New Update Feedback [Constructive]

Question

When my girlfriend called me and woke me up saying how much I would hate the new guide I was immediately intrigued.  After 2 minutes with the guide I agreed.  It was ugly, there was less information immediately available, my eyes had to adjust every time I paged down, I was not happy. 
I was ready to call in and complain immediately but decided to fully educate myself on the update before doing so.  After 30 minutes with the system I've come to the conclusion that there is good and bad with this update. 
But I do have some feedback that I hope is taken seriously:
Firstly, my favorite, the new DVR network.  The ability for us to now watch what is on EITHER DVR in any room is fantastic.  It's a simple process, the menu is useable, and the ability to custom name the DVRs is great.
The ability to set a recording from any room on either DVR is also great.  This will make things simpler because our main multi-room DVR is in the basement.
Unfortunately that's about it for the good, now for the bad constructive:
The guide is ugly.  Mainly the color scheme is too soft.  In addition to a strange choice of colors, there are too many colors.  Not only do we have different colors for each type of program (which is fine) that color is modified when you hover over it to a very soft version of that color effectively doubling the amount of ugly colors we are forced to look at.
Too much empty space.  One of the things that made the old guide so loved was how effectively it used screen resources.  There was no space between channels like there are now.  I understand your trying to make the guide look graphical but by giving each program rounded edges and putting a gap between programs your not using the space we're given to it's full potential.  This also goes back to my previous gripe: too many colors, the gap between each program adds yet more color our brains need to process.
PIP on the guide covers the top channel number.  I'm sure your team came to the conclusion that we would be able to figure out what channel that is easily, but why?  This is one more calculation our brains need to make and is just plain frustrating that you would think this was okay.
The main piece of information people want access to is the program name.  There is zero need to put info in the center of the screen with the program.  The old guide did it correctly, put all the programs as close together as possible for easy flipping, and have the info on the side near the PIP (which should be back where it was) where we can look if we choose to.
HD Guide is 4:3.  I thought you had fixed that?  Why is the new guide incapable of displaying in 16:9?
OnDemand featured movies list.  I know this is from a previous update but it's been bothering me.  When browsing the featured new releases OnDemand, it is very hard to tell what every movie is without hovering over it.  The title of the movies is very truncated and we're forced to know what the movie is by the picture.  The old list of featured movies allowed for easy browsing by title and still gave us the image to look at.  Primary focus should be on the title and the image should be an after thought.
When browsing through the DVR schedule, the list skips very strangely when you flip to a new date.  I understand that the rows the dates occupy are not selectable and it's centering the first program from the new date you scroll to in the middle, but it's very strange.  It's confusing frustrating when you were looking further down the list just to find the show you were looking at is not where it should be after scrolling one position.
Companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars optimizing the way things look to allow their end users the least frustration and confusion, I don't feel your designers got it right.  In the IT industry a big thing these days is to track what a user hovers over with their mouse in effort to track the path they took to where they actually wanted to go and then optimize the website in order to reduce the amount of time it takes to go one click.  The features you provide us should focus more on productivity not on them being "shiney".  I sincerely hope that the user interface gets another upgrade to improve the look and feel, while making the process as simple as possible.
Please feel free to /sign this thread if you agree with my points.

Answer 1

Apparently you need the latest verizon hardware to fix some of the display issues related to font and maybe colors, but I don't think anything is going to change the awful interface & layout ratios that were chosen for this update.
Overall, i'd have to agree with your opinions after playing around with the new interface for 15 minutes this morning before work. I'm hoping they can either roll the patch back for everyone who doesn't have the new hardware or at least offer to replace the equipment that originally came with the installation with the latest hardware.