Back in April, I wrote this hyperbolic review of the new Time Warner “Navigator” software that the cable giant is rolling out to all their DVRs. The upgrade had only just happened at the time, and it seemed like a giant step backwards from Passport, the previous software. But a few months have passed now. Maybe I’ve calmed down a bit. Maybe Time Warner has rolled out some updates and fixes for it… Or maybe it still sucks.
Here’s a calmer, more reasoned list of my beefs with Navigator. Time Warner needs to address these issues as quickly as possible… especially since AT&T’s U-Verse just rolled into town:
Boot time sucks: It took the old Passport software around four minutes to boot. Navigator takes just over nine minutes to fully boot. Since I have the same problem on my computer with XP vs. Vista, I can only conclude that Time Warner’s programmers are taking a cue from Microsoft on how to make your software worse, not better. Obviously, rebooting your DVR is not something you do every day… but when Navigator was new and crashed a lot, waiting almost ten minutes instead of four for the TV to come back was (and still is) infuriating.
Search still sucks: As I mentioned in the original review, Navigator took away “keyword search”, so you can no longer search for “Kate Winslet” and find movies or chat show appearances featuring the actress. As much as that sucks, I could deal with that. But something that really does suck is that Navigator, for some unknown reason, allows multiple entries for the same program. For example, if you want to see who’s going to be on David Letterman this week, you could search for “David Letterman”. You might get three hits. If you click on the first result, you’ll get a submenu that lists Monday and Tuesday’s episodes, and you’ll have to navigate to the second entry to see Wednesday’s episode, then navigate to the third entry to see Thursday and Friday’s episodes. Passport would have a single entry for The Late Show With David Letterman, and all episodes would be listed in a submenu off that single category. So Navigator, for no good reason, makes things harder, not easier. And that’s assuming it works: just the other day I searched for Whatever, Martha!. The show never appeared in the results window, even as I typed more and more of the title. By the time I had fully typed out “Whatever”, I just scrolled down to find the show.
Program guide data is incomplete: Here’s a summary of tonight’s episode of Prison Break, copied directly from tvguide.com: As the hunt for Scylla concludes, Sarah takes a hostage, T-Bag and Gretchen have their last stand at GATE, and Michael and Lincoln encounter Gen. Krantz. They’re also betrayed by one of their own. In Passport, the summary would read exactly like that. But in Navigator it would look like this: As the hunt for Scylla concludes, Sarah takes a hos. It’s like that for every program on every channel, and has been since the rollout. Is it too much to ask to have the program guide contain the complete summary?
Some programs are NEW too often: Like most DVRs, you can set Navigator to record an entire series. Example: “record the series Weeds“. You can also set the DVR so that it only records new episodes. The only problem with this is that Navigator often tags every showing of a “new” episode as new. This is a pain on channels like Showtime or HBO that often rerun new episodes on different channels. For example, Weeds usually comes on Monday nights on Showtime, but it’s replayed several times a week on Showtime West, Showtime 2, Showtime Signature, etc. Navigator has a nasty habit of trying to record all these episodes, as they’re also marked as new. Which is annoying enough, except that it also…
Records programs you tell it not to: To compound the above annoyance, Navigator will sometimes record programs, even if you expressly tell it not to. Back in April, when I was first “upgraded” to Navigator, I had a hell of a time with it wanting to record EVERY SINGLE EPISODE of The Tudors. I’d look through the “Scheduled Recordings” menu and delete all the extra recordings of The Tudors that I didn’t want. Most of the time, Navigator would comply. Sometimes, however, it would record it anyway. This is annoying as hell, especially if your DVR is a getting full and you lose a recording you wanted to keep in favor of a rerun of a show you’ve already seen and don’t want.
