Searching for a better "Search"

I am a little bit perplexed why I am the only one who noticed this “bug” or “enhancement” as a problem.

This is how I have used my DirectvTivo unit for years. I want to record movies to watch. I don’t know or care about the titles or who acts in them. All I care about is the category such as Drama, Comedy, Romance, etc. I like to see a relatively short list so that I can scroll thru of all the upcoming shows and pick one to record. I go to Title, Category, Movies, select a category like Drama, type in “A” so it shows the list from the beginning and then a few seconds later pages of movies in that category appear and are all listed once so you can scroll thru the entire list and easily select a movie. If it is on more then once, after you have selected it, it would then give you a choice of times and channels to choose from. Very easy and intuitive.

Here’s how it works on the HR20. You do not get a choice of category under Title or Person so I went to Keyword. Since I do not want to use a Keyword I use Space so that I may proceed to use the following screen which is Category. I select Movie, Action/Adventure and wait. Two minutes and thirty seconds later I get 365 choices. But guess what, about 95% of them are Monster House! Yes, the list takes forever to populate, and when it does, it is large, but it repeats it over and over and over again.

So I tried Drama the same way. This time it was 2 minutes and 15 seconds and I received 51 choices. Most of them Mean Creek, not a big variety.

Then I tried Comedy. Two minutes and 10 seconds later I received 61 hits. Mostly Fat Albert and A Foreign Affair and others. But they were repeat after repeat!

I liked the way the Tivo combo unit laid them out in alphabetical order so you can flip thru all the pages, select one, then pick the showing you want to record. The other major problem, (which I know is on the Wish List) is that it shows all the stations I don’t receive.

So you might say, use the category sort. I tried that too. Under Action/Adventure, it comes up very quick, but it has 2,310 hits! Again, not a list that is easy to select from and because it is sorted by time and by this very nature, repeat after repeat show up. Drama, 3,696 hits. Comedy, 5,203 hits. Category Sort does not produce the same results as my DirectvTivo unit, not even close, so this is not the answer.

I feel that the “Category” filter should be the next step after “Title”. This should help considerably. But after that, don’t show the same title over and over and over again. Show it once, then when you select it, show your channel and time options on the following screen. Very effective and intuitive.

My only other question is, why hasn’t anyone else complained about this? Am I the only one that uses a DVR like this? I am posting this in the Wish List forum to get it added.