Macopinion

Tivo versus DirecTV HDDVR, Part 3

by Marc Zeedar macopinion@designwrite.com

Guide
Tivo's Guide is brilliant: I've written about it before but it's a marvel of interface design. It uses a unique two-column approach that packs a lot of information on the screen at once.

Tivo's on-screen Guide makes it easy to see what shows are coming up on a particular channel. Notice how we can see all the shows on channel 12 (Fox) from 7 p.m. to midnight. We can also see the current show on eight different channels in the left column.

The disadvantage of this approach is that unlike a table-style view (like TV Guide grids), you cannot see future shows on multiple channels simultaneously (you can see what's airing currently on multiple channels). In other words, you can see what's coming up at 10 p.m. on channel 19 by selecting it in the Guide, but you can't see what's going to air at 10 p.m. on channel 20 at the same time (you'd have to move off of channel 19 and select channel 20 in the Guide).

While this sounds like a disadvantage -- table-style grid views are nice as you can easily compare what shows are airing at the time you want to watch -- the reality of a DVR is that show times don't matter as much. This is even more true with a dual-tuner DVR. With a DVR you don't need to select shows by time, but by name, and these days, with shows often repeating on various sister channels, your DVR can figure out a way to record it even if the air time conflicts with other shows you want to watch.

The problem with grids on a TV screen is that very little information is displayed on the grid. Look at the DirecTV DVR Guide:

DirecTV DVR's Guide to upcoming shows. Here we can see six channels at once -- but the width is so constrained it's only for a couple shows on each channel. Worse, many of the titles are so trimmed you can't tell what they are.

On paper a grid like this would be much wider, showing me a whole evening or afternoon's schedule at a glance. Like this, it's pretty much useless, with many shows barely displaying the title in the cramped table cell. The DirecTV grid is also slow to scroll and navigate, though there are some nice touches. Both Tivo and DirecTV let you use the channel Up/Down button to jump a whole screen up or down. But DirecTV adds special buttons (red and green) to jump you forward or backward twelve hours. That's sweet: if you're interested in prime-time programming and it's Monday evening, two presses of Green will get you to Tuesday night's programs. On Tivo that would require scrolling through a whole day's worth of programs. (Tivo does have a separate "Browse by Time" screen specifically designed for finding shows airing on a future date, but the feature is buried in menus and I imagine few people use it.)

DirecTV DVR also has a mini-grid view -- a single line that overlays the video and lets you see upcoming shows for one channel at a time.

DirecTV DVR Mini-Guide.

But just like the full grid view, it displays so little information it feels painfully inefficient, like reading a newspaper printed on 3x5 cards. Reading long horizontal text is incredibly awkward -- I deeply wish DirecTV had an option for a vertical display like Tivo's.

Winner: Tivo (by a landslide)

Show Information
Both DVR systems are limited by the show information provided to them. So many TV systems display show information these days that you'd expect them to be pretty similar, but Tivo has the surprising edge here. Not only is the basic information far more complete, but there's additional hidden information if you want more details.

Both display a short description of the show; DirecTV is unusual in that it has two descriptions -- an extremely short two line description for when you're browsing the full Guide and there's not much room for the text, and the standard more complete description when you select a show. While DirecTV's descriptions are okay, Tivo's descriptions are better and a little more detailed, especially about movies.

Tivo also adds star ratings for movies, which is nice, and both tell you the parental rating and standard content warning labels. By default Tivo lists more actors in the main description and additional actors such as guest stars and even writers, director, producer, and more in the additional detail screens.

Typical Tivo show information screens.

Typical DirecTV DVR show information screens.

Tivo "additional info" screen(s).

Winner: Tivo.

Next Time: Commercial Skipping and Managing Programs

macopinion@designwrite.com

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