Spectrum TV DVR Functions on ATV4K Need Improvement

ATV4K model A2737 (64GB) with tvOS 26.1. SpectrumTV ver 3.36

While overall, I am quite happy with Spectrum (internet and TV), I am disappointed with the Spectrum TV app, specifically with DVR functions. Here's a list of key bugs or deficiencies I've observed:

1. In the top DVR menu (My Library), under a given title, when a program is recording, the app will show “one program” (or more, if you have more than one) but when you click into that item, you can’t actually see or select the recording that's in-progress, thus you can't start the recording until the recording is finished. This is an infrequent failure, but it happens enough to be noticeable.

2. When a program is still recording and you begin watching it before the recording has finished (obviously, this is counter to #1), I've observed two playback behaviors on multiple occasions: (2a) Playback will begin to “skip,” meaning it’ll jump forward a few seconds every 5-10 seconds. (2b) Playback will start fast-forwarding for no apparent reason (without touching the controller), typically at a very fast framerate (e.g., 6x). For 2a and 2b, these behaviors cannot be stabilized back to "normal" contiguous playback through any of, stop/restart (the recording), fast-forward or rewind, or pause. Even if you start a different recording and then go back to the recording with these problems, the behavior remains. Equally, when this happens, it's specific to a single recording; if I playback any other recorded program at the same time, it does not exhibit these failure modes, but if I go back to the suspect program/recording, the bad behavior repeats in precisely the same manner, at the same time in the recording. This suggest a few conclusions: 1) it's not a network problem; 2) it's not a Spectrum TV app problem; and 3) that the problem is on the server-side of the equation, meaning the quality of the recorded content on the Spectrum TV cloud.

3. Sometimes, recording playback “loses the plot” (e.g., #2a, 2b) so in an attempt to recover, you restart the recording, but you cannot fast-forward to where you were as Spectrum TV app continuously goes back to the start of the recording no matter how many times you may attempt to fast-forward, or re-start the same recording. So, if you are deep into a program (think sports or a movie) and this happens, you basically give up because you don’t want to re-watch all that you’ve already watched. As with #2, these symptoms are recording-specific, suggesting it's a server-side STV cloud recording quality issue.

4. When in otherwise nominal playback of a recording, started while the recording is still in progress, when the recording finishes you can no longer fast-forward or rewind; you must exit the recording and re-start it to regain these controls.

5. The “Record a Series” function is highly inconsistent. Sometimes it’s offered as a capability, but most often it’s not. Think NFL football, or Formula 1. The result of this is I have a weekly reminder to “Set DVR Recordings” to ensure I set-up individual episode recordings to get what I want to watch. This is frustrating.

6. There's no indication of a program set to record at the DVR search-results level. You have to go into the search results program-by-program to see that it’s set to record. It would be a welcome improvement for STV App to show a red dot for a single recording and three overlapping dots for a series recording, in the top-level search results.

7. Search sometimes returns program metadata results in other languages than my primary language (English). From my experience, Spanish. For example, if I search Formula 1 Racing, (which has five events for each race—practice, qualifying, the race itself) I’ll get up to five results in Spanish. Interestingly, when you click into any singular event where top-level search metadata is in Spanish, the underlying specific event data is displayed in English.

8. Most recently (specific to STV ver 3.36?) I've observed that when starting a recording that's in-progress, the recording starts at the "live" timeframe with no opportunity to "Play from Beginning." Consider a sporting event, you delay your playback of the recording by say 60 mins, then when you start the recording, it starts at the "live" time showing you the score. Ugh. An interstitial between starting a program and actually playing it back that allows me to select "start live" or "start from the beginning" is an easy fix.

There’s more but these are the most significant deficiencies that I have observed. I think it would be a good move by Spectrum to improve this customer experience on the Spectrum TV app.