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VOD won't resume, and when restarts FF completely disabled

Missed a TV show the other night and took a shot in the dark and lo and behold it was on On Demand (first time for everything). We started to watch it and about halfway in paused for 3 or 4 minutes. Came back, hit play and the show restarted. Went to FF and a box popped up saying that FF was disabled completely. WTH?! What's scary is when I googled this I found the same complaints about Fios VOD going back to 2012! Aren't we at the time where every show is recorded and we can't just access it? No wonder why people pirate shows - trying to do it legitimately and these companies put up as many hinderances as possible to make it unenjoyable.

Comments

bobbo527

@SteveLogan wrote:
Missed a TV show the other night and took a shot in the dark and lo and behold it was on On Demand (first time for everything). We started to watch it and about halfway in paused for 3 or 4 minutes. Came back, hit play and the show restarted. Went to FF and a box popped up saying that FF was disabled completely. WTH?! What's scary is when I googled this I found the same complaints about Fios VOD going back to 2012! Aren't we at the time where every show is recorded and we can't just access it? No wonder why people pirate shows - trying to do it legitimately and these companies put up as many hinderances as possible to make it unenjoyable.

The FF is disabled at the request of the network supplying the VOD. Don't blame Verizon for that, it is the same for every carrier.

UncleChutney

The problem is that, after you hit pause and it times out, when you press the play button to resume watching, the show re-starts at the beginning, and of course fast-forward is disabled. I can understand why it is disabled, but it shouldn't start back at the beginning after you hit pause and it times out and you hit the play button to resume (my guess is that you're supposed to hit the enter button to get back to where you were).

However, once you hit the play button and it just starts at the beginning, if you're most of the way through a show, say 45 minutes, the only way to see the end is to watch the entire 45 minutes again. After re-starting, since it only remembers where you were when you last stopped, the original position you were in is overwritten, and lost forever, without remedy. You either have to watch the entire first 45 minutes over again, or just forget about watching the end of the show.

At the very LEAST, it should have an option similar to the "restart from beginning" option that is "restart at the end," so that you can rewind back to the place you were. In that case, you don't have to try to fast forward; it can still be disabled. But you don't have to wait 45 minutes to get back to where you left off!

The alternative would be to have the play button resume where you left off after you pause and it times out, rather than re-starting from the beginning. That is the proper, intuitive response in that context. How many people, after hitting PAUSE, and getting timed out, are likely to want to start back at the beginning? (Hint: virtually zero) But let's say there are some who DO want to restart from the beginning? ANSWER: That is always an option from the menu.

I'm a programmer, so I know how these things work. The current design is user-un-friendly, and apparently none of the programmers at FIOS have figured out how to solve the problem within the parameters of the advertising requirements.

So, there's the soluion to the problem, VERIZON FIOS. No charge. Make it so.

UncleChutney

By the way, I forgot to mention that, when you hit PAUSE, and it times out, the menu is now positioned on "RESUME." So, obviously someone at least knew that the user would logically want to "resume" from where they left off when they hit PLAY. But if you hit the PLAY button, even though the menu selection says "RESUME," it DOESN'T resume; it starts from the beginning, without so much as a "Are you sure you want to start over?" before it does, and you're up a certain creek without a certain paddle.

VERIZON: HINT: Customers don't like to be up a certain creek without a certain paddle. And when they get this sort of lack of response to the issue, they are likely to get out of the VERIZON FIOS canoe and walk home with their money, which isn't something you want, is it? In other words, this unresolved issue is not good your for business.

So, FIX IT!

Keyboards

You guys are preaching to the choir here. Been with FiOS since 2007, on this board since its inception in 2008 and the issue has been there and never resolved from day 1 of my service.

One of the main reasons I don't bother posting here much is that it seems pointless since many issues are never resolved (even though some Verizon employees do monitor these peer to peer boards).

Ron2818

This has been a problem for years and they can't or won't fix it, I think I'll give Comcast a try.

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