For this year’s Tour de France I had Comcast install cable, so I was able to watch Lance win number seven… *in a row.* One thing that I struggled with before placing the Comcast order was how to a PVR working: it seems that my circa 1999 ReplayTV was not going to cooperate, since it was on the fritz.

I thought about buying a Tivo (too expense to use for just one month) or even setting up a Windows Media Center (too much trouble, and I hate IR blasters). Instead of all this trouble, I decided to sign up for Comcast’s PVR service… even though their website said that it wasn’t available in my area (it obviously was).

Here’s the nut in summary:

*The Good*

* Good picture quality
* Firewire out (that I never used)
* Can record HDTV (although I don’t have one)
* Can record two shows at once
* Only $5/month
* The installer was a big fan of PVRs, and really knew his stuff

*The Bad*

* Some evil engineers created the UI — it totally, completely sucks
* The remote sucks worse than the UI: tiny keys that make no sense
* I could never figure out how to search for a show
* Crashed many times… one time deleting a show I had recorded
* Kind of loud

In summary, it surprising that five or six years after Tivo was released that Comcast would offer a PVR that is clearly a generation behind (or several) in it’s UI and reliability. I’d recommend it to folks new to the whole PVR thing. For people in the know, I’d recommend DirecTV’s Tivo PVR. It is leagues better.