Got my X1 box last night and as a DVR/Cable Box, it's actually quite good. The interface is pretty well thought out as are some of the features. One improvement is that it automatically selects the HD channel of whatever you're looking for. For example, if I select our local Channel 4 (CBS), it'll redirect me to Channel 234 (its HD counterpart) automatically. Also, when you hit "Last" it pulls up the last nine channels you watched. Additionally, the DVR is nearly five-times bigger than the old one and you can record four programs at once while watching a fifth (first-world bullshit, I know).
The guide and menu features are nice, too, especially when you want to search. The remote's keypad is just like a phone, so you just type the word you're looking for and it'll pull up anything that matches. If I'm looking for "Walking Dead", I just type 9255 and it'll automatically read it as "WALK". And if I see a show in the guide, and then select it, I'm able to choose past episodes to watch from OnDemand, and they're sorted by season.
Also cool is the sports feature. You only have to hit a button and it'll pull up a side-window showing you all the scores and times for every game, even the ones that aren't televised in your area. And if you click on one of the games that is televised, it'll take you right to it.
OnDemand is also massively improved, looking more like a Netflix app than the old crappy menu they used to have with the annoying video loop they had running.
Then there's the Apps section, which is where I assume the EA Origins thing will go eventually. Right now they have Weather, Traffic, Pandora, Facebook, and some other stuff. It's all pretty slick and loads up rather quickly. It'd be pretty sweet if they got Steam onto this thing, but wishful thinking, I suppose.
A couple negatives:
-The box doesn't shut off. It's always on, so there's the power concern.
-There's no reminder option anymore. It was nice to see a show coming up in a few hours and to be able to set a reminder to flip in on.
-No Input Select on the remote. This is a big negative for me because I often am switching from cable to AppleTV to BluRay and it was nice having a remote that could change the input. That's a really big oversight, IMO.
Overall, it's an incredible improvement from their old, shitty DVRs. Glad I upgraded. Thanks for alerting me to it!
Topic: EA and Comcast bring you a set top box (Read 1007 times)