They took away the counter!: Let’s say that you’re watching a football game on live TV. Around ten minutes into the game, your significant other asks you to run to the store to pick up some milk. You press the PAUSE button on the remote, then drive to the store, where you run into a friend you haven’t seen in a while. You talk with him\her for several minutes, then walk in to the store and get the milk, then drive home. With Passport, as soon as you hit the PLAY button, you’d see a program banner with a progress meter. The most important feature of the progress meter was a clock showing you exactly where the program was at the moment. If it was now 2:00 in the afternoon, and the clock on the progress meter said “1:17”, you knew that you were almost 45 minutes behind real time. Navigator took the clock away, so you now have NO IDEA of how far behind you are. 30 minutes? 45 minutes? An hour? Who can tell? This is especially bad for movies and live sporting events: since the progress meter is a fixed size, the longer the program is, the less accurate the clock-less progress meter appears. Since football season is in full swing, this is currently my number two beef with Navigator.
Rewind\Fast Forward still suck: So then… what’s my number one beef with Navigator? That rewinding and fast forwarding still suck. Like most DVRs, Navigator has multiple fast forwarding and rewind speeds, so you can rewind or fast forward at 1x, 2x or 3x speed. Like most DVRs, Navigator “weighs” these speeds, so that the faster you rewind, the more the DVR will “jump back” when you press PLAY again. With Passport, this was flawless. You could fast forward at 3x speed, and as soon as you saw your that your show was back from commercial, you’d press PLAY and you’d be exactly where the show resumes. Do the same thing with Navigator: fast forwarding (or rewinding) at 3x will cause the DVR to “jump back” anywhere from 30-45 seconds, so as soon as you see that your show’s back from commercial, pressing PLAY will make it jump back… to the middle of the next-to-last commercial before your show starts back. So you have to press FF again to skip through the final commercial. Only if you press PLAY as soon as you see the show, it’ll skip back 10 seconds again, so you have to watch the last 10 seconds of the last commercial before your show starts again. I quickly became an expert at fast forwarding and rewinding with Passport, so much so that it was a matter of pride that I was almost always able to resume play at the black screen just before the show came back on. After seven months with Navigator, I still can’t do the same.
15 Minute Jump is clunky: With Passport, you could skip ahead (or back) 15 minutes by pressing the FF or REW buttons and then pressing the LEFT or RIGHT arrow key. To skip 15 minutes again, you simply pressed the LEFT or RIGHT key again. By having a dedicated key, you could go through a long recording in just seconds. Navigator disabled the arrow key functionality, so that if you want to skip 15 minutes ahead now you press and hold down the FF or REW button for 5 seconds. To skip ahead another 15 minutes, you press and hold down the same key again. It’s a minor annoyance, but it now takes 30 seconds to do with Navigator what used to take 5 seconds with Passport.
No program length in the summary: When you press the LIST button to bring up a list of your recorded programs, there’s no indication in the summary of how long the program in question is. Under Passport, you clicked LIST and you’d see the list of programs on the left, and on the right there would be a summary of the selected show, along with what channel is was recorded from, when it was recorded (“Monday, 8:00 pm – 9:00 pm”) and a summary of the episode (“As the hunt for Scylla concludes, Sarah takes a hostage” ). With Navigator, you have to press the INFO button to see how long the recorded show is. It’s a small annoyance, but it just shows how awful the UI on this thing really is.
Default Option is “Cancel”: Speaking of “awful UI”, if you want to watch a program that’s still recording, you can press LIST and use the arrow buttons to highlight the program you want to watch. You can simply press the PLAY button, but since this is on the bottom of the remote (and the buttons you used to get where you are are at the top of the remote), this requires some acrobatics with your hand. So since my fingers are already there anyway, I usually just press the SEL button. This brings up another menu. And what’s the default option on that menu? No, not “Play” as you might guess. It’s “Cancel Recording”, which is the exact opposite of what 95% of users would want to do 95% of the time. It’s a niggling thing, and I’m hardly a “UI expert”, but you should never, ever, ever have a default option that’s the opposite of what a user will want to do 95% of the time.
