TiVo Community Forums Archives - Do you reset Thumbs/Suggestion regularly?

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Do you reset Thumbs/Suggestion regularly?
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Posted by: cheerdude

With the new year approaching and with me close to getting Digital Cable, I have been thinking about reseting my thumbs/suggestions.

I am curious if anyone does this on a regular (i.e. yearly) basis... or if it would be best to just leave well enough alone?

Jeff

Posted by: cello

I've done it before, because I started off with a very bad thumbing strategy.

I've truthfully found that suggestions are less than ideal for me - I am trying to train my tivo to record dramas and movies for me, but now matter how conservative I am with my thumbs up for sit coms and how generous I am with my thumbs for movies and shows like Law and Order, I still come home to a suggestions list full of Seinfeld or Kids in the Hall (to the extent that I've been forced to undo my thumbs for them.) I'm thinking about undoing all my thumbs again soon and trying a new thumbing strategy. My suggestions are improving as I learn with every reset. I just wish that there were an option for me to ask my tivo to record a larger percentage of new shows. Or for me to be able to tell it "I love Buffy more than almost anything, but I own 4 DVDs, so for god's sake stop recording it for me!!!"

Posted by: devdogaz

The more data you have in there, the better tailored to your interests the Suggestions will be. The only reasons I can think of to reset those settings is if someone who regularly used the TiVo is no longer using it or if your interests change dramatically.

Posted by: bobsoron

I have suggestions turned off, and I always cancel out any thumbs ups (which occur only automatically; I never assign them) and thumbs downs by pressing the other button an equal number of times.

It was mildly entertaining for the first month or so, but I've got better things to do than play with some bad algorithm that claims to find some programs I might be interested in.

Posted by: coldtoes

I thought about resetting after realizing that using more than one thumb up on anything seemed to skew my suggestions so that I only got shows I'd already watched. But I hated to do it, since it took a long time to build up that thumbs data. Instead I went through my suