Comcast Enthusiast (Or XFINITY as they are now calling it)

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

New Concast Guide and DVR Features

I just found this page on Comcast's website announcing a bunch of new/upcoming features to the Cable Guide Software. Seems like Comcast is giving the the standard guide software some similar features to the Comcast TIVO Guide software. Some of the highlights are:

Watch In HD - The Watch In HD button allows you to instantly watch programs in HD with a click of your remote.
On Demand - Skip Ahead / Skip Back - Allows you to skip ahead or back 5 minutes by using the page up and page down buttons on the remote.
Interactive TV - Shop by remote or request coupons from advertisers using your remote
Caller ID - See who is calling on your TV, This feature is not really new, it became available in my area about 4 months ago.
myDVR Manager - Schedule DVR recordings online. This has been available on the Comcast TIVO software for quite a while. Looks to be the same software being used on the standard Guide.
DVR Search and Record - Enter a search term and the DVR will aoutomatically search and record programs related to your search.
DVR History - The DVR will remember shows you have already recorded and will not record them again.
DVR Folders - Categorized programs in folders
DVR Clean up - Allows you to delete more than one DVR Program at once.

Many on the new DVR features are features that have been always been available on the Comcast TIVO DVR, But you pay an extra couple dollars a month for the TIVO DVR. One of the reasons I pay a little more for the TIVO DVR is because I was always having lag problems with my standard DVR. With these new features it may not make sense to play the extra money for the TIVO DVR (as long as the lag issues are gone). Will be interesting to see these features in action.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Comcast Smartzone Calendar

Comcast sent out an email last week about a new Calendar feature within Smartzone. I had a chance to poke around with the Smartzone Calendar tonight. While I do like it I don't see myself using it all that much.. For my personal appointments I use my Blackberry Calender which I always have access to so it is much more convenient. For my work appointments I use my companies' corporate Outlook client. The Smartzone Calender does have a feature which allows synchronization with outlook calendars but this is not something that my corparate IT department would allow as you need to install a toolbar.

Overall the Smartzome Calendar seems so have most of the features that the Outlook calendar has. These features include:

View the Calendar by Year, Month or Day
Add an Event/Meeting or recurring Event/Meeting
Ability to Share your calendar with Comcast and non-Comcast Users.
Create Tasks and Notes
Get pop-up reminders of meetings/events
Ability to synchronize with Outlook via a toolbar install.
Ability to view upcoming OnDemand movire releases (which is just an advertising tool for the OnDemad services)

Kudos to Comcast for continuing to add new features to the services that they offer. More info in the SmartZone Calendar can be found here.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

New High Definition Channels Comcast Boston / New England - December 2009

Just last month I posted that Comcast had added a bunch of new High Definition Channels. It looks like Comcast had delivered an early holiday gift to their Boston area customers this week by adding another 39 channels. This brings the total number of available High Definition channels to 103.

Our current channel lineup is:

771 - HBO Signature HD new *
772 - HBO Family HD new *
773 - HBO Latino HD new *
774 - HBO Comedy HD new*
775 - HBO Zone HD new *
776 - More MAX HD new *
777 - Action MAX HD East new *
778 - 5 Star MAX HD East new *
779 - Thriller MAX HD East new *
780 - WMAX HD East new *
781 - Outer MAX HD new *
784 - Travel Channel HD
785 - Encore 1 HD new *
786 - G4 Video Game Television HD new
787 - Style HD new
788 - Lifetime Movie Network HD
789 - Fox Business Network HD new *
790 - Hallmark Movie Channel HD new
791 - QVC HD
792 - DisneyXD HD *
793 - Fuse HD new
794 - Bravo HD
795 - CNBC HD
796 - ESPNEWS HD *
797 - Biography HD
798 - Independent Film Channel HD new
799 - Women's Entertainment HD new
800 - HDPPV
802 - PBS - WGBH
803 - ION HD - WBPX (formerly PAX)
804 - CBS HD
805 - ABC HD
806 - FOX HD
807 - NBC HD
808 - CW HD - WLVI
809 - ABC - WMUR (New Hampshire Affiliate)
814 - WSBK 38
815 - Planet Green *
816 - TV One HD new *
817 - NBA TV HD new *
818 - MLB Network HD
821 - National Geographic HD
822 - NHL HD new
823 - Discovery Channel HD
824 - Disney HD
825 - Nick HD
826 - ABC Family HD
827 - MTV HD new
828 - Palladia HD
829 - VH1 HD new
830 - FX HD
831 - TBS HD
832 - HGTV HD
833 - TNT HD
834 - E! HD
835 - USA HD
836 - Lifetime HD
837 - A&E HD
838 - The Tennis Channel HD new *
839 - HD Theater
841 - Fox News HD
842 - CNN HD
845 - WeatherScan HD
846 - Univeral HD
847 - The Weather Channel HD new
848 - Golf HD
849 - ESPN HD
850 - ESPN2 HD
851 - NESN HD
852 - Comcast Sports Network HD
853 - NFL Network HD
854 - Food Network HD
855 - Spike HD
856 - CBS College Sports Network HD new *
858 - Comedy Central HDnew
859 - American Movie Classics HD
860 - Cartoon Network HD
862 - SciFi Network HD
863 - Animal Planet HD
864 - Country Music Channel HD new *
865 - Versus HD
866 - Science HD
867 - TLC The Learning Channel HD
868 - Cinemax HD *
870 - HBO HD *
871 - HBO 2 HD new *
872 - History Channel HD
873 - Starz Edge HD new *
874 - Stars Kids HD new *
875 - Starz HD *
876 - Starz Comedy HD new *
877 - Showtime HD *
878 - Showtime 2 HD *
879 - Showtime Showcase HD new *
880 - Showtime Extreme HD new *
883 - The Movie Channel HD *
884 - The Movie Channel Xtra HD new *
885 - The Big Ten Network HDnew *
899 - NFL Redzone HD
901 - MSNBC HD new *
902 - Tru TV HD new
904 - MGMHD *

