I've been using use the Rogers Ignite system for a month now, and I've waited before commenting; I wanted to be fair and not just whine because it's different to our previous cable box. For the most part, it's a competent system, but I have found a few problems I'd like to see addressed. 99% of my problems and issues revolve around the program guide - it seems to be a work in progress with a few obvious missing elements:
First, an explanation - Once every week, I scan for programs airing during the next seven days. The current guide setup makes this process a real chore.
The horizontal guide format was antiquated 20 years ago. Advancing the guide three-hours into the future means clicking the 'move right' button on your remote 6 times (once for every half-hour movement into the future, 12 clicks if the guide shows 15 minute long programs). Pressing the 'Fast Forward' button to advance 24hours is useful, but not if you want to see all the upcoming programs in that 24hour period. If you're attempting to scan one channel for programs a week into the future, it can take quite literally hundreds of clicks.
Also, oddly if you do look for programs a few days into the future, after showing the first two days of programs, the guide stops showing the day of the week you're looking at (located at the top left hand of the screen) - instead showing only the numerical date; so if it's Tuesday and you're looking for programs airing next Thursday, you'd better have a calendar nearby...
A MUCH better solution is a vertical guide, and this is where Shaw's “Gateway” cable box excelled. Their vertical guide showed the upcoming programs on one channel, eight at a time, with another eight displayed every time you pressed the page up or page down button. The Gateway had the right solution – it gave users a choice of horizontal AND vertical guide formats. I'd love to see that addition made to Ignite (perhaps add an option for a vertical guide display to the “Select Your Guide View” screen?).
I've discovered a partial work around that makes the process of scanning for future programs easier: If we mark the channels we scan most often as 'favorites', they appear under the “Saved” menu, (“Saved”, then “My List”) and can be scanned individually there, showing the upcoming programs on that channel displayed vertically, which is essentially what I want; but there are still problems: mainly, there is no quick way of 'discovering' what the programs are or when they were made.
Quick example of what I'm talking about: I search “Turner Classic Movies” every week looking for films made after 1960 (I don't like black and white films - most films after 1960 are in color). The current ”My List” menu doesn't show the dates as I navigate over the titles, so I either have to push the 'info' button on every single title to find out when the movie was made, or go back to the horizontal guide and push that 'move to the right' button on the remote control more than one hundred times to look through a week of upcoming movies.
The Gateway's vertical guide menu was displayed in split-screen with the titles on one side and descriptions on the other. It automatically showed us a brief summary of the program when we navigated over the title (including the year it was made) in that 'descriptions' pane, with more detailed summaries available if we pressed the 'Info' button. It made the entire process of looking for upcoming programs easier and altogether quicker.
On the topic of that “info”, I'm also disappointed by the actual lack of information given: Ignite only displays the names of the three top billed actors, and while you do give us the program rating (PG, 18+ etc) you don't tell us what the program type is (children's, drama, documentary, animated, musical etc). The old Gateway's 'detailed information' showed us the program type and the top ten actors names (sometimes more) as well as the names of the director and the producers.
Your addition of a Rotten Tomatoes rating is a nice touch, one I appreciate. I also appreciate the black and white color scheme and the font chosen – it's easy to read regardless of the size of screen I'm watching - altogether better than the blue of the Gateway.
Another oddity on that “My List” menu: When you set a program to record, it doesn't show the 'red dot' reminder that it's been set to record like it does on the horizontal menu. It seems like a simple omission, but frustrating none the less.
One thing I'm actually considerably worried about is PVR space – after one month and 65 recordings, I'm at 54% full. We purchased a standalone hard-drive to increase the Gateway's PVR capacity, but that isn't a possibility with Ignite. I imagine every single one of your subscribers would appreciate you doubling or tripling our allotted PVR space.
The voice remote's ability to advance the program by minutes and seconds (ie: saying “three minutes and fourteen seconds” advances the program by 3 minutes and 14 seconds) is nice, but it seems one obvious step away from being truly useful; “skip commercials” would be a perfect addition. Please?
One really annoying quirk of the Ignite system: I record the 4:00AM airing of “BBC World News” to watch while I eat my breakfast every day. Strangely, I'm forced to record it manually; it's easy enough to set to record, but if I do, Ignite records every single instance of “BBC World News” that airs throughout the day, not just the 4:00AM time slot that I want – the end result being 24 episodes recorded in a that 24 hour period. Allowing us to record specific time slots would be greatly helpful - just make “Airing Time” another option in the record menu. I'd also like the ability to stop recording programs 60 minutes late added to the record menu too - weekend programs have a tendency to start very late because of afternoon sports running over time.
Another annoyance is the fact that when a paused PVR recording 'times out' and the system turns off the recording you're watching, the “Recordings” menu resets to the top of the page instead of remaining focused on the title of the program you were watching. Making us scroll through that menu again seems a bit unnecessary.
The only other thing I'd really like to see is the ability to turn off 'live TV' when we push the 'Exit' button on the remote control – make it go into hibernation when we don't want it. Example: when we are in the “Saved” menu, live TV is still blaring in the background, despite our not watching it anymore. More annoying is ending a PVR recording and finding the system automatically playing live TV in the background, which forces us to mute or reduce the volume despite not watching that live TV program in the first place. It's a small point of complaint, but in annoys every single time.
All in all, I'm positive about Ignite – I think it has real possibilities, it just needs some tinkering and one or two additions to be made. I look forward to future updates.
