To save some money, we recently dumped DSL, our phone line, and DirecTV ($200/mo total) and switched to TV & internet delivered via cable, courtesy of Atlantic Broadband ($60/mo total). We saved about $140/month, gotta love that. We don’t use landline phones that often anyway because we have cell phones.
My first thought after the installation was, “Man, this internet is fast!” It feels a heck of a lot faster than the DSL line, even though I was paying for the top-of-the-line DSL speed.
My second thought was, “Man, this fake Tivo sucks butt wind!” Despite the fact that the Explorer 8300 is pictured atop my old DirecTivo in this photo, make no mistake: that junky Scientific Atlantic box has absolutely nothing on the Tivo except a height advantage, and that is going to be very temporary. Both boxes are soon to be six feet under.
Atlantic Broadband rents out their DVR for $5/month with no money up front – an apparent bargain compared to the $15/month Tivo subscription plus the $50-$200 up-front cost. I got what I paid for, if not less.
The Explorer 8300′s user interface is hilariously bad, bad to the point of embarrassment. The screens feel like 1980′s computers: blocky graphics, square fonts, colors that don’t go together.
The buttons on the remote don’t even begin to make sense. The size, colors and labels of the buttons have little to do with what they’re used for. Any idea what the difference is between the yellow triangle A, the square blue B, and the round red C? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? And how about that unlabeled button, eh? The round one opposite the Exit key? What, was there a sale on buttons, buy the ones you need and get one free?
If you’re in a menu and you want to go back one level, you push the round red C button. Not the left button or the up button, but the round red C. When did a round red C start meaning “back”? And don’t push the Exit button, oh no, that bails you completely out of the system, and you have to start over in their menu hell. And don’t try the back-looking arrow at the bottom left of this picture – that doesn’t have anything to do with going back.
Tivo made the whole thing look so easy, simple and friendly. This thing is a case study in why every electronics company needs to be viciously proactive about industrial design.
Anyway, even without the control foolishness, I’d still place two calls on Monday morning. The first is calling Atlantic back on Monday to take this thing and shove it. The audio quality is horrible and the pictures have ghosting. It’s like I’m using an old analog VCR, not a digital video recorder. The second will be to Tivo to set my account back up.
