Default to Favorites when pressing Guide button?

My household just switched from Cox to U-verse a couple of days ago. We started off with Cox, then went to DirecTv, then back to Cox again. The learning curve of a different remote and screen menus was not something I looked forward to. All have pros and cons and there ought to be a Nobel Prize for coming up with a remote/screen menu combo which uses only the most used and appreciated features of all that are available.

I too was perplexed at the labor involved with setting up a Favorites menu scheme that worked as it was meant to. Creating a user didn't do it. The time spent in going through hundreds of channels was an equal waste. I soon discovered that if the system was determined on defaulting to display all channels on invoking the guide, *hiding* the channels I don't watch seemed the best of a bad situation.

Frustration reared its ugly head again when I noticed that one of the hide channel options was "check all", which to me was counter-intuitive; my favorites list totaled about 70-75. With hundreds of choices to UN-check you can imagine how much time that task took. It would have gone much more quickly with an "UN-check All" menu option. That was I could scroll or enter the numbers to go directly to the channel number block grouping.

Yes. I agree. Direct channel number input is what I wound up doing and thought I wrote.

Aside from the lamentable First-world problem of having to spend the time to manually un-check so many channel choices, the point I was attempting to make was that I believe an "UN-check All" choice in that particular menu field would better suit the majority of U-verse users.

I have this same problem.  And now sinced they added a new menu item before "Favorites" in the menu it takes FIVE button presses to get the the guide!

1. Menu

2. Down

3. Down

4. Down

5. OK

I find it hard to believe this is the only way to get show favorites on the guide.  It should just remember the last channel guide you used so you just have to hit 1 Button:

1. Guide

They already have the functionality to change the channel line up while on the the guide by hitting the "enter" button then selecting the list, so they just need to store the last channel list used!

It's probably less than 10 lines of code not including unit tests.  A developer could definitely do this in less than 1 day.

Had to add my opinion to the list here, just in case the "right" people are paying attention (although I doubt it).

I am yet another new DirecTV convert, and I have to say that my experience in a little over a week has taught me how much better DirecTV was.  If it wasn't for the savings, I'd would go back in an instant.

This favorites issue is just one of many things that I've encountered that have me shaking my head, but it is definitely the most frustrating because the guide is easily the most used thing on the TV.  Plus, the solution seems so simple.

Simply allow us to setup a default favorites that comes up when the guide button is pushed and have channel up/down follow that.  That's all anyone is asking for.  Having to hit five buttons to get to the favorites guide is pathetic.  And the "solution" of hiding channels is terrible.  As mentioned above, those hidden channels are gone.  So if I hide the premium movie channels because I don't get them, I have to add them back in if there is a free preview weekend (for example).  I went through the process of hiding 700 some channels (thanks for including a "check all" option, but not an "uncheck all" option) and ended up unhiding them because I couldn't create a favorites list with any channels hidden.  The idea behind a favorites list is that they are the most used, but that doesn't mean you will never want to see any other channel.

For now, I'm getting by with a sequence on my harmony remote, but that is slow and shouldn't have to jump through hoops to do this. 

Absolutely agree.

Apparently AT&T is never going to get this resolved. Maybe the solution is switch to internet only and get DIRECTV or Dish Network. I've given up on AT&T U-verse TV and just don't watch the tv anymore.

How is it useful to remove channels from the guide? Other people might want to watch these channels, but not me. I just want to see my favorites. 

{keep it courteous}

Darn, I can't believe ATT has let this problem go on this long without responding to customer complaints.  Thought I'd found something better than DirecTV, but maybe not so much.

I've been around since Ma Bell gave her customers 'candlestick' phones. That was a long, long time ago. She figured that so long as what she did was good enough, then her monopoly would endure forever. She sure was wrong. Had she listened to her customers, she might have had a fighting chance of maintaining a dominate position in _something_, but she didn't.

Now that Ma is dead and gone, you'd figure that the new owners would remember why she lost her knickers; but, based on this thread they haven't. I've been with this product for one week and am debating on whether to keep it, or...

The abysmal programming of the favorites function makes me crazy. Nothing need be changed in the hardware. Spend $500 for the software change, have it beta tested (I'll volunteer), and release it. Show people that you're reading the mail, that you care! Oy vey, already!!

Flatus

What did you do to program your harmony to go directly to favorites?  I have a harmony.

Thanks