Usability Forum

Charter Digital Cable has the most frustrating UI ever

By Eddieelcid73. Saturday, November 12, 2005 4:47:26 PM

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.

Glove based input deviceThinking of the whole system (Gomer Pyle built my ATM)

Comments

Unregistered user # Thursday, February 23, 2006 8:46:33 PM

Anonymous writes: 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.

Eddieelcid73 # Friday, February 24, 2006 3:52:38 AM

The moxi DVR I had did something similar.

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.

Unregistered user # Thursday, April 27, 2006 10:25:07 PM

Anonymous writes: 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.

Unregistered user # Wednesday, June 21, 2006 7:42:46 PM

Anonymous writes: 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!

Eddieelcid73 # Thursday, June 22, 2006 6:16:09 PM

Sorry- I can't help you. I've moved on to satellite. But I did manage to get a picture of the remote before I moved. I'd love hear you thoughts on it as I've forgotten the flaws of it.

If you're up to it- usability at EL73 dot net.

Unregistered user # Tuesday, December 5, 2006 5:10:24 AM

Anonymous writes: 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.

Unregistered user # Thursday, January 11, 2007 11:31:23 PM

Anonymous writes: 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 LopezEddie_Lopez # Friday, January 12, 2007 12:44:44 PM

Yeah- I've actually gone through several other bad cable/satellite providers in the meantime.

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.

Unregistered user # Friday, August 17, 2007 12:31:16 PM

Nick S. writes: 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.

Unregistered user # Sunday, October 7, 2007 9:28:09 PM

Anonymous writes: where is the set up buttun

Unregistered user # Monday, November 16, 2009 12:51:07 AM

Anonymous writes: 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!

Unregistered user # Friday, February 19, 2010 9:56:17 PM

Anonymous writes: Here it is 2010 and I'm having trouble with getting the volume to work on the Charter remote. They had me go in and pick up a new remote, but that one didn't work either. I then spent 45 minutes on the phone with a Rep who had me trying all sorts of things, but still I could not get the volume to work off the Charter remote. Mute does not work either. I never had this problem with Comcast which I just loved. They are really great in my book. Charter is poor. When I first moved to the area the Charter installer tried to tell me he couldn't get the volume/mute to work off the remote. I told him that would not do and he worked at it and got it running. Problem is it no longer works. ONe day it did, next day it doesn't. Where did it go??? Charter is no help. I think these cable companies have too much power int he communities they are in. We are captive. They leave the consumer with no choice but satellite which isn't always the best choice either. I pay my bill on time, but don't get much for the effort.

Unregistered user # Friday, August 27, 2010 3:17:44 AM

Anonymous writes: where is the setup button mine does not have one

Unregistered user # Sunday, September 19, 2010 7:22:38 PM

Anonymous writes: I hit some button on my charter remote, and now I have a snowy picture. Can't get anything on the TV. This isn't the first time this has happened. Don't know how I fixed it before, I just started pressing button, but this time it didn't work. I talked to a rep online, but seriously she was not help. I can't wait till ATT comes to my area. I am going to switch so fast charter won't know what hit them. In the mean time, how do I get this problem fixed?

Unregistered user # Sunday, December 5, 2010 3:39:42 AM

Abe writes: I'm really starting to hate charter. My signal strength is weak, they charge me extra for channels that are supposed to be included in my package and something stops working at least once a week. It's just ridiculous. Sad little company really isn't afraid to charge premium prices for this mess either... What a joke

Unregistered user # Tuesday, February 22, 2011 12:37:59 PM

Anonymous writes: Moved from the north to middle south. Our only option is Charter in the area we live, which is ridiculous, wanna talk about a monopoly. Our provider in the north was TimeWarner(Which is Comcast basically) I have their HD box for our tv in the living room and a basic digital box for the bedroom. The bedroom cable box has been a nightmare. Its definetly has been used and abused from previous owners, there's still ring marks on the top vents from the other owner. I just disconnected the box to move it while we moved in our furniture and when I went to reconnect it had a shit fit and now none the guide works. Bottom line this company has been nothing but disappointments why am I paying 160$ for these services?

Unregistered user # Tuesday, March 1, 2011 4:49:34 PM

Andrew writes: I’m both an employee and a long-time subscriber of DISH Network and I can tell you DISH’s guide is a whole different animal. It’s intuitive and easy to use and instead of an advertisement or something like that, a small portion of the screen is used to display a channel. It also has search functions with a variety of options, like search by title/keyword genre etc. Take into account DISH has lower prices and has beaten Charter for ten years in a row for overall customer satisfaction in the ACSI survey. You should definitely consider checking it out.

Unregistered user # Tuesday, November 8, 2011 11:01:09 AM

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