Comcast Drops Microsoft

Frosty Piss writes "Comcast plans to drop Microsoft's television software and on-screen program guide from its digital cable boxes. The cable company will replace the Microsoft technology with GuideWorks software — Comcast is a part owner of GuideWorks. Comcast has been the lone cable company in the US using Microsoft technology for set-top boxes, and only in the state of Washington, Microsoft's back yard." The Microsoft offering has a solid presence in Latin America. The company is no longer trying very hard to market it here at home.

Before everyone cheers.....

[LordPhantom]

...I've heard that the COMCAST software sucks. It's more or less an out of the frying pan into the fire situation. And to be honest, given their incredibly lousy customer service, what makes you think they're going to develop reliable software? Or software that will allow you to do anything -more- useful than the Microsoft offering? A quick google search showed as much (if not more) complaining about Guideworks on -current- comcast boxes versus the Microsoft software.

Re:Before everyone cheers.....

[Anonymous Coward]

The old comcast software that the microsoft software replaced didn't look as nice, but it had more features, some of which were pretty buried within the software, and was generally more responsive. The worst thing about the old comcast software is sometimes it would hork downloading its program guide and render the fonts incorrectly, occasionally to the degree that they were illegible. Over all, while microsofts offering seems somewhat more stable, the lack of responsiveness and lost useful features is extremely annoying. Given that all my neighbors have switched from satellite to comcast (out of redmond wa no less) I can only imagine how truly horrible it must be.

Enhanced for your pleasure

[cxreg]

This guy's take on MS-on-Comcast is right on. It's been nothing short of godawful.

http://wilshipley.com/blog/2006/03/this-post-is-mi crosoft-enhanced-tm.html [wilshipley.com]

Re:Good riddance

[Richard McBeef]

If it didn't say "Powered by Microsoft" in the upper right corner, you weren't using Microsoft.

Re:Clues spotted at Comcast?

[lgarner]

"Mission-critical" doesn't necessarily equate to something of life-or-death importance. For a television-delivery company, those components which directly affect the delivery are mission-critical.

Re:WRONG!!! MOD FUD DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

NOT wrong! I had to reinstall my copy of XP (that I paid good money for) just last month. It got the "reboot blues". My PC dual-boots between Mandriva and XP, and whenever I run Linux (and very often after I've been running Windows), booting XP results in a BSOD.

Of course, they (excuse me mr. microsoft employee, YOU) changed it so that the BSOD is on-screen for less than a second, then the PC reboots itself.

But the damned thing is still there. Anyone who says Windows never BSODs is either ignorant or lying.

Yes, it's more stable than 98 was, but I have yet to see the Linux side crash.

-mcgrew

Re:Good riddance

[Fizzog]

Not sure why the parent is Flamebait.

The previous software was cheesy but it had lots of options to customise how you used it. It didn't look pretty but it did a decent job.

I remember when Comcast were advertising that they were changing to the MS software. They claimed it would perform better and would have many great new features. It performs considerably worse, has no new features, and several features of the previous software were not available.

The MS software is really poor. Performance is terrible, navigation is a pain, options that should exist don't and it never does what you think it should.

I'm glad they are changing to something else, it *has* to be better than the MS guide.

Re:BSOD jokes

[eli pabst]

Yea right, thing of the past. I just took my wife to the Martina McBride concert this past weekend as a Mother's day present and the main 10ftx10ft display directly behind her BSOD'd for about 10 seconds in the middle of a song before they could cut the feed to it. Don't kid yourself and pretend that current Microsoft products don't BSOD. They may not do it as much.

AT&T

[sTc_morphius]

While AT&T is not a cable company, their uverse TV system is using Microsoft's Software here "at home". It is not to shabby really, and I do like it more then the Comcast box I just kicked out of the house.

Re:Linux?

[Afrosheen]

Of course I'm subject to correction, but I'm thinking it runs on VxWorks. Alot of embedded devices use it these days.