Hi, I'm an AT&T employee and the following is my opinion... and a lot of others too!
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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