CE'ers: Please Read

[jcrandall]

This week reading some of the comments in reponse to the CE trail have caused some concern, and we think it is appropriate to revisit the purpose of the CE program.

This is a beta testing program to test receiver software - that's it.

The feedback we provide in the CE threads needs to be helpful, pertinent, and for lack of a better work, professional.

Below are a few that stand out. Comments like this are not helpful, and should not be part of this testing program.

Simply remember this: posting in the CE area is providing feedback directly to the DirecTV programmers, who allow us this opportunity. That said, keep your commentary on topic and professional.

= cleaning up our programming screwups.

We need Tivo now. This subject is getting old.

It seems to me that lately Directv isn't even trying.

You'd figure they'd have this down after 2.5 years

we need to start testing some new stuff

If you're just in the CE area "looking for new features", you might as well look elsewhere. That is not what the program is about, and you will be disappointed.

Unlike some other sites, we try to reserve modifying and deleting our member's posts barring the most aggregious things. In the CE area, however, we need to maintain professionalism as part of this testing.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation and time.

 

[Jimbo]

If you're just in the CE area "looking for new features", you might as well look elsewhere. That is not what the program is about, and you will be disappointed.


I tried to point this out in the thread you were mentioning, but they didn't want to hear that, I guess.

Jimbo

 

[darrencp22]

I'm not looking for new features, just a DVR that works efficiently. I see a few comments of mine there. Complaints / feedback on GUI response are valid. Since DirecTV does read this forum it is an excellent place to voice concerns. Quite frankly, I think they should drop new features until they can solidify their hardware.

 

[FlyerTom]

I must agree with darrencp22 above. I originally got into the CE program shortly after my HR21-700 was installed a little over a year ago. I sorely missed the 30 second skip feature my old TiVo HDVR2 sported. However, since then, the CE's have been disappointing. I religiously downloaded every available update with the thought that "under the hood improvements" and "GUI response" and "stability" issues would actually work. Alas, they haven't, and most of the posts here bear that out. When I scroll, I want the highlight bar to snap up or down ALL THE TIME, not stall after two clicks and catch up when it feels like it. Same goes for entering a channel number...the first two digits would display immediately, and the third would give you the impression that you didn't press the button hard enough - entering "501" would end up 50.........11.
Comparisons to TiVo should always be taken seriously. Those guys had it right, and DirecTv fumbled horribly in dropping them. Rest assured, when D*, as you call it, finally markets TiVo's DVRs, I'll be first in line.

 

[darrencp22]

And to tie it back to CEs. These are the improvements customer are asking for. This is the improvement we want to test in CEs. If they want our feedback to test, they need to take the critism. Right now the bad is, they're not doing a good enough job correcting performance issues. A note to the great staff here. Thanks for letting us discuss this. If this were elsewhere we would have been censored quite a while ago.

 

[jcrandall]

Again, back to what was said earlier:

The feedback we provide in the CE threads needs to be helpful, pertinent, and for lack of a better work, professional.

We specifically try to avoid suppressing feedback, but if comments are negative as to the program or process instead of pertinent to the testing of a particular CE release, they will be moved.

 

[jcrandall]

Some of the staff was talking about this the other day and dfergie had a good idea that we're going to try.

We really want to keep the main CE release threads somewhat clean for the engineers to easily see the problems, and so we can help those with significant problems.

We've always had many other things posted in these threads that aren't directly related to the CE, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

What we are going to try is moving the off topic posts (things like downloading, discussion of the process, discussion of lack of new features, etc) to the weekly initial CE notice thread. This will keep the key thread clean and avoid deleting/modifying posts. It also allows for discussion of these things, including frustrations, in a proper place.

Please don't think we want to suppress anyone's opinion. I too am often disappointed on Friday night. We just need to keep the feedback clean and professional in the CE release threads.

Thanks again for being Satelliteguys!

 

[Rey]

we understand. sounds good :up

 

[goaliebob99]

Instead of moving, why don't we have a dedicated thread to posting issues, and issues only will go there.

 

[JAG72]

Instead of moving, why don't we have a dedicated thread to posting issues, and issues only will go there.

Have one for issues and one for general discussion for each CE.

 

[jcrandall]

We could do that, but it is alot of threads to manage for not a lot of posts, specifically the discussion only non-issue.

Most things can still go in the regular CE threads, we're just looking to reduce some of the chatter like "downloading" or "no new features again".

Lets use the base thread for the week, that calls out the initial list of expected CEs, and we'll go from there. We don't want to end up with more threads than we need.

 

[Jimbo]

We could do that, but it is alot of threads to manage for not a lot of posts, specifically the discussion only non-issue.

Most things can still go in the regular CE threads, we're just looking to reduce some of the chatter like "downloading" or "no new features again".

Lets use the base thread for the week, that calls out the initial list of expected CEs, and we'll go from there. We don't want to end up with more threads than we need.

So you don't want us to let others know that were downloading unless we have issues ?

Jimbo

 

[jcrandall]

Not at all. You are still welcome to post downloading type posts during the CE window. Saturday morning Don or I will move them to the other thread, allowing the CE release thread to be cleaner for feedback.

Hope that clarifies it.

 

[dfergie]

Post like normal and we will move as Jason said...

 

[Optimist]

Most things can still go in the regular CE threads, we're just looking to reduce some of the chatter like "downloading" or "no new features again".

Lets use the base thread for the week, that calls out the initial list of expected CEs, and we'll go from there. We don't want to end up with more threads than we need.

Not at all. You are still welcome to post downloading type posts during the CE window. Saturday morning Don or I will move them to the other thread, allowing the CE release thread to be cleaner for feedback.

Hope that clarifies it.

This really doesn't make sense to me ... You don't want to end up with "more threads than we need", ostensibly because of hte work required to monitor them (as posted upthread), yet you're willing to spend quite a bit of time MOVING individual posts around ....

Why not just have a "Discussion Thread" and an "Issues thread"? It works well elsewhere, and sure makes more sense to see the pointless "Im downloading", "Me too!" posts in a discussion thread than in an announcement thread or in the issues thread...

 

[jcrandall]

One concern we have with having double the threads is the amount of stickies at the top, and we don't want to start doing sub-forums, as it makes it too hard to find the info.

Actually moving posts is very easy, and something that doing once a week on a Saturday would clean the thread to leave the feedback.

We'll try it this weekend and see how it goes, I think we'll end up better organized

 

[meStevo]

Ya I don't see the problem with the CE release threads being technical (discussion of problems/issues relating to that CE) and a general running CE discussion thread that has all the chatter inbetween the intended technical posts. The same complaints get tiring though valid or otherwise the effort to fix our collar and straighten our tie is appreciated.

I think it's clear that this is a place for testing what we have, not clamoring for additions or complaining about the lack of xyz compared to abc product. Take it for what it is or don't participate and start a thread in a different area.