Dear Comcast and ABC,

Sunday night I decided to watch “Body of Truth” through Comcast Video-On-Demand (VOD). Thank you for making the show available. I was, however, extremely frustrated by your decision to completely disable any fast forward functionality.

I did not let the notice at the beginning of the show that the fast forward feature was going to be disabled bother me. Fast forwarding through any VOD offering through Comcast is an inexact process, aggravated by slow response and only one fast forward or rewind speed. I hardly ever fast forward through any VOD offering because it ends up being more frustrating, which is opposite to my desire for TV entertainment.

While watching “Body of Truth” I paused the playback. The pause timed-out and stopped the playback function, as it usually does when I pause VOD for longer than two minutes. Typically, all I have to do at this time is restart the playback to resume the show where I left off.

In this case, however, I was forced to start playback from the beginning of the show. Not only did I have to re-watch from the beginning, I could not fast forward through any of what I had seen just minutes before.

I completely understand the desire to not permit fast forwarding through commercials. I will tolerate that as long as the commercials are limited in length.

However, I will not tolerate the asinine decision to prevent viewers from fast forwarding through material which has already been watched. I’m assuming it was a Comcast software glitch that forced me to start from the beginning of the show, but not allowing me to skip through what I’d already seen? If I hadn’t been only 18 minutes into the episode, I would have stopped immediately and never watched any ABC fast-forward disabled offering again.

I urge you to rethink your logic and what you believe your customers will endure. I understand your desire to maximize your revenue stream, however frustrating your viewers with these ill-conceived methods will likely undermine your goals.

Please fix and I will be much more likely to watch.

Sincerely,

David Perez