VIDEO SOURCE no longer works: In Passport, you could change the aspect ratio – Zoom, Stretch, Normal – by pressing either the # or VIDEO SOURCE buttons. Navigator disabled the “Video Source” button, leaving the counter-intuitive # button as the only way to change the aspect ratio. Way to go, TWC programmers!
The buffer is now “show based” instead of “time based”: Like Passport, Navigator can buffer up to an hour of live TV, so you can pause a live program for up to an hour while you take an important phone call, do a household chore, run to the store… what have you. Passport didn’t care which programs had passed during that hour – it simply buffered the channel you were watching for an hour. Navigator uses a “program based” buffer, which requires you to press the REW button multiple times. For example, let’s say you’re watching Adult Swim on Cartoon Network, where there are often shows that only run 10-15 minutes. So when you come back to the TV, a couple of programs might have completed by then. You press PLAY to return to your program. When that program is done, Navigator freaks out and goes back to live TV, so you now have to rewind to see the programs you’ve missed. Only the buffer only goes back to the current program, and automatically stops when you get to the start of that program. So you have to press REW again to go back to the next program… and Navigator stops at the beginning of that program, so you have to press REW again to go back to the beginning of that program. All of this is assuming that the damn feature even works in the first place – I’ve lost endings of football games than ran over because Navigator simply refused to go past the beginning of 60 Minutes (which was, in fact, the football game).
FAV buttons no longer work in the program guide: With both Passport and Navigator, you can mark certain channels as “Favorites”. In both Passport and Navigator, you can cycle through your favorite channels by pressing the FAV button on the remote. However, under Passport, you could also cycle through your favorites in the program guide by simply pressing the FAV button on the remote. In Navigator, pressing the FAV button in the program guide just changes the channel to your nearest “favorite channel” instead of switching the guide to your next favorite channel. The only way to easily see what’s on your favorite channels in Navigator is to enable an option that lists your favorites at the beginning of the program guide. Which sounds cool, but enabling the option actually moves those channels in your program guide instead of copying them. Let me give you an example. Lisa really likes the Music Choice channels, and both of us like the “Retro Active” (New Wave) channel which is channel 515. If you add this to your favorites and then enable the “Show favorites first” option, you can no longer press the CHANNEL UP button to go from the “Alternative” channel (514) to the Retro Active channel (515). Navigator has moved it to the start of the guide, and pressing CHANNEL UP will skip directly to the “Electronica” channel (516). To switch from “Alternative” to “Retro Active”, you would have to enter the channel number directly *or* hold down the PAGE UP button until you want from channel 514 to (what would normally be) channel 2. Which is stupid!
PIP cannot be resized: Since the SA8300HD has two tuners, it also has a built in “picture in picture” (PIP) feature, which allows you to watch one program while keeping tabs on another channel. PIP isn’t a new technology, and a lot of people don’t use it (aside from football fans, which might switch back and forth between games during commercials). With Passport, pressing the PIP button enabled the PIP feature. Pressing PIP again would shrink the PIP window, which was good if all you wanted to do was flip between football games during commercials. Unfortunately, Navigator killed the “shrink PIP window” function, so now you either have a large PIP window… or not.
Closed Captioning doesn’t always work: I use closed captioning somewhat frequently. Sometimes the audio mix of a show will be wonky, and people’s voices are hard to hear. Or maybe Lisa’s on the phone. Or maybe the people on TV have thick Scottish accents. Whatever. Sometimes the closed captions will inexplicably stop working in Navigator. The only way to fix it is to reboot… which takes ten minutes!
