Clear Comcast TIVO Hard Drive

I noticed a couple months ago that I had a recording om my TIVO that seemed to be corrupted. I think Comcast refers to these as phantom recordings. I could not play it or delete it although it said that recording was in progress there was no light on the front of the box indicating something was recording. I called Comcast about it a couple months ago, they couldn't figure it out and told me that they would call in a specialized TIVO tech to get back to me. I never heard from them.

It wasn't much of an issue until recently where we started having an issue where recordings on our season pass were not recording and things that were recording were getting deleted after a couple days. I assume these issue are due to the phantom recording so I called Comcast back today for some help. I assumed that they would just send a tech out with a new box. But the tech wanted to try something new.....He said there was a way to delete everything from the hard drive which should fix the issue. For those having similar issues below are the steps I went through to wipe out the hard drive.

1. On the Comcast Box - Press the power button and then the select button. This will bring up a diagnostics screen
2. On the TIVO Remote - Press the replay button
3. Press the TIVO button three times
4. Press the Live TV button
5. Press the channel up button

After this sequence is completed the box will reboot. When it starts back up all of the recordings, season passes and other setting should be gone. Time will tell whether this fixes the issues I have been having.

Comcast Online Backup

Over the past couple months I have had a few friends tell me stories of hard drive crashes that caused them to lose thousands of precious family photos and other files on their computers. I thought well, their own fault for not backing it up. Then I realized that much of the pics, music, photos and videos on my PC are not backed up either. In the past I have backed up to CD but I now have so many files that would be too time consuming. So I decided to research backup solutions.

My first potential solution was an external hard drive. Hard drive space is getting so cheap you can now get a Terabyte external hard drive for less than $100. The downside to an external hard drive is that you are not protected against fire or theft. Also, after reading reviews for some of the drives, reliability seems to be a bit spotty as many customers were experiencing problems with drives overheating or just not working. Not going to do me much good if the drive doesn't work.

My next potential solution was online backup services. These services require a monthly fee and many will allow you to backup unlimited amounts if data. You install a small application on your PC which takes an encrypted one-time back up of all your specified files, then will constantly check for new files and automatically back them up as they are created.

This is a great solution. It is easy, secure and relatively inexpensive. I like the fact that you just install the product and it does all of the work for you. The two major players in the online backup industry are Mozy and Carbonite. The products that they offer are virtually identical, just have a little bit different pricing structure.

Mozy offers unlimited backup for $4.95 / month or $59.40/ year. If your backup needs are on the lower end they do offer 2 gigabytes for free.

Carbonite offers unlimited backup for $4.58 / month or $54.95 /year. They offer a free 15 day trial.

While researching these options I came across an article from Jan 2009 that said Comcast would soon be offering an online backup service to their customers. I searched high and low on the Comcast website and could find nothing regarding online backup. So either Comcast has not rolled the product out to my area or they have decided not to roll it out at all. I am leaning more toward the latter as based on the article the pricing of the product was just not competitive.

The article states that the product will offer several storage plans:

10 GB - $49.99 per year
50 GB - $99.99 per year
250 GB - $239.88 per year

For less than the price of the Comcast 10GB plan you can get unlimited storage space from Mozy or Carbonite. I am guessing that Comcast realized this and scrapped the product. Out of curiosity I did a quick search to see if any other ISP offers online backup to their customers and found that Comcast's major competitor Verizon does. They offer plans based on storage space as well but are more competitive that Comcast's theoretical plan.

Verizon Online Backup & Sharing

Online Backup & Sharing/5 GB - $1.99 / month
Online Backup & Sharing/25 GB - $4.99 / month
Online Backup & Sharing/50 GB - $6.99 / month
Online Backup & Sharing/150 GB - $12.99 / month
Online Backup & Sharing/250 GB - $19.99 / month

Verizon's plans are still more expensive than Mozy or Carbonite but they are ahead of Comcast by offering a product. I feel that Comcast is really missing the boat here by not offering competitively priced online backup to their customers. Ultimately I would love to see them partner with Mozy or Carbonite and offer the product to their customers for free like they do McAfee Anti Virus. That would save me the $49.95 /year I am now paying for Carbonite. This would probably also help Comcast retain their customers. If a customer has all of their precious files backed up with the price of Internet service they would be less likely to leave for the competition that does not offer the service for free.

