This is my brain on TiVo

Perspective: This is my brain on TiVo

By Leslie Katz

Published: March 13, 2006, 4:00 AM PST

Patrick Joseph McNamara...

Back in the analogue days of cable, I got use to being able to set my VCR up
and forget it, then come back later and watch what I wanted to when I wanted
to. (Now I have to make sure it's on the right channel.) TiVo and DVR is
really an attempt to recreate that.

Jack Zwick...

TiVo does soooo much more with wish lists and season passes. You set it
up once, and you're good for months with a TiVo.

Steven L....

Right on these NGs, I've heard complaints from TiVo owners about TiVo
failing to track so-called "extended" episodes. Like when "Lost" runs a
63 minute first-run episode, TiVo stops recording after 60 minutes.
Until TiVo fixes that, I prefer to set my recording equipment manually
each week based on that week's schedule.

Randy S....

TiVo never had an issue with recording a show for 63 minutes if it was
scheduled for 63 minutes. It does that all the time, and always has.

What *was* an issue is that if one show ran 61 minutes, and you had
another show set to record that started at the 60th minute, Tivo would
only record one show or the other because of the conflict. But to blow
another hole in your complaint, Tivo *did* recently address that with an
update, and now TiVo will just cut off the overlapping portion of
whichever show you have ranked as lower priority. Unless you have a
dual tuner Directivo, which never had that problem in the first place,
since it will just record both shows at once.

And that's not even mentioning that you can always set up a season pass
to "pad" a show with extra recording time if you want (good for shows
that tend to run past scheduled time like sports and award shows).

Sheesh, you can really tell who's actually *used* a TiVo, and who
hasn't, can't you?

Randy S.

UCLAN...

And "The Shield" is 66 minutes tonight.

Stan Brown...

Thanks for the heads up. When I checked on Sunday, Excite was showing
63 minutes. And I've already set my VCR, so I would have missed the
last few seconds of the show.