VOD menus always return to default: If you browse a Video On Demand channel that has multiple categories then view a particular item, the Navigator software always returns to the base channel menu. For example, let’s say that you tune to a “Music Videos On Demand” channel. This channel has a base menu of “Music Videos”, “Live Performances” and “Interviews”. You click on “Music Videos”, where you are presented with “Pop”, “Rock”, and “R&B” categories. You click on the “Pop” category, then pick a video to watch. When you press the STOP button, Navigator dumps you back out to the main menu, so you have to click “Music Videos” and then “Pop” to get back to where you were. Passport would dump you back to the “Pop” category, so that you could immediately watch another video.
Does anyone out there have any complaints that I missed? Or other reasons for hating Navigator? If so, let me know via the Comments section!
Hey there – good work, looks like we’re all on the same page with the HORRIBLE new UI (I’m in Keene, NH and my box just got infected with the Navigator virus). I have some more annoyances for you – will the list ever end?
1. No longer able to rewind on the digital music channels – if you’re like me and leave it on for background noise, but just happen to walk into the room as a really good song is ending and you want to know what it is, you’re out of luck.
2. Lost the ability to group recorded shows – I used to be able to group all episodes of each show together for easy sorting…not anymore.
3. Can no longer play/delete multiple recorded episodes at once – with Passport, with any series i had the option to: play all, play all new, delete all, delete all viewed…lost that functionality
4. No way of telling if you’ve watched a show or not (with Passport unviewed shows were bold)
5. Lost the TV on/off timer – I have my TV plugged into the box and it was set to turn on in the morning Mon-Fri…now I can’t set ANY on/off timers, there’s no option anywhere!
6. I’m no longer able to set more than one series recording for any given show – i record Jeopardy and used to have two series recordings to record the new episode at 7:00 on one channel, as well as any that are shown on the gameshow network – with Navigator, I can only have ONE Jeopardy series recording set, meaning I can either record only the new episodes on the one channel, or set it to record all episodes on all channels which results in it recording the same episode at 7:00 and 7:30 on the two primetime channels ><
In a nutshell, DEFINITELY a leap in the wrong direction – I’ll let u know if I think of any more (which i probably will!)
nice list man…just got forced upgrade. huge step backwards. ive had twc over my house and the stupid tech couldn’t even tell me how to jump fast forward. i had to google it. thank goodness for you!
There has to be something I can do. Can’t we TALK to TW? This is clearly inferior and EVERYONE is complaining about it. As customers there has to be something we can do, short of leaving the service (which I will do after my year contract with them is up). This new Navigator software is horrendous and they’re acting like they’re doing us a favor. We didn’t need “Start Over” before they screwed things up.
What good would that do? I mean, really. It took threats from Congress for them to kill their metered broadband plan (and even so it’s not really “dead”, it’s just “dormant” for now). I don’t think that there’s anything we can do, save returning our DVRs to TWC en masse, which is something that will never happen. Navigator sucks, but it’s better than no DVR at all.
Also, I should note that they fixed the “FAV buttons in the Guide” issue. You can now open the guide and press the FAV button to scroll through your favorite channels again.
On the other hand, the guide just keeps getting worse. I’m a Georgia Tech fan, and often want to see if their football games will be on TV. Since they took away keyword search, I can’t just search for “Georgia Tech”. The guide keeps all college football games under MULTIPLE “College Football” headers, so instead of having to search 100 different games under one header, I have to search through 19 different “College Football” headers, some of which will have 15 games, some of which will be empty. What’s worse is that there’s no indication that you’ve looked in one of the empty headers, so if you come across a string of empty headers, you can never be 100% sure that you’ve checked it or not. Epic fail from TWC’s programmers!
To be fair, Start Over works with any digital cable box (with or without a DVR). We have a standard Explorer 2200 non-DVR cable box in the bedroom, and it’s nice to have Start Over up there.
Of course, I’d prefer U-Verse’s box, which can stream recordings from the downstairs DVR… but it’s even more expensive than TWC.
