Cox on demand comes to Lakewood

Yes, it’s true — you can get Cox on demand any time you’d like in Lakewood, Ohio. And Cox Digital Cable service now offers it, too!

With a surprise that made my day, when I booted up our brand new, yet out-of-date Explorer 8000 DVR Wednesday night, we were greeted by a warm, blue ad to watch Failure to Launch on demand.

No thanks, Cox, but I did sample your on demand offering, and here’s what I found:

• An interface that feels similar to Replay TV’s — bold background color, vertical list of choices on the left, advertisement / large logo treatment on the right
• Interface is different from Comcast On Demand, but offering is similar
  The layout is different — with one main column to choose from versus Comcast’s two columns. But, the on Demand choices are similar — the videos on the Music Choice channel are the same, for example
• Slower to respond than Comcast, but less prone to crash.
  The few Comcast on demand boxes I’ve tried all hang or exit out to the channel guide when you attempt to scroll through a menu too quickly, or if you press “back” immediately after making a selection. In 10 minutes of trying my best, I was unable to “crash” the Cox on demand. It takes longer to scroll through the choices, though

Why am I making a big deal out of this? Because on demand came from out of the blue — there’s no listing for on demand on Cox’s Cleveland-area page and no one at the Parma office knew about on demand when I got digital cable August 5.