Search only shows a couple of days? And other issues.

[pmrowley]

The way Universal Search is currently set up is extremely problematic, and it really fails with the wife. Over the season, my wife wanted to record and watch the numerous Christmas shows and movies showing across several channels. Using the Companion to find these programs proved to be fairly fruitless. She missed a lot of shows she wanted to see, because the Companion search missed things. We just didn't know that the search would be so non-comprehensive.

1) Searches only showed about a day or so of shows. Why wouldn't it show everything that is loaded into the guide for a given search? I understand that it's going to produce a very long list, but it's much faster to scroll through a long list on our tablet than in Media Center. Isn't that the whole point of having the Companion? Forcing the user to re-do a search every day just doesn't work. Or am I missing something? I just tested with Media center, and I have show listings in a search out to 1/5. Companion doesn't display anything past the 30th.

2) Searches default to title, and can only be switched to description. Why isn't a keyword search implemented? When doing a keyword search in Media Center (cumbersome, as we are exclusively using an extender,) it turned up hundreds of programs, many of which were missed by Companion (even allowing for a day or so's worth of program data that Companion is displaying, and doing two searches; one with Title, one with Description.) The concept of the Universal Search is great, but my wife doesn't trust the results, since it misses so much. At the very least, the search functionality needs to produce the same results as Media Center's search.

3) Special characters break the search. (Search for "Don't Trust the B" and it won't turn up anything. Search for "Dont Trust the B" and it'll come up.)

Personally, I think the Search function is the most important component of the app, and right now, it just doesn't cut the mustard compared with the onboard search capabilities. Can we count on enhanced search functions in the future, or should I just go out and buy a Chatpad for my Xbox? We love the Companion, but we just don't trust it enough yet.

[Motz]

Thanks for the feedback. Every bit of feedback helps shape and mold the companion app so it is greatly appreciated. Hopefully I can address some of your issues.

1.) Right now I am only querying for the top 50 results, however I can expand this to return more. Also it seems like they aren't being sorted by the date correctly so I will fix that up as well.
2.) I default to Title because it is faster, however "Description" is actually Keyword, I just need to change the wording there.
3.) I am fixing this up as it was just brought to my attention with & as well. So if you notice anything else let me know.

So hopefully I can make a few tweaks here to fix it up for you, I would also be interested in everyone elses comments.
Thanks!

[barnabas1969]

Motz, I understand why you only return the top 50 results, but it would be nice to have a "next" button to see the next 50 results, and so-on.

[pmrowley]

I would suggest a couple of settings for us to define our search defaults. Then I would be able to tell the Companion to default to Keyword searches, and return more results (50, 100, 250, All.) That would go a long way for a better Wife Acceptance Factor.

[Motz]

These options will be in the next version of the apps.