Comcast Universal Caller ID

In various places over the past few years I have seen Comcast advertisements about the ability to see incoming calls on your TV. A couple months ago I got an email from Comcast about a new feature coming soon called Universal Caller ID. This product allows you to see incoming calls on your TV or your PC. At the time the product was not available in all areas and apparently my area was one of the areas that it was not available in, as it was not working.

To enable the cable TV caller id you need to go into the interactive menu. A few months ago when I tried to do this I had no interactive menu. They must have since released a new version of the Guide software, when I went in yesterday a menu selection for Interactive TV was there. So in a few seconds I went in and enabled Caller ID. We tested it out today and it works as advertised. A box comes up at the bottom of the screen with the name and number of the person calling....see below

The second piece of this feature is Caller ID to PC. In order to get this to work you need to install some software. After the software is installed you need to log in using your Comcast account and you get an icon running in the lower right hand corner if your PC. It works pretty much the same as the TV version. See below:

The PC software and additional info can be found at the Link below:

http://www.comcast.net/callerid/

Of course you need to have Comcast Digital Voice in order to get this feature to work. I though the feature was pretty cool but my wife wasn't impressed. I asked if she wanted the software installed on her laptop and she told me no....when I inquired "why" she told me the phone is right next to her laptop she can just look at who is calling there. Oh well, I still think it is cool.

One disappointment was that it did not work on my TV where I have the Comcast TIVO software installed. This is where we do 95% of our TV watching. No info on the site regarding whether they will be updating the TIVO software to include the feature anytime soon.

I continue to be impressed by the new "free" features that Comcast continues to add to their product line. I love to see the products integrating and working together. The features probably will not impress the masses buy we geeks out here really appreciate them.

Comcast iPhone Mobile App

I am usually an early adopter of new technology but one area I have always lagged a bit behind was with a cell phone. I have had a cell phone for almost ten years but I only use it to make calls. I had a very basic plan with the minimum amount of minutes you can get. I was an early customer of the short lived Comcast Pivot/Sprint Cell phone plan which kind of made me hate cell phones in general for a while

With the recent popularity of the iPhone and other Smartphone devices we recently started researching upgrading our current plan to a data plan so we could surf the Internet and check email. We decided to stick with our current provider (Sprint) and picked up two Blackberry Curve Smartphones this weekend.

I have to say I love the phone. I can check my email, get news updates and listen to music. I have been really missing out on some great technology. One of the great features of these Smartphones is all of the apps that you can download. I noticed a few weeks ago that Comcast was offering an iPhone app that allows you to check Comcast email, check Comcast voicemail and check TV and OnDemand listings. The app looks pretty slick and it is free, click the link below to check it out:

http://www.comcast.net/iphone/

Unfortunately Comcast has only built the app to work on the iPhone. I realize that the iPhone is the new hip thing to have but it would be nice to have the Comcast app that works on other platforms as well. Blackberry has been around for much longer than the iPhone and they must have a much larger user base. I would think it would be worthwhile to build an app for the Blackberry users out there as well. If anyone at ComcastCares is out there is listening I for one would love to see the Comcast app for my Blackberry.....and while you are at it include some functionality so I can schedule recordings on my Comcast TIVO DVR from the app.

Comcast Tivo Online Scheduler

Back in June I got a postcard from Comcast advertising some new features for the Tivo on Comcast. One of the features that I was really excited about was the online scheduler. This feature will allow you to schedule tivo recordings from any computer. A very nice feature if you are not at home and realize that you have forgotten to record something. The postcard just said the feature was coming soon and pointed to this page: http://comcast.net/tivo to check for availability. At the time the feature was not available for me and I kind of forgot about it.

