How Do You Use It?
When _I_ watch TV, I generally have one hand on the remote and never take my eyes off the screen, even to use the remote (shocking, I know). I imagine most other people do too, so changing the channel should be an easy, natural, thoughtless mechanism.
Unfortuneatly, this doesn't seem to be the case.
Reversing Gravity
The "traditional" model of couch surfing is very simple. You press the up button on the remote and the channel goes up by one. You press down and the channel goes down by one. And on the fancy, "experience" enabling digital cable couches, it works much the same way. Or, rather, it should.
If you read my last post, you know that traditional couch surfing doesn't work; the response time just isn't fast enough. Therefoe, the guide has to used to surf channels, and this is where the trouble appears. If the guide worked the same way, the channels would grow upwards, as if they were stacked on top of the other.
Instead of this sensible relation, however, the wizards at Comcast decided it would be best if the channel list in the guide grew downwards. This way, if you press the down arrow, the channel number increases by one. Genuis. What ends up happening is you get used to either the guide or traditional channel changing, and then quickly switch to the other and end up moving in the wrong direction. Combine this with the impossibly slow times of channel changing and trying to watch cable tv becomes a truly frustrating experience.