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In general, recording sports on X1 is horrible
This is less of a question and more a statement of fact. Recording (and later watching sports) on Xfinity is worse on X1 than it was on the old platform. The more you try to record and watch later the worse it is. Nearly everything Comcast has done with X1 is the opposite of what most true sports fans would want. I doubt a single Comcast product engineer has ever willingly watched a sporting event. The impossible-to-turn-off automatic jump-back feature, where the faster you fast forward the more it skips back when you hit play, is horrible with many sports. It's bad enough when watching a TV show or movie. But for sports it's a total kill-joy. I used to be able to time FF, Play, and Rewind just fine on my own, thanks. Now when I FF to a certain spot, past halftime or a commercial, or in between an MLB pitcher's pitches, or between one tennis point and the next serve, I can often only use 2x FF. Any faster and I'll catch a glimpse of a critical play/point right as I hit Play and know the outcome before the recording skips back to where I can actually watch it in 1x motion. The feature slows down watching a long game, and forces you to go slightly PAST where you would've otherwise pressed play, or you sort of have to sneak up close to the time you want and then switch to a lesser FF speed. But when you're FF'ing between every play, every pitch, or every serve, that's impossible. I want the ability to TURN OFF that entire bit of not-so-smart FF'ing functionality when I watch most sports. Of course there's no option for that. (Don't even SUGGEST speaking to the voice remote to accomplish any FF'ing / skipping / skip backs. That's not a practical solution. Then if you have an XR15 remote that has no 15-second Replay button, if you want to watch a play again or simply go too far, there's no easy way to skip back - not without programming your box to replace the default PgUp/PageDn buttons to a different skip time than the default. But that setting never seems to stick in my experience, which is one main why I turned in my XR15 and kept my older XR11's.)
Then let's talk about setting recording times. When recording shows and sports from the guide, you used to have an option to set the recording to stop 2 extra hours late. Now, most programs only offer 30 minutes past. It was justified by Comcast adding the feature to auto-extend the recording time for a live sporting event. But I tried that numerous times, and it was always worthless. It worked like 1 out of 10 times, if that. I missed the end of so many football games that ran long (like into overtime). It still doesn't work worth a flip. Too many live programs on too many networks never get flagged as live I guess, or Comcast dropped the feature because it never worked. So those programs almost never extend past their scheduled time(s). For example, I'm recording US Open Tennis now. I've missed the 5th set of like 3-4 different Men's matches because the recording stops after the maximum 30 extra minutes is done. Yet the network was still showing the ongoing match in its entirety. The only way to do this now is to record the program for just its scheduled time exactly, and then record the next 2-3 hours worth of shows also. But if the shows scheduled to follow are all 30-minute ones, that's such a giant pain - just like watching 5-6 separate recordings to watch one game/match is a giant pain. (Is there even a way to manually record a specific channel for a given time period anymore? If so, it's buried / not convenient to do that, unlike the way it used to be.)
Then, if I DO miss the end of a game or match I've recorded a day or two prior, I can search for episodes/replays/highlights via the X1 menu and built-in sports app. The problem with that, of course, is that when I DO find highlights or even an entire match available to replay on demand or via the YouTube app or whatever, you often don't just see the basic info about who's playing. Most of the time you SEE WHO WON. The title will say something like "Player X defeats Player Y to reach the semifinals of. . ." That absolutely stinks. If I just wanted to see who WON, I would've pulled up the score on the Internet. I WANT TO WATCH IT AND HAVE THE SUSPENSE OF NOT KNOWING THE OUTCOME. It's the same when/if you use the built-in sports app functionality to search for your favorite team, or if you leave the score feed junk turned on. You'll see the scores right there on the screen. Again, that's NOT what I want Xfinity to give me when I'm recording sports to watch later. I have the regular Internet for box scores. I just want to see when a game/match is on, and if it is I want to be able to schedule a recording of the ENTIRE contest to watch later. If it's already later and for some reason I missed it, I just want to WATCH IT without it being spoiled in advance by you, Comcast.
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