I agree 100% with everything said,Great review and Kudos for you,Its funny because I called Time Warner and I told them how much the new DVR sucks vs the old one at least my favorite 3 were ruined ,ff/rew,search,and complete program data.Anyway they said I was the first one to complain about this and in the back of my mind I said YEAH RIGHT!I did a search and found this review and felt much better.I also asked a few friends that own the Time Warner DVR and they also agree it sucks and wished it was back the way it was,Again great review!BTW It sucks taking a step backwards at these prices.
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU..
I’ve been trying to figure out why my captioning wasn’t working for about 2 weeks now… Just rebooting my box and they’re back. =) Stupid unstable box (used to crash every few days too).
That’s an outstanding summary of everything that’s wrong with Navigator. May I add one thing? Navigator does not allow you to do manual recordings, i.e. inputting day, start time, stop time and station number. This is huge for me.
If we watch several programs on the same channel on the same night, it’s much better to record them as a unit. That way, you don’t have beginnings and endings of shows cut off. So, we might record 4 CBS sitcoms fromn 8 to 10. You can’t do that in Navigator. Also, sometimes the grids are wrong. Maybe you know there’s a sports event that was rescheduled and doesn’t appear on the grid. Or maybe you are recording two shows, but want to record the end of a sporting event after one of the shows ends. You could do all that with Passport. Not with Navigator. We need the ability to set manual stop and start times.
Audio: I have two of these DVRs, now “upgraded” to Explorer. Both output video to my TVs via HDMI, but I use the digital audio output from the DVR to my amps…so that I get true 5.1 Dolby surround, etc.
Here’s the problem: Every time I turn on the DVR and then the AMP, it “remembers” my settings (digital audio out), but when I power on the TV, because it’s connected via HDMI cable, the dumbass DVR “thinks” I want HDMI audio…and shifts to that setting. Which means my AMP is not getting digital audio anymore. So every time I turn on the system, I must go into SETTINGS on the DVR, then DEVICES, then AUDIO OUTPUT, and re-select DIGITAL AUDIO. sheesh!
believe me, I’ve tried every possible sequence, TV first, then DVR, then AMP, and all permutations thereof. but nope, effs up every time. on both the DVR in living room and one in bedroom.
this never happened prior to the upgrade to Explorer. AAAARRRRRRGHHHHHH!
Well now i cant get my dvd player to work!!!
I had it set up so the dvd player went to the cable, then to the surround sound, i had to push the video sourcs button to make that work, now the fucking thing doesnt work. everytime i try to record a series, it doesnt give me that option to recoed at the same time every week.
total b.s.
A couple annoyances I’ve noticed with the new navigator… when watching the beginning of a recorded show to see if I’ve already seen the episode, I’ll delete it and the navigator goes back to live TV instead of back to the recorded list so I can delete more repeat episodes. Passport always took me back to the LIST. I liked that.
Also, I can no longer press the SETTINGS button and manually record a show that I’m watching at that moment. I used to be able to hit SETTINGS and manually record that program, then leave the house, come back and watch it. NO MORE!
The worst part of the new navigator is the FF and REW bullcrap. I can’t get it to stop where I want anymore.
Great summary of the Navigator crap. You wrote this almost 1.5 years ago, and best I can tell, none of the problems have been fixed. The only function that has changed is FAV — they removed the Sort function!!! FAV is now useless — who wants to single-change channels through all of their favorites? There is no more grouping of favorite channels anywhere in the listing. Every time I contact TW, I get the “sorry you are unhappy” response, along with “we will give your suggestion to the higher ups”. Does TW even have a programming team working on Navigator updates? I wish I was a candidate for satellite, but I have too many TVs, and I have to stay with TW for RoadRunner anyway.
And here I am, reporting in May 2, 2010. We’ve just received the “upgrade” in Central Texas and shockingly, none of these bugs have been worked out! I’m so frustrated. After 5 years being largely happy with TWC, I’m ready to call it quits.
Morrowland -I have the exact problem concerning the audio — very frustrating – have you found a solution?
