An annoyance with Xfinity’s Smart Resume
I recently wrote about streaming’s growing affection for advertising, now that the streaming industry is no longer expanding as much as it did during its first 10 years. A few people wrote to me about a related advertising phenomenon, this one on cable, specifically Xfinity: the Smart Resume doublecross.
Smart Resume is a wonderful feature for Xfinity customers (of which I am one). When you record certain shows via your DVR such as “Saturday Night Live,” then watch them later, you can very easily fast forward through the commercial break. You simply press fast forward, and the Smart Resume feature automatically and conveniently brings you ahead to the very beginning of the show’s next segment.
Or it should do that. For at least a few months now, Smart Resume has been bringing viewers not to the next segment of the show but to 30 seconds or so before. So you wind up having to watch about 30 seconds of ads before the show resumes.
I thought it was a problem with my TV set-up somehow, but after hearing from Xfinity subscribers last week and looking at the Xfinity Community Forum, I can see that others are having the same negative experience. Is there something wrong with Xfinity’s tech, or is it intentional, to get more eyes on some of the ads? Hmm.
It’s enraging, regardless, especially given the prices people are paying for their cable service. You’re led to believe you have this convenient feature, and that you can dodge one of the more annoying aspects of ad-supported TV — the loud commercials — but then you’re more or less tricked into submitting to some of them.