. It looks like it’s worth twice the price and it is much quieter in operation. The software is also much easier to work with.
The biggest drawback to the Sky box is being tied into their contracts. Mind you it will also decode BBC HD test transmissions. I am also underwhelmed by what passes as HD here. The data rate must be failrly low as the picture quality is nowhere near as good as UK HD broadcasts. Maybe satellite is the way to go rather than cable?
Luckily I am NOT in a Comcast area, but unluckily it’s Charter. Actually I’m ok with them for the most part and some things are awesome. Like the Moxi DVR. It was the best (although it was crap technically, I loved the user interface!) They aren’t “doing” them anymore so when mine just screwed up, it was replaced with a Motorola HD DVR (which I had before for a few weeks and ABSOLUTELY HATED!) Ugggggggghhhhhhh! Satellite? TiVo? Maybe I’ll just use my DVD-Recorder even though it’ll be MUCH more of a pain in the you know where! :-)