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ER / CSI Issues
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Posted by: mikesweeney

because of NBC's brilliant idea to start ER one minute early, I got screwed out of CSI. I wanted to either stop CSI early, or start ER late but those options weren't available.

"TV your way", not if it doesn't do what I want it to do.

Season passes don't work so great if I have to do it manually.

Mike

EDIT: I don't mean to sound like a troll here, but with the new fall line-up moving into full gear this seems to be a major problem. TiVo is not totally to blame, but it's as much their fault as its NBC's fault as well.

It doesn't seem like a difficult feature to add, especially since the start early feature is already there.

bleh.

Posted by: ccwf

There's no way † to tell TiVo “always record ER starting a minute late,” no matter when it's on, even if it's on from midnight to 1am this week because NBC is televising the President's scheduled speech.

But you can certainly tell it to “record my particular NBC affiliate every Thursday from 10pm–11pm” (with a manual repeating recording). And you can prioritize that manual repeating recording, too, in case you have other things that should preëmpt ER sometimes.

† Without a hack that is. Negative padding is reportedly possible now with a hack.

Posted by: mattack

quote:
Originally posted by mikesweeney
because of NBC's brilliant idea to start ER one minute early, I got screwed out of CSI.

I know I said basically the same thing in another thread, but I'm VERY GLAD that NBC is giving truthful times for 'er'. (Or at least I _hope_ it's truthful.. I wonder if 9:59 actually still cuts off the very very beginning?)

I like 'er' and CSI, but I've had to tape CSI for this very reason.. because I wanted full 'er' recordings so I could dub them off to videotape.. (maybe I should really just buy the darn DMR-E80 like I keep saying I will.. then I can record 'er' onto it, and Tivo both Survivor & CSI..)

Posted by: mikesweeney

quote:
Originally posted by mattack
I know I said basically the same thing in another thread, but I'm VERY GLAD that NBC is giving truthful times for 'er'. (Or at least I _hope_ it's truthful.. I wonder if 9:59 actually still cuts off the very very beginning?)

I like 'er' and CSI, but I've had to tape CSI for this very reason.. because I wanted full 'er' recordings so I could dub them off to videotape.. (maybe I should really just buy the darn DMR-E80 like I keep saying I will.. then I can record 'er' onto it, and Tivo both Survivor & CSI..)

but as you said with the hack, negative padding is an option so why can't they institute it?

my current set up only records first-run. why should I have to set up a manual recording because the tivo doesn't offer negative padding?

Mike

Posted by: Rob Helmerichs

This is thread number three on this issue...can we get some merging?

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-v...threadid=133126
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-v...threadid=132435

Posted by: davewill

quote:
Originally posted by mattack
I like 'er' and CSI, but I've had to tape CSI for this very reason.. because I wanted full 'er' recordings so I could dub them off to videotape..

Color me stupid, but if you're going to dub ER off to videotape anyway, why not tape ER instead?

Posted by: dbenrosen

Where can I find info about the hack to allow negative padding?

Posted by: mitchb2

Did they do this last year? I know I Tivo'd both shows without doing anything manual.

Posted by: Rob Helmerichs

quote:
Originally posted by mitchb2
Did they do this last year? I know I Tivo'd both shows without doing anything manual.

They've always started the show about a minute or two early, in a cheap marketing gimmick to annoy people into not watching other networks, but this is the first time the guide data has reflected it.

I find the accurate guide data even more annoying; at least the old way, I had the option of padding my season pass a couple of minutes or not. This makes it harder...or at least, it WOULD make it harder if there were two shows I watched at 8:00 (Central). Fortunately, there's just CSI, so there's no conflict for me (two tuners).

Posted by: ccwf

quote:
Originally posted by dbenrosen
Where can I find info about the hack […]

For hacks, see the Underground part of this forum.

Posted by: mitchb2

We've decided to dump ER, even though we like the show.
I know it's a pretty lame form of protest, but I don't know what else to do.
Nothing I can do as one person.

It would be nice if thousands of people kept their CSI SP and cancelled ER.
I wonder if that data would get back to them somehow and cause them to change the scheduling.

Probably not.

Either way, if a person was really commited to seeing it, they could either VCR it (which I'm done with), or just download the episode Friday morning, with the commercials removed, and no obnoxious network logo.

If they were so inclined, I mean.

Posted by: mattack

quote:
Originally posted by davewill
Color me stupid, but if you're going to dub ER off to videotape anyway, why not tape ER instead?

Because I don't want the commercials. So I end up Tivo-ing 'er', then dubbing off to videotape, manually nuking the commercials. (usually do this in PIP while watching something else live)

Though I think I'm getting really really close to getting a Panasonic DMR-E80 so I can do all of this on there (i.e. record it there, edit it there, dub to DVD) _and_ have another digital recorder for conflicts.

and btw, yes I know 'er' is about to release season 1 on DVD. I really like the show, but I don't think quite enough to buy the DVDs. I'm very glad it's being released though. Maybe after the whole show ends, I'll netflix 'em all (if I end up not liking the results of my DVD dubs) and go through the series again.

Posted by: mattack

quote:
Originally posted by Medieval Guy
They've always started the show about a minute or two early, in a cheap marketing gimmick to annoy people into not watching other networks, but this is the first time the guide data has reflected it.

I think you're giving way too much credit to the networks.

They're doing it so they can cram more commercials into one of their highest rated timeslots, thus making more money. (not that that's a bad thing, esp with good guide data).

Now, if we can stop the !@$ animated bugs somehow.. that'd be a miracle.

