TiVo Community Forums Archives - Redundant recordings on season pass

TiVoCommunity.com
(c)opyright 1995-2005 All rights reserved
indexcheckTC
This area is a static history of posts in the TiVo Community Forum Archive.
This archive history was made for the simple indexing of search sites like Google.

Pages:1

Redundant recordings on season pass
(Click here to view the original thread with full colors/images)

Posted by: zoreo

I have a major gripe with season passes. Most of the programs I record are programs on cable channels that are repeated several times with-in a day or two period. The problem is that even though I check 'new episodes only' Tivo records every airing so I wind up with multiple copies of each program! I know I can schedule a manual record- but often the networks change things around and mess that up. It seems to me that as sophisticated as Tivo is there must be a way for it to know when a program has already been recorded and not record it again.

Posted by: dgh

I only have this problem with a couple of shows (maybe only one now) so I just make it a very low priority keep at most 1 season pass. I'm not sure how will this approach scales if it's really most of your shows but it might still be worth a try.

Posted by: zoreo

Well it not just one or two for me- it's most of the shows I record off Tech-TV and HGTV and Comedy Ch and many others. In fact, most of the channels I watch repeat their whole schedule so a program will be on two or three times with-in a 24-hr period.

Posted by: cptodd

Zoreo,

This occurs because these channels do not make it a priority to feed good guide data to Tribune (I believe it is Tribune). Are you sure that it happens with TechTV? A while ago they "got religion" with respect to their guide data and it is now quite good.

Chris

Posted by: njtaz

I have that problem with MTV mostly because the guide data they put out isn't accurate. No show description just the show title so TiVo doesn't know if its new or old.

Posted by: zoreo

As I recall the guide does have the content description for these programs so I don't understand why it can't distinguish repeats. Maybe each program should have a special identifying number that Tivo could check to see if it has already recorded it. Doesn't "VCR-Plus" work that way?

Posted by: zaknafein

quote:
Originally posted by zoreo
As I recall the guide does have the content description for these programs so I don't understand why it can't distinguish repeats. Maybe each program should have a special identifying number that Tivo could check to see if it has already recorded it. Doesn't "VCR-Plus" work that way?

It does, if the channel does what they are supposed to do.

TiVo has what is called the 28-day rule. Each unique episode has an ID. TiVo checks these IDs and sees if has recorded that individual episode any time in the last 28 days. If it has, (or will) then it doesn't record it a second time.

However, if the guide data is incomplete, these IDs are missing. All TiVo knows then is that an episode of that series is airing. It has no idea whether it is new or old. To be safe, it records it.

TechTV has been better of late. Comedy Central OTOH, is still spotty at best.

Posted by: ccwf

However, Gemstar's VCR+ (U.S.), Videoplus (UK), and ShowView (Europe) systems do not work that way. These systems just encode a day, channel, start time (in local time), and duration in a single number. Thus, they are no more than a quick way to do a manual recording for your VCR (with no padding options and no way to handle Daylight Saving Time changes).

Posted by: zoreo

quote:
However, if the guide data is incomplete, these IDs are missing.

Is there any way to know what programs have these ID codes?

Posted by: ccwf

Turn on backdoors or use TiVo Web.