First Week Review of Comcast Xfinity X1 cable and internet

I made the change back to Comcast.
I got two of the X1 boxes

I have had a week to test out the x1 boxes, here is my review of Xfinity’s X1 package.

Everything looks good. The colors are crisp. The black is a hard black, the colors are a vibrant and the whites are strong whites. You can read and see everything in the menus.
You can crank resolutions up to 1080p 16:9. but The signal is in no way 1080p. There is just no way. The images are not 1080p quality. Maybe slightly better than 720p. Which is still called 720p.
The menus on the X1 boxes are convoluted. There are barely any options or functionality. The menus load so slow. I have yet to find the channels I like, lord knows how the heck I am supposed to preprogram a show that I want to watch. You know, like on Direct tv, you find the title of the movie, highlight it and click. You get the menu … bam there it is.. Where is that option in X1? I just want my tv to automatically change to the channel when it is time. Should be simple right? All of the effort they put into looks, they could have put some into function.
but again. Did I tell you the menus load at a snail’s pace? I even tried this weird (far off in the menu) thing where you can test out options, which the menu “fast” option was off, I turned that on…  well that did squat for me. I understand the design theme with having everyone’s logo on the left for the channel but really, I bet that is what is slowing down the menu.

If you are looking for a specific channel call letters, good luck looking for the title of the channel (which is usually right under the logos), what is there is tiny. This feels more like “Hey we know you are too stupid to actually read these, so here are the pictures that represent your favorite channels”.

The truth is the X1 feels like it is a prototype for something I’ll probably have to pay to upgrade to later. or as if they did a random hat draw of crap that people like and said “Okay we will make it look like 50 of these 500 things, just make it pretty they will eat it up, so we can charge more”. Then, they did, and nothing is useful together. Or actually useful at all.

Sometimes the signal flakes out. I also get notices that the device is ready to reboot. Right when I turn the tv on. and I don’t think the X1 ever turns off. At all. Weird thing is I contacted Comcast about an issue and they asked me which cable box I was having an issue with, and I told him the bedroom, he said “hang on it is rebooting now” It rebooted….. This kind of creeped me out. Nilson family intrusion junk .
When the X1 wants to reboot, it takes about 5 minutes to complete. and nothing seems to work any faster or any better.

There is some sort of bundled thing in this box that allows me to “stream” movies. Why? Can we just call this “on demand? and not whatever they call it now? How cheesy is that? Why does the sales rep and the installer want to tell me how it is like netflix “and similar’ blah blah blah.. it is dumb, it feels like netflix menu on dial up…. I’ll have to check more into that. Right now it seems pointless.

Maybe that’s the big problem. Maybe it just needs to have a wifi adapter so it can connect to my modem, because the x1 built in modem is sucky. and might need more ram.

Then there is the low def and high def channel flip flop the x1 does.
Say I click on channel 11. Which is a local station here. Since channel 11 is in low def and there is a high def duplicate at 611, the tv automatically changes to channel 611.
Why not just make 11 high def and forget 611? or make all local stations only in the 600s or even how about this option… If the channel is in low def and in high def, the low def option disappears so that when I go back to the guide, and resume my channel flipping, I don’t have to scroll through all of the crap i scrolled through to to get to channel 11? Because just below 611 is about 200 channels in different languages that I don’t speak. Can I turn all of that off? even the channels I am not subscribed to, can I turn those off also? When that dang menu or narrative bubble pops up telling me I don’t pay for that channel, the fricken x1 locks up for what feels like an hour but is more like 2-3 seconds.

The x1 box does not turn off. I guess so they can count you as a viewer even when you are at work… or asleep.

Not happy with X1
Even the xr2 remote is dumb. The shape of the xr2. Sure the form is great in your hand, but the xr2 shape is kind of figure eight. Both ends feel exactly the same. If the room is dark and you need to turn down the volume… good luck. You’ll likely press the number 6. Why would comcast do this? Come on. Make one end feel different. And why did Comcast put the mute next to the power button? That’s just rude. I’ll put a sticker on the bottom at the back end. to prevent smashing wrong buttons in the dark,that should fix that. Prevent me from hitting the number 8 when I am trying to go to bed.

Maybe I will wait for x2 or x3 and pay for my upgrade and cross my fingers I don’t have to try and learn another piece of junk.

If you came here for the remote codes for your x1 box, and made it down this far, look here