Posted by: TomJHansen

Negative padding, soft padding, whatever. People will still screw that up. Make the scheduler a little smarter. Heck, if it can figure out what shows I like, it can do this:

See that you want CSI from 8:00 to 9:00. Also, see that you want ER from 8:59 to 10:00. Depending on the priority, tape all of that show. Tape the rest of the other show (whatever is left). You might miss a few minutes on either end, but I think most people can live with that.

What gets everyone who's not had TiVo for a few years (and gone with the buy a second TiVo solution - which is what I've done), is that TiVo records from 8:00 to 9:00 and then DOES NOTHING from 9:01 to 10:00. People would be fine with missing a minute here or there as the networks move stuff around. But completely skipping almost an hour isn't what people want. It makes them want to go back to the VCR with the tape channel 5 from 8:00 to 9:00 and tape channel 10 from 9:00 to 10:00.

Just my perspective as a computer programmer...and this is something that will continue to hold TiVo back in my opinion. DirecTiVo with 2 tuners lessens the problem, but it still exists.

This is what the OP is saying. The first time this happened to my parents, they just shook their head and set the VCR as "backup".

Posted by: JTAnderson

quote:
Originally posted by TomJHansen
It makes them want to go back to the VCR with the tape channel 5 from 8:00 to 9:00 and tape channel 10 from 9:00 to 10:00.

There's an interesting bit of perception at play here, isn't there? With the VCR, the only option was to program it to record a particular channel for a particular timespan (possibly repeatedly). The 20%-50% percent of us who actually used VCRs to time shift did this. And we were happy.

Then, along comes TiVo and hundreds of us recognize it as a far superior way to time shift TV programs. It still has the capability to record a particular channel at a particular time. But it also offers several far better ways to choose what and when to record. Now we have a situation where the best available work-around appears to be to go back to the old-fashioned manual recordings and it has people threatening to return to the VCR. My momma used to say something about cutting off your nose to spite your face.

(I don't mean to pick on you, Tom. You just happened to post an appropriate springboard for these comments.)

That said, I too would love to see:

- negative padding.
- optional padding (only pad if it doesn't cause a conflict).
- optional truncation (record part of a low priority program if there is no opportunity to record the entire program).

Posted by: Walt

It sure is nice to have a two tuner DirecTiVo which solves the problem.

Walt

Posted by: HTH

I record CSI and ER on different TiVos for precisely this reason.

The guide data reflected this once before. I'm not sure what show it was (I think it was Friends (which also runs long regularly (besides the super-sizing) and is also reflected as such in the data this season) but it could have been Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher). I saw the guide data was reflecting the longer time, so I decided I didn't need my own padding anymore. Then the next showing didn't have the longer time and I missed the end.

Unfortunately, without soft padding, having the guide data reflect these slight overlaps between channel schedules does more harm than good. I'll be keeping my padding on these shows.

I only noticed it because I had to move shows around because of the Nebraska game this Thursday.

Posted by: TomJHansen

quote:
Originally posted by HTH
I record CSI and ER on different TiVos for precisely this reason.

HTH - Me too - I'm just saying what people expect when they quote "TV your way" like Mike did.

JT - no problem - but it's amazing how high people's expectations are. I think if TiVo was hardware only, they'd be fine with it. Maybe I am just picky because I think it would be easy to implement in the software. But I'm sure there is some reason that it can't be done easily. Probably how it schedules and tracks shows and it can't divide them easily or something.

Posted by: mattack

quote:
Originally posted by TomJHansen
People would be fine with missing a minute here or there as the networks move stuff around.

I know that your point is: miss a minute here or there as opposed to miss the whole program..

But even the existing padding wasn't always there. IT was added due to complaints about people missing a minute here or there! (with "er" and "Friends", especially!)

Posted by: josborne

I was surprised with this issue when I got home yesterday. I record both CSI and ER as well. I just went ahead and setup a repeating manual season pass by Channel and time for Thursday from 10-11. The first minute of ER is always previews from the previous episode anyway.

Posted by: devdogaz

Luckily, I stopped wasting my time on "er" a couple of years ago so this particular case is not an issue for me. However, this subject of negative padding is what broght me to the forum in the first place. It is completely ridiculous that TiVo does not allow a recording to be shortened at the beginning or the end. They have no direct ties to the broadcasters and are not promising anyone that if their subscribers record a show, they will watch all of the commercials, so why do they force us to record the extra stuff at the end of a show if we don't want to?

Based on what I've read here, it's not a difficult programming fix. So I'm calling on one of the TiVo representatives (Pony, Bill, etc.) to come in and give us a legitimate reason why they don't allow negative padding, or tell us when they plan to make it available.

I currently have a Series 1 TiVo. My guess is that if they did add negative padding, it would only be to Series 2 boxes. This is a feature that could get me to upgrade my DVR to a Series 2 and I'll bet I'm not alone in that respect. Do you hear me TiVo? This simple fix could mean more money for you! What a novel concept!!! Provide the features your subscribers are asking for and it might get you more subscribers/revenue.

Just my $0.02

Posted by: HTH

quote:
Originally posted by devdogaz
Based on what I've read here, it's not a difficult programming fix.

Actually it is a lot harder to introduce such a feature into an established piece of software than it is to design it in from the start.

Posted by: ccwf

quote:
Originally posted by HTH
Actually it is a lot harder to introduce such a feature into an established piece of software than it is to design it in from the start.

This is certainly true in general, but TiVo Web users had previously noticed that TiVo appears to do the right thing right now if negative padding is entered. The SoftPad module now also supports negative padding.