A year and a half ago, Cablevision launched a new feature, iO TV Quick View, which provides viewers a live snapshot of what’s currently airing in three different categories – sports, news, and children’s programming.  Each had its own channel number, making it easy to launch the features.

It’s a great feature, especially for kids, who can easily see what’s on, move the cursor to their progam of choice, and push SELECT to go to the channel (audio changes as the cursor is moved from block to block in the 3x3 grid set up to make optimal use of the screen’s real estate).

The drawback is it wasn’t customizable.  There are typically more than nine news programs showing, and often more than nine sporting events, making the feature a little less effective than it could have been.  It wasn’t as much of an issue with kids, as all their favorite channels were available in Quick View.

Cablevision has now upgraded Quick View, adding customization of channels and the ability to create Quick Views for different family members or different themes.  It’s fairly intuitive to set up – you can set up a Quick View for your kids, one for each family member’s favorite channels, sports, news, movies, and basically any category you choose to create.

The different Quick Views can be easily accessed though one portal (channel) – the same screen that includes all the customization features.  Now, users can easily see what’s playing on their nine favorite channels in any category.  This can be quite useful, eliminating the need to move to each channel individually to see what’s currently being shown – or having to scroll through the programming guide, which, considering the number of available channels, can be a cumbersome chore.

Cablevision has certainly tried to create an easy way to personalize viewers’ experiences – a must considering the alternative options for video content delivery, including several online sources that continue to increase in popularity.

But, it’s not a feature I will be using much, at least not until they make Quick View an enjoyable experience.  Yes, the features provide the customization users expect today.  But, both access and setup are painfully slow – at last check, it took more than a minute for the Quick View screen to load.  By that time, users can easily surf through all their favorites.  And setting up multiple Quick Views took more time than any human being should have to tolerate.  I set up one for my kids – they loved the original iO TV Quick View (which is still available through the Quick View menu, but with only one set up, the service bypasses the menu and goes directly to the one customized view I’ve set up for them).

“Some Quick View this is,” I mumbled under my breath – or so I thought.  My children followed with, “They should call it slow view,” and “No, they should call it ‘Takes a million years to load view.”

You’ve done something wrongwhen kids complain about their user experience.  Great concept, but it needs some serious work, Cablevision.