TIVO - damn infuriating

[Stuart Wright]

I'm so frustrated with my TIVO.
I use it to record lots of kids programs and the occasional program for me.
The most common and frustrating problem for me is that of bad timing from the broadcasters. In order to be sure of getting ALL of a program I have to set the box to start a minute early and stop a couple of minutes late. For example, I recorded tonight's episode of The Office and left the recording to end on time and it finished 5 seconds before the end credits. AAARRRGGGHHH!
Does $ky Plus suffer from the same problem?

The next probllem arrises because I have to extend recording by a minute at the start and 2 minutes at the end. It means that I can only record half the kids programs I want because a lot of them start within a minute of eachother and my overrun programming makes TIVO cancel the recordings because of conflicts. GRRRRRR!

And if a program DOES start and end on time, it means I have minutes of crap either side and there is no way to crop 'from start' or 'to end' to trim the programs. How rubbish.

And now I have a playlist which looks like this:

THE OFFICE
ASTRO FARM
BANANAS IN PYJAMAS
TWEENIES
MAKE WAY FOR NODDY
BANANAS IN PYJAMAS
CUBEEZ
BANANAS IN PYJAMAS
ULTIMATE CRASH TESTS
ASTRO FARM
BANANAS IN PYJAMAS
MAKE WAY FOR NODDY
ASTRO FARM
BANANAS IN PYJAMAS
BANANAS IN PYJAMAS

Why can't I, for example, sort the programs alphabetically and play them all in the displayed sequence? E.g. my little girl gets all the tweenies in a row.

Yes the TIVO gives you some good advantages, but from the point of view of a typical punter and an experienced computer programmer, I would put TONS TONS more functionality in there.

I'm frustrated by the bloody thing.

 

[pointon]

Put a post up in the TiVo forums saying the above. The people working on software updates apparently do take a lot of notice on worthwhile comments made on the forum.

I know what you mean though. And just because you run a recording over by a couple of minutes to say 10.02, means TiVo refuses to record anything starting at 10.00 beginning two minutes in. Get the whole thing or nothing at all.

 

[DaveP]

I have both Sky+ and the Tivo and I find the Tivo rules for extending programs as frustrating as you. You can't even record two consecutive programs on the same channel if you select the first one to run late!

Sky+ allows a manual adjustment to the start and end times. I start one minute earlier (not enough now Sky 1 are playing silly b*ggers with their start times!) and run two minutes late. If ! schedule a program to follow on then I select the KEEP option on the first one. This gives it priority to finish before swapping to the next program.

Hope this helps!

DaveP

 

[Setenza]

I had the same problem recording "Sirens" last night on ITV1.

Started watching 15 minutes into the recording and the wife was not pleased when the recording stopped dead on half 10, but ITV were overrunning by 2 minutes.

Luckily, I turned on the "Live TV" function and as it was set to ITV1, had the 20 minutes of programming buffered. Managed to wind it back to the start and catch the climax of the drama we had been watching.

To be honest, I do not blame Tivo, so much as the broadcasters, for not sticking to their program times. ITV are the worst offenders for this IMHO.

 

[gringottsdirect]

For recording specific programmes get Skyplus+.