Comcast DVR: Product Review

Imagine a world where you never have to utter the phrase "There's nothing to watch on television." That's how my life has been ever since I got the Comcast DVR about a year ago. With the Comcast DVR, you can pause live television, rewind a scene you may have missed or that you want to see again, and record and store your favorite television shows.

Let's say you are watching a movie on HBO and you get a phone call. All you have to do is press the pause button on your remote and you can talk for as long as you want up to an hour and a half. The Comcast DVR automatically stores a program you are watching as long as you stay on that particular channel. This allows you to pause and rewind live TV. Unless you chose to record the program you are watching it will automatically disappear in about an hour and a half or two hours.

Pausing and rewinding live television is great, but where the Comcast DVR really comes in handy is the recording of shows. You can record up to 60 hours of standard television (digital shows may take up more space). There is also an option for you to record every episode of a particular show that is going to be shown. All you have to do is highlight the show on your program guide (there's also an option that allows you to search for a show), and choose the option to record all episodes. There is also another option on the Comcast DVR that allows you to record the show on every channel. That ensures that you will never miss an episode of your favorite show. If you only want to see new episodes of a show, then there's option to record new episodes only. So basically what I have done with my Comcast DVR is that I have set options to record a lot of my favorite shows every time they air on television. Right now I have so much on my DVR that it is 75% full. Every time I want to watch television I just choose one of the shows that have been recorded and I am set. I also do customer service work from home and so when I am in between calls, I just watch a little TV and when I get a call I just pause whatever I am watching.

The Comcast DVR has other great features as well. Of course you have the on-demand feature which allows a person to watch movies or other shows that Comcast has set aside for viewing at anytime, so even if you don't want to watch any of the shows that you have recorded, you can press the on-demand button and to see what they have available for you to watch.

The Comcast DVR also allows you to search for a program by channel, genre, and time. The box is also HDTV compatible for those of you have televisions that are high definition.

The one major problem that I have with Comcast DVR is that sometimes I may miss like a minute of my show. It's not entirely Comcast's fault however because some shows may begin later than they are scheduled to begin. However there have been times where it seems that all of my shows started a minute earlier which caused me to miss a small portion of my show. This is probably because at the time, the Comcast DVR clock was a minute or 30 seconds off. It doesn't happen that often, and you can choose to start your programs a minute earlier. The problem with that is you are only allowed to record two shows at once. Let's say that you have to shows recording at 9:30 and you have show recording at 10:00 with the option to start a minute earlier. One of the shows will not record because at 9:59, you have scheduled three shows to record. Also there is not an option for you to end a show a minute earlier.

The price of the Comcast DVR is $9.95 per month but it is worth a lot more to me. I could not imagine my live with the Comcast DVR so it is my suggestion that you give it a try and see how much more convenient watching television can become for you.