Charter Digital Cable has the most frustrating UI ever
By Eddie. Saturday, 12. November 2005, 16:47:26
I have Charter MOXI DVR for my primary TV which is quite decent (I'll do a review on that soon)- but in my bedroom I have the standard digital cable box. Pressing guide on the remote gives me this:
Why do users click on the "guide" button? To see what's on TV perhaps? How much of this screen is dedicated to helping the user find out what's on TV? Roughly a quarter of the screen.
You'll note is that there are advertisements there. Who thought it was good idea to put ads that big in the navigation UI? There is like a quarter of the screen that actually shows what's on TV. I mean- why even have a guide menu at all? They have a TV guide ad there- but the guide on the screen is nothing like TV Guide. you can't easily see at a glance what is coming up next on a channel.
The whole top center of the screen is not even used.
Thanks for taking up the big chunk of space to advertise yourself. I'm already paying you Charter. Your logo shows up on my bill every month.
The channel titles ("44 VH1") takes about half of the screen space as the program playing!
Perhaps most frustrating is that sometimes when I hit the guide button- it seems to forget what channel I'm on and default to showing me the listings on channel 2 and I have find my way back to where I was.
This is the most useless guide I have ever seen. I think it's desiged like this on purpose to get you to upgrade to DVR service.
Not that I'm saying the Ads are alright with me- but if you can't beat em- join em:
Reduce the Charter logo and TV Guide logo- put both on right, move the two ads to the top of the screen one where the charter logo is, and other to the right). Remove the brown bar surrouing the TV channel/names and move to the far left and show us what's coming up next (Guide view) on the channel. Remove the "get latest" on the bottom.
Finally- get a DVR.
Why do users click on the "guide" button? To see what's on TV perhaps? How much of this screen is dedicated to helping the user find out what's on TV? Roughly a quarter of the screen.
You'll note is that there are advertisements there. Who thought it was good idea to put ads that big in the navigation UI? There is like a quarter of the screen that actually shows what's on TV. I mean- why even have a guide menu at all? They have a TV guide ad there- but the guide on the screen is nothing like TV Guide. you can't easily see at a glance what is coming up next on a channel.
The whole top center of the screen is not even used.
Thanks for taking up the big chunk of space to advertise yourself. I'm already paying you Charter. Your logo shows up on my bill every month.
The channel titles ("44 VH1") takes about half of the screen space as the program playing!
Perhaps most frustrating is that sometimes when I hit the guide button- it seems to forget what channel I'm on and default to showing me the listings on channel 2 and I have find my way back to where I was.
This is the most useless guide I have ever seen. I think it's desiged like this on purpose to get you to upgrade to DVR service.
Not that I'm saying the Ads are alright with me- but if you can't beat em- join em:
Reduce the Charter logo and TV Guide logo- put both on right, move the two ads to the top of the screen one where the charter logo is, and other to the right). Remove the brown bar surrouing the TV channel/names and move to the far left and show us what's coming up next (Guide view) on the channel. Remove the "get latest" on the bottom.
Finally- get a DVR.
WIDGETIZE
Anonymous # 23. February 2006, 20:46
I know what you mean. I used to have digital cable in North Carolina (before moving back to GA and getting stuck with Charter) and, not only did the guide show 3-hour blocks for about 10 channels per page, the guide was also updated for 7 days (vs.
elcid73 # 24. February 2006, 03:52
Another cool feature of that DVR was that it showed the station icon along with the channel. It was much easier to find the channel you were interested in when you could see the HBO or History Channel Logo.
Anonymous # 27. April 2006, 22:25
I work in the usability field and I find the UI and remote for Charter digital cable to be unusable too. The most annoying for me is navigating to On Demand features. Where is the back button?!? If you navigate 5+ levels to see what episodes are available for a series why can't you just go back to look through other series under that channel? Similarly, if you click to view the episode description why can't you go back to the list of episodes from there? As of now it seems the only option is to go all the way back to the beginning and navigate 5 levels again. Maybe I am missing something. Although if I can't find something that simple after months of use that signals a huge usability issue regardless.
Anonymous # 21. June 2006, 19:42
I came from florida & had BrightHouse as my cable TV provider. WOW what a sad sad difference, charter must be the bottom of the barrel when it comes to Cable TV. BrightHouse's interface had everything you speak of here, no ads, current show displayed in the corner, 3 - 1/2 hour slots and 5 channels displayed nicely on the screen. Charter go check out a bright house menu system and TAKE NOTES!!!!! The ads do nothing but piss me off and consider satellite. I'm paying for your crap, dont you dare advertise to me, I pay your BILLS, NOT ADVERTISEMENTS. On another note, i have been unable to find anyone who knows how to program charter's terrible remote control. All of the online guides say "hold the setup button"... ummm there is NO 'SETUP' button on my remote. Anyone know how to program it? i just want volume control on my TV damnit!
elcid73 # 22. June 2006, 18:16
If you're up to it- usability at EL73 dot net.
Anonymous # 5. December 2006, 05:10
WWW.charter.com used to have a channel lineup on their website. Plug in your zip and get the current programming. It was free. Now they've removed it, probably to drive revenue to their digital services. Not sure how subtracting value can be a long term strategy for retaining customers. But then again I don't have an MBA.
Anonymous # 11. January 2007, 23:31
I have www.htva.net as my cable provider. I just upgraded to digital cable and DVR. First thing I noticed is exactly what this webpage is about! I am online right now trying to figure out how to remove it. The number one reason I got digital cable over satallite was because digital cable's guide update is fast, where satallite takes a few seconds while scrolling.
If I can't get these off the screen, I am pretty sure I am cancelling everything all together, and ordering up satallite. Reason being, main reason I wanted this was because the guide.
This is like buying a new car with bald tires on it, I am going to get where I got to go and it won't prevent me from using it, but its going to suck and piss me off the whole time.
Bad part is, this webpage is from 2005.. this 2007 and the problem still exist.
Eddie_Lopez # 12. January 2007, 12:44
You're right though- the fact that 2 years later it's still a problem is a big user experience problem. We just aren't being listened to.
Anonymous # 17. August 2007, 12:31
Hey its really not bad esspecially since i went from no guide at all to this one. and i liked that it went back to channel 2 when you restart the guide the Second time i dont always want to watch something that is above the channel im on and i want to start at the beginning to look at all of the shows on. and you dont have to whine anymore anyway because apparently there were a lot of people whining like you and they changed the entire menu and guide the other day and it looks simular to what you were hoping for. except now it only shows 4 channels at a time the most annoying part though is that after you enter a channel you have to hit ok for it to go there. you cant win, but you can have them accomedate your complaints.....you just will never be satisfied until its perfect to your every request.
Anonymous # 7. October 2007, 21:28
where is the set up buttun
Anonymous # 16. November 2009, 00:51
It's now 2009 and charter still sucks! Ive had the same ANALOG box since 2001 and customer service told me that was the only box for digital cable and that if I wanted a digital box I would have to upgrade to HD! I'm moving toward appleTV and ditching cable!