ok .. i couldn't find any other general on demand beta feedback threads, so i'm posting my feedback here..
first, it has a suprisingly abundant amount of on demand content available..
i don't have an ethernet cable near my DVR and was debating whether to buy a bridge or run a cable.. i was about to buy one when someone yesterday at work completely randomly asked if i wanted one, she is moving and brought a box of stuff in she didn't need... so i hooked it up.
apparently the wireless method is supported but not recommmended by them.... i don't fully understand this, since the slowest link is the broadband--by far. the wireless is plenty fast to support downloading at the fullest speed of whatever broadband i might have.
the problem is my broadband is ATT dsl, which sucks... i have now had it a year and am probably cancelling it to get comcast cable modem (as much as i cringe at the thought of that), or i'm calling them out to make them fix it... (my neighbors downstairs is the exact same dsl yet his is faster most of the time...). it's a tad bizarre, but they can never pinpoint any issues.
anyway...
it works reasonably well.. but things download at a snail's pace. so it's not as good as comcast VOD by any comparison on that front, it's more on demand in the sense of "look through the list, check what you want to download before you go to bed, next day it's there" .. (my connection is somewhere around 700 kbps)... even with the fastest cable modem i don't think the mentality of how to use it would be much different.
occasionally when it's downloading it's telling me it's having problems connecting to the internet... i think it's bogging down my connection too much... and then it's even starting to cause slowness on my laptop while content is downloading. i don't mind that it's having problems, but it's annoying that it has to pop up and tell me.. i wish it would just continue on when it can... and i wish you could just schedule the downloads, so it really could just download overnight, even if i selected to download it right now.
so here is my wish list:
-ability to turn off internet connection errors
-ability to throttle bandwidth used so it doesn't hostily take over my broadband
-ability to schedule VOD downloads overnight by either an actual scheduler, or just a fixed window period that never changes, not immediatly download when added to queue ... (i see there is a "pause download" button, but resuming is a manual process)
-...in the future it would be nice if the Internet connectivity was used for other more useful stuff ... since a DVR is a computer and they try to charge you PC type prices for getting one, they should add more PC-like functionality... (web browsing?? who knows).
-media sharing would be nice... either downloading your DVR's content from the web, or other receivers in the house, etc... (does the "CE" betas do any of this?); along the same lines, web scheduling of my DVR content would be nice
-i'm sure a lot of others here would appreciate a USB wireless adapter capability, since that's a $20 part vs a wireless bridge which is 3x that.
-is there a way to remove all "$" items from the list? i'm not likely to spend money on a movie released in 1995, let alone 1970... (there are some of both of these)
-hitting the "back" button from when you're viewing the specific show/VOD item takes you back to browsing the list you were on, but it seems like it's redownloading the whole list.. it's slow and clunky because of this