* Pay or subscription channels

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Comcast Outage Board - Network Health

I was recently browsing around the Comcast help pages and noticed a link to something called the Outage Board. Follow the link and you get a page that looks like this:

Apparently the page is updated with the current status of various network components for a particular user/area. You seem to need to be signed in to your Comcast account to see your status. Some of the items are pretty obvious like Internet Connection, SmartZone, Video Services and Digital Voice. But there are a couple items on the list that I have no idea what they mean, things such as: Provisioning, Commercial, CSA Abuse/Security Issues and Other Features/Services. The page is currently showing that I have an outage alert in Other Features/Services since November 16, 2009. There are no links to explain what these things are, even a google search provides no answers.

Might be a useful page to see what is going on if I am having trouble with my service but then again if my Internet is down I won't be able to get to the page. If anyone can shed any light on the Comcast Outage Board post a comment.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Weekly Verizon Fios Advertisement

I think I have mentioned it here in the past that I get a letter or postcard just about every week from Verizon FiOS trying to get me to switch from Comcast. Usually these letters tout some new feature that "Cable" does not offer. This week the new features they are advertising have me a bit intrigued.

FiOS has something called Widgets which traditionally allow you to access local information like traffic or weather in a ticket under the program you are watching. The new widgets apparently allow you to view Twitter, Facebook or ESPN Fantasy Football. I am not a big Twitter or Facebook user but it would be pretty cool to check my Fantasy Football scores while I am watching the game. Right now I either have to run into the other room to check my scores or wait for my extremely slow Blackberry Fantasy Football App to update.

The Gizmodo blog has a few screenshots here if you are interested.

New Smartzone Features - email and digital voice

When Comcast switched over to Smartzone one of the biggest complaints that many people had was that you could no longer see all of your email boxes in one place. Comcast apparently has been listening and has recently added this functionality to Smartzone. They went a step further as well and you can also add third party accounts like Yahoo and Hotmail.

I tried adding my secondary accounts last night and it worked great. My accounts showed up in my Smartzone homepage and also show up in the folders section of the email page. My only complaint is that when I imported the accounts all of the messages in those mailboxes showed as unread so I had to go in to mark the as read in order to easily tell that I have new messages. No big deal though. For instruction on how to add additional email accounts go here.

Comcast has also recently launched a feature that allows secondary account users access to check voicemail in Smartzone. Unfortunately it isn't completely working for me. I was looking forward to this as I have access to messages online and but my wife does not. In order to listen to messages online she needs to log onto my account, kind if a pain. I was hoping that this new feature would solve our issue but it does not seem to be working. After going through the instructions here, I had my wife log into Smartzone and the voicemail messages still do not show up. She can see the messages if she clicks on the voice tab on Comcast.net and logs in but it does not show unheard messages and she can not access voicemail from within Smartzone. If anyone else has successfully set up secondary access voicemail access or is having similar issues post a comment to this post

And just to keep us interested Comcast promises a couple new Smartzone features coming soon:

A Smartzone calendar tab
Additional Comcast Digital Voice online calling features
Reading pane preferences
Ability to send email to multiple contacts directly from your address book