Patty
My biggest complaint – Passport had the “Copy to VCR” option, which I used to copy entire series to DVD, or to uload stuff I wanted to archive after my DVR started getting full (even though Time Warner told me it was IMPOSSIBLE to copy to DVD). Their answer now with Navigator – rent (and pay for) a second DVR. You’ve got to be kidding. Some of the service rep’s I’ve talked to about this issue claim the feature was taken away due to copyright infringement laws, even though TW’s web site still shows you how to hook up a VCR to copy programs.
I call them monthly to complain, and to see if any improvements are coming. No positive response from them…
I think Navigator has somewhat improved in the last five years. However, it is NOT EVEN CLOSE TO WHAT A MODERN CABLE GUIDE SHOULD BE. My honest assessment of Navigator is three-fold. TWC wanted to do the following:
1.) To develop an in-house program guide on their own, so that they would not have to pay outside vendors for updates.
2.) To have a program guide, that they could have monopolistic control over the features.
3.) To use Navigator as a “Spring Board Mechanism” to launch other products and services such as Caller ID on TV, Start Over, and Look-Back, to gloat, “TWC has it, Satellite and AT&T U-Verse Don’t.”
I don’t think TWC wanted Navigator to be a great guide, because the majority of customers just want to be able to find their shows, manage their shows, and that’s it. There are some updates that have recently been added. There are two versions of Navigator, one is for legacy boxes, called MDN, which is any box without a C in the model number that is NOT a Samsung. Updates for these boxes are being phased out, because the boxes are no longer being made.
The newer version of Navigator is called ODN, and will continue to be updated as the technology evolves. ODN builds are on all SA/Cisco boxes with a C in the model number and the Samsungs. My comments will apply to the current ODN box I have, an SA-8300HDC DVR:
The Positives Are as Follows:
1.) Guide information is complete and no longer truncated.
2.) Searches for Find Shows (The “B” button) are now organized beginning on the show being watched. Duplicate listings of shows have finally been ELIMINATED!
3.) Multi-Room DVR (Requires a Truck Role to change the box and put a filter on the line) has been added
4.) Remote DVR Manager is now available through a My Services Account Registration in most areas with an on-line guide with functionality for all MDN/ODN DVR’s.
5.) Faster Navigation and bug fixes with each upgrade.
Features Coming Soon:
1.) DVR Compensation: Allows for a user to control the jump back speed of the DVR, when coming out of a RR/FF situation
2.) 4x Fast Forward Speed
3.) Transparency Channel Banner Control
4.) Individual Place settings for Start Over and Look Back
5.) Interactive Menus will soon be embedded into the channel banner
6.) I-Pad Guide Functionality available for download for all users with an MDN/ODN box.
7.) Auto HD will have a sub-setting allowing the box to auto record the HD version of a show, if the user tunes to the SD version of the channel. This will be able to turned on/off in the Settings Menu.
Things still lacking:
1.) No Keyword Search: This is just disgusting that a modern IPG lacks a keyword search option. The next update really needs to have this!
2.) No Permanent Guide Filtering. (MDN’s latest Navigator release has a temporary guide filter, but the settings do not hold.)
3.) No Manual Recording Over-Ride: You can’t automatically set up the DVR to currently record only part of a show
Other updates to add,
(See my post above for the differences between the MDN and ODN versions of the software.)
1.) For DVR’s: The newer ODN Navigator boxes are still slower in speed and navigation that the older MDN boxes. ( But are improving.) The older boxes for DVR models, the SA-8240 (no C, not a Samsung.) and the SA-8300 (no C, not a Samsung) sill have the fastest speed and Navigation. The fastest ODN boxes, are the Samsung models. However, there are reported issues with them using HDMI cables. If you want the best quality from the Samsungs, most customers have noticed improvements by switching to Component Cable. On the Samsung boxes, the 3090 in most cases, did NOT have HDMI conflicts, but the 3270 Samsungs do. (Although this may be fixed with the next software update.) Cisco, (Formerly SA) offers the 8640HDC, which is faster than the SA-8240 HDC, and SA-8300HDC. The higher models are the Cisco HDC8642 and I think (not sure) there is a Samsung 3272 that is Whole House DVR compliant. It must be noted that the Samsung 3200 series does NOT have PIP function due to a manufacturing decision!
