Since this post is a bit stale you may have already figured this out by now, but the Comcast HD/DVR box is a piece of shit. They’ll tell you it’s just like TiVo but it ain’t.

It’s buggy and very unfriendly. The one i’ve got now will lock in “mute” mode if you turn it on while it’s recording something you programmed earlier. The only way to un-mute is to turn off the machine thus canceling your recording.

Some mornings I wake up and the video and audio signals are completly gone. The chanel guide is up to date, and I know I’ve got a cable signal because the TiVo I keep hooked up to the same system to back up the Comcast box when it fails is playing live video and audio just fine. It took three calls to Comcast to find someone with enough smarts to diagnose the issue. The fix is to totally power down the box for 30 seconds to reset things, but the re-boot process wipes the program guide for an hour or so while it puts things back together.

The other annoying little tick i’ve noticed is random, Microsoft-like crashes. No warning, nothing, just ppufffttttt, done.

I’ve had mine for almost two weeks now and I plan to take it back to comcast and get another to see if it has the same bugs, er, I mean features. I’m just going to keep returning boxes until they get it right.

The box is fantastic when it functions as advertised but I wouldn’t even call this thing a beta, it’s certanly a long way from being reliable. The folks at TiVo can rest assured that Comcast isn’t a threat yet.

You HAVE to watch it. Otherwise some exec will go “See? People don’t want HD. Nobody’s watching it!”