Being a guy, I enjoy, not just having a televison, but being able to find something good to watch. In the old days, there was TV Guide. You bought a copy and struggled through the listings trying to match your channel list with the one in the book. As far as I’m concerned, the greatest recent invention in television viewing is the electronic guide. With the touch of a button a beautiful listing of each stations programs appear with times and correct channels. Usually, the ability to whittle down to only movies, sports, ect. make it even better. Let’s face it, there are just too many channels and most of those channels have nothing worthwhile on. Another great feature is the “fav” or favorites list. With the proper programming, only your favorite channels are listed in the guide. Which is awesome knowing you don’t even have to see all those shopping channels that only a few watch.
With my recent conversion from Direct-TV to Charter, I now have a reasonable ability to rate the four television services we’ve had as relating to the programming guide. I know that is a narrow specific topic but again, this is very important to us guys. Haven’t you seen us open up the guide, go through it completely three times then look ahead an hour and do it all over again? The four nominees are Direct-Tv, Dish, Charter, and Uverse. I admit that Uverse isn’t available where we live but it has to be thrown in the mix.
Since I use Charter now, I’ll talk about it first. I’m not a fan of the color purple. I don’t like the small windows for info. The buttons on the remote are small and hard to find at times. There are too many options, if I press “OK” that means I want to go there! Scrolling through the guide is difficult if you are using the page down option. Also, it seems that all channels are listed. I want an option to only see the programming I’m paying for. So, the final opinion is that Charter’s guide is usable but could be greatly improved. My rating = #3 I will say that Charter is trialing a new guide that should be a leap forward. The rollout date is unknown though.
My previous service before Charter was Direct-TV. I really enjoyed their menus and buttons on the remote. I have to give them credit for having one of my all time favorite services. The guide was simple and even “person specific” programing was easy. A neat feature was an option for “channels I get”. I didn’t have to scroll through channels we were not paying for, a good thing! My worst complaint was, at the time, adult programming could only be blocked on one unit. Hopefully that has improved now. My rating = #2
Dish network was our service several years ago, so i’m hesitant to even include them but “it is what it is”. Dish was a disappointment in so many ways. I still remember cancelling the service because they wanted to charge me $69.00 to replace a defective unit. It was a good thing because I was introduced to Direct-TV. Sorry Dish Network, my rating = #4
So, who is #1 you ask. In my book there is no question about, Uverse from AT&T wins hands down! I had the opportunity to view the service for a couple of hours recently and was blown away. One of my favorite features is the channel numbering. If you are viewing a non-HD channel in the lower tier, just add 1000 to go to the same HD one. The guide colors are all very nice with large windows and good info. If you are watching a channel and press guide, the viewed channel goes translucent in the background… impressive! Without a doubt, there isn’t any comparison where Uverse looses. My rating = #1
Uverse = #1
Direct-Tv = #2
Charter = #3
Dish = #4
The morale of this blog, for companies, is that the electronic program guide is important. Keep it simple and keep improving it or customers will be taking their dollars elsewhere. By the way, if any of you ever stop catering to the big dogs in the media and offer ala carte programming, get ready to make mucho dinero(APPLE-TV?). As a consumer, I hate paying for channels that are NEVER watched! Are you listening MTV, LOGO, Current, etc.
There are other options if your television guide isn’t up to par. ZAP2it is a good online guide. Another is TitanTV. There is also a downloadable free open source guide called TV-Browser. There are also several good downloadable apps for your phone.
Hey, I gotta go check my guide. There may be something good that I’m missing…
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