Got my first taste of the new Start Over feature offered by Time Warner Cable. If you’re a TWC customer, you’ve been channel surfing, and happened to land on a channel where this service is available, you will see a window pop into your screen from the left asking if you want to “Start Over.” You push the Select button on your TWC remote and presto! The program starts at the very beginning. A great little service for those who forgot to set up their DVR in advance.
The upside:
You get to restart a program from the beginning even if you just happened upon it during the closing credits.
The bad stuff:
The service is only available on a handful of channels (Showtime, USA, TNT, Comedy Central, to name a few) but there’s a promise of more to come, according to press materials.
Rewind and pausing – no problem! But fast forwarding is forbidden — meaning you cannot avoid commercials. (Boo! Hiss! Snarl!)
What if you want to see what’s going on elsewhere? You can still pull up and search the onscreen guide, but if you see something you want to record, you cannot do it while you’re watching a Start Over show.
The TWC Start Over feature was the 2007 Emmy Winner for Outstanding Innovation and Achievement in Advanced Media Technology for Best Use of on Demand Technology over Private (Closed) Networks. Sigh. Such a big title for a service that provides so little.
This article appears in July 25 • 2008.