Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Cable TV boxes
Raised as a usability problem by 25 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2010–2026), in 24 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Cable boxes are poor at helping people find contentUnreviewed
20102026- Cable boxes are painful to use for the commenter2026-01-12
- Cable boxes are very bad at helping people find content2020-09-29
- Rented cable box is crappy and blocks using own tuner or recorder software2015-12-14
New cable box switches channels much more slowlyUnreviewed
20102026- Button presses take 1-3 seconds to respond and channel changes take 2 seconds2022-01-30
- New cable box switches channels far more slowly than the old one2020-08-04
- Channel takes forever to change after pressing remote buttons2019-12-19
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 24 complaints
- Ad breaks are so long and frequent that watching anything requires constant channel switching2026-02-05
- Cable boxes are painful to use for the commenter2026-01-12
- Clunky UI, extra remote and tangled wires make them hard to use2024-11-17
- Cancelling cable service is tedious and frustrating for customers2024-08-30
- Mom cannot figure out how to close full-screen ads that appear when the box turns on2022-12-23
- Remote and interface are laggy, so navigating to a show takes minutes2022-10-08
- Remote has too many buttons and is hard to use2022-08-24
- Button presses take 1-3 seconds to respond and channel changes take 2 seconds2022-01-30
- Cable boxes are very bad at helping people find content2020-09-29
- New cable box switches channels far more slowly than the old one2020-08-04
- Channel takes forever to change after pressing remote buttons2019-12-19
- Cancelling cable service takes hours of call-waiting2019-03-24
- Interface is extremely laggy and awful to use2018-10-31
- Channels everywhere feel full of dark patterns and clickbait, hard to watch2018-05-15
- After power loss, channel guide data is lost and takes about 15 minutes to reload2017-04-14
- Rented cable box is crappy and blocks using own tuner or recorder software2015-12-14
- Ad-funded viewing has terrible user experience, making it hard to watch shows2015-09-23
- Cable box so slow that selections take seconds to show feedback2015-06-23
- Cable TV shows distorted picture requiring manual aspect ratio toggling on display2015-01-06
- Cable's user experience is horrible, forced to buy unwanted channel packages2014-04-23
- Channel guide is unusable because of too many channels to navigate2014-04-23
- Cable boxes run very slowly when changing channels or opening the guide2012-02-25
- Searching for shows on the cable box is slow and time-consuming2010-05-20
- Hard to find something to watch; cable box search and navigation are slow and awkward2010-01-10