Comcast Equipment, Simply the Worst!

You are watching a show, really getting into it but the volume is a little low. You accidentally hit 2 keys and wham, the remote control responds to almost nothing! This feature likely designed to make their service less susceptible to toddlers hitting all the buttons simultaneously more often than not seems to make their service "adult-proof". Even turning off the power won't reset the device as the "child-proof" mechanism appears to be timed. Unplugging the device completely would likely rectify the problem but that could take several minutes to reboot. By the time the device finally becomes responsive again, you have missed the ending of the show!

If this were an isolated event, I could understand. No service is perfect. But how many times have you surfed channels only to see that annoying message "Your Explorer is not authorized"? Again, several minutes pass and the equipment functions normally. Judging from the fact that you always pay your bill on time, one can only assume by the message that Comcast is deliberately doing something for their security that more often than not backfires on the wrong people! If these quirks were not annoying enough, some people experience frequent equipment reboots. Even more annoying is the need to hold the remote still several seconds or it won't power on or off correctly!

I guess I should not be surprised by this considering this is the same company that put a big "On Demand" button in the way of the little power on/off button making it more likely to accidentally end up in "On Demand" than intentionally. Like it is not aggravating enough that they make the number "1" key automatically go into "On Demand". If you are not fast enough typing another number, Comcast will lock you into "On Demand" with no way to stop the slow loading service! Also extremely annoying is their interactive guide. They took a good feature, added banner advertisements and produced a hard to navigate, extremely unreliable and prone to freezing guide. Then when you finally do want to actually see an "On Demand" movie, they don't even show which movie service you are in. Often I browse first to see what is available for later viewing but with Comcast's service, you can't even tell if you are in HBO or Showtime without clicking the Last button several times to backtrack. Maybe they have a hidden feature that provides an easier way to do this but what's wrong with just showing it on the screen? With all the wasted space and room they reserve for the Comcast XFinity logo, they could fit this in but I guess I would not know what service I had if the XFinity logo was not constantly in my face!