However, the whole house DVR DVR’s cannot be given out separately as stated above. They require a truck role to put a filter on the line. Unless you are interested in Whole House DVR, or a bigger hard drive, (see below.) keep your SA-8240, or SA-8300 box.
If you need a bigger hard drive, the MDN boxes have a history of working well with drive expanders. Western Digital is an often recommended choice. This will increase the often too small drive storage space of 160GB on the legacy DVR’s.
The ODN boxes are hit and miss with all drive expanders, BUT have bigger hard drives in most cases. The average size is 320GB of storage on the more modern DVR’s. Note that ALL whole house DVR’s come with 500GB’s of storage!
For non-DVR’s. The legacy Pioneer boxes are so out of date that any customers should swap them out. They don’t have the memory to run Navigator well at all, and don’t even have HDMI support for HD. They are 6-10 years past their usefulness, and that is a kind estimate.
SA boxes: Models 1000-2000 are almost as old as the Pioneers and should be swapped if you are having trouble with them, Probably the same with the 3000’s series. The SA-4000’s are good. The newest models of non-DVR box that runs Navigator well is the Cisco 4640HDC and the Samsung 3260 and Samsung 3262.
Hope this helps!
Jack
New Search System Coming!!!!
Hi All! Just a heads up that TWC is planning on releasing a new search system for the Navigator Guide!!!! Yes, it will include keyword search, a search filter, the ability to search by Actors, Popular Items, Sports Teams, and more. The rollout will range from later this year to early next year. The search options will reside on the network servers, instead of the boxes, allowing the boxes to do less work.
Note that due to the increased functionality of the new search system, this update will be planned ONLY for the ODN Navigator platforms, This includes the C-model SA and Cisco boxes, as well as the Samsungs. The older non-C boxes do not have the memory needed for this update, and are not planned to have it. Newer Motorola boxes, where Navigator comes pre-installed, may get the new version, but not sure, as my division does not carry Motorola boxes.
The big update that will have the prerequisites for the new search features will be Navigator 5.0. Within a few days to weeks after your boxes get the update prerequisite of Navigator 5.0, you should get the new search system. I can’t wait for this! Best thing they have done for the guide, EVER!
Major Navigator Update!
Navigator, provided that you have a modern box, is now TONS better than what we had in the past. You MUST have a NON-SA box. Either Arris, Samsung or a Cisco to get the new features. functionality is as follows:
1.) All menus are now in HD with a true 16×9 format. Output resolution and Guide Display can be changed for those with SD sets or smaller screens.
2.) An Advanced Keyboard Search, where users can search by Title, Genre, Actor, Cast, Movie, TV Show, Channel, or Sports Team.
3.) A new DVR Manager with 500GB of storage and the ability to delete multiple shows and series at once.
4.) Movie and TV show cover art for shows and series.
5.) A Video on Demand Portal (VOD) with Cover Art For Movies and TV shows all on one channel.
6.) A six-tuner DVR is available in many markets were you can record up to five shows at once, while watching a sixth program. It has 1 TB of storage and is offered for an additional $3-$5 a month in addition to the DVR fee.
7.) Movies and shows will soon feature “Common Sense” ratings information for parents.
(Criticisms-The Advanced Search System Keyboard is often unreliable for returning search results as it is cloud-based I have sent TWC feedback on this issue. The B button auto-search is missing in my area of Wisconsin, but is coming back in a future software update! with the option to turn it on/off in settings.)
Jack