Goodbye Yahoo! TV - Hello TV Guide
I've been a long time user of tv.yahoo.com/grid - until recently. I don't have cable television. I don't have satellite either. I've got a big set of rabbit ears in my attic. My complaint is not the lack of channels, how well standard definition broadcasts view on my 16 year old 25" Sanyo TV, and especially not the price; Free. What the rabbit ears don't get you is a nice on screen TV schedule. I've been using http://tv.yahoo.com instead. It was simple but very functional.
Yahoo! TV got a face lift... it might even have new features, but I wouldn't know. I only used the TV schedule. I won't use it anymore though. The TV schedule was part of the botched operation. It's now potentially pretty and very "Web 2.0ish"... minus the usability improvements at the heart of #2.
My critiques complaints:
- Time Zone: As a software developer, I understand that localization is no fun, but if you let the end user select a locale using a zip code and then display the "region"/metropolitan area associated with that zip code (ie. Kansas City), your time-based schedule software better show the correct time for the user's selection. Kansas City time is CST not EST (I thought that was pretty obvious). FYI... "King of Queens" aired at 7:00PM CST and 7:30PM CST.
- Select Favorites: I watch (at least have available to me via rabbit ears) channels 4, 5, 9, 19, 29, 38, 41, 50, and 62. The "old" - or should I say "stable, production" version of tv.yahoo.com/grid knew about all of those channels - even how to order them numerically... but I'll touch on that in a bit. For some reason the new, improved tv.yahoo.com has overlooked channel 9 and replaced it with channel 7 (the digital/HD version orsomethinglikethat). It may sound like a petty complaint, but hey... "what happened to channel 9?"
- Display My Favorite Channels Only: This is a fantastic feature! If only it worked correctly... When I opt to use this feature, channel 7 (MIA channel 9's replacement) is missing from the list. This feature is now useless as ABC is one of my household's favorite channels.
- Overall Display: This is a "two-fer" complaint. If I can't use the Display My Favorite Channels Only feature to filter unwanted channels, then at least display all the channels neatly. Get rid of the huge (app. 275px) gap in the middle of the page. I'm sure there is a logical split in the channels... I'm just not smart or patient enough to figure it out. It'd also be nice if the channels were ordered numerically... I'd had expected channel 4 to be listed before channels 19, 29, and 38, but I'm no Human Factors Expert.
No single complaint here would have turned me away from the new site, but put it all together and it is no longer useful to me. I'm now using TvGuide.com's TV listings that doesn't fault on any of the above. I'd love to continue to use Yahoo! TV, so please let me know if I'm using this software incorrectly. I've encountered the same problems in both FireFox and IE.
I hate the new site also.
But I have found a way to get around it.
If you set up a MyYahoo page you can include the TV listings as content on that page.
It looks like it used to and its not interactive.
Thanks for the info. I don’t necessarily hate the new site, I just miss the functionality of the old one. I still give props to the developers for the advanced UI capabilities.
Yes thanks for the review and for that tip about MyYahoo. Any ideas on how to add more channels, I get default stations
Yahoo’s November 28, 2006 television listing update rendered the site entirely unusable for me — even with a big broadband pipe, it crawwwwls and requires constant nursing, click click click, to get through it.
I have not seen a single comment anywhere supporting the change. It’s now mid-January. Why not fix it? Their usage must have dropped to zero, except for the teeny market of people who have internet access but have no cable tv. Awful.
Man, I thought I was the only person in this boat. I was a long-time user of tv.yahoo.com/grid, and I don’t have cable TV. It was great, did exactly what I needed it to do and little more. More importantly, it worked just about the same in every browser (a few minor CSS issues in opera).
Yahoo’s new “web 2.0 redesign” push just sucks. I actually don’t like the look-and-feel but more importantly, the simple “listings” link is hidden away WAY down at the bottom of the page. The results are more dynamic, but include a lot more channels than I care about and really, I didn’t have a problem having to click on an entry and be taken to a new page with additional information.
I’ve always really liked yahoo, but in the past couple of years, I feel it’s gotten increasingly difficult to submit user feedback. Anyway, thanks for the blog.
Yahoo! forgot about their audience. People without on screen guides. It is horrible.