Earlier this week I decided to check the website again and was presented with a page allowing me to activate the TIVO online scheduler. You click on the button it verifies your TIVO box and you are good to go. In order for the feature to work I think you need to be logged into http://www.comcast.net/ using your Comcast ID. Then you need to access the TV listings for your area. The TV listing Guide with the TIVO Online scheduler is below.

It is pretty simple to use, just click on the show you want to record and a little box pops up on the right allowing you to schedule the recording or set up a season pass.

If you click on the little Tivo Online Scheduler Button on the upper right another box pops up (above) that allows you to view or cancel your upcoming recordings and season passes.

There is also a DVR selector page that will appear if you have multiple DVR's. I assume this page did not appear because I have only one DVR.

First Impressions:

The interface was easy enough to use and I think is a great new feature. This is a feature that is included if you buy a real TIVO box so it is time that Comcast added it.

Issues:

The TV Listing page can take a while to load. Not all of the time but a couple times when I went into it I thought my screen had locked up.

The Online Scheduler screen seems a little buggy. When I cancelled a recording the list of programs got all crunched together and I could no longer read them. See below:

Not really an issue but something to keep in mind. You need to give the DVR some time to sync up with the online changes. So if you need to record something that starts in 5 minutes you probably will miss it.

I wish Comcast would notify their customers where these features are available. I got the initial postcard in June but it was not available at the time. Some time over the past couple months they turned this on and did not notify me. I have a friend who also has the TIVO box and he was not even aware of the Online Scheduling functionality

Overall:

Despite the few issues I have I am very happy that Comcast continues to add features to its products. The online scheduler is not something that I will use that frequently but will be nice to have when needed.

WeatherScan on Comcast

About little over a year ago I noticed that Comcast had added channel 845 (Weatherscan) to the HD grouping of channels. At the time the channel just displayed a message stating that the channel required a subscription. I assumed that the channel was just not part of the package I am subscribed to. No big deal.

Then a few months later I started noticing that when I was scrolling through the 800 level channels when I got to 845 (WeatherScan) I would be automatically be redirected to 245 which was the digital version of Weatherscan. This was a little annoying as I could no longer just scroll through the HD channels. I called Comcast to report the problem and was told that a new version of the Guide software being released in the next couple weeks would fix the issue, which it did.

Just this weekend I noticed that I am now getting the live channel WeatherScan on channel 845. The channel is identical to Weatherscan on 245 so I am not sure why it is included with the rest of the HD channels. It is definitely not being broadcast in HD and since it is just a loop of the current weather, forecast, traffic, etc I am not really sure it needs to be in HD. With limited bandwidth being a concern with cable providers I would much rather have one of the many other HD channels that Comcast doesn't currently carry than this one.

Comcast Boston / New England High Definition Channels

The last time is posted about the line up of High Definition channels was about a year ago. At the time we had 41 channels. Comcast seems to have been randomly adding channels over the past year and we are now up to 47 High Definition channels. My current channel lineup is:

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
818 - MLB Network HD
821 - National Geographic HD
823 - Discovery Channel HD
824 - Disney HD
826 - ABC Family HD
828 - Palladia HD
830 - FX HD
831 - TBS HD
832 - HGTV HD
833 - TNT HD
835 - USA HD
837 - A&E HD
839 - HD Theater
841 - Fox News HD
842 - CNN HD
845 - WeatherScan HD
846 - Univeral HD
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
859 - American Movie Classics HD
862 - SciFi Network HD
863 - Animal Planet HD
865 - Versus HD
866 - Science HD
867 - The Learning Channel HD
868 - Cinemax HD
870 - HBO HD
872 - History Channel HD
875 - Starz HD
877 - Showtime HD
878 - Showtime 2 HD
883 - The Movie Channel HD

We seem to have lost a channel or two somewhere along the line. I think we had Bravo at one time but it doesn't seem to be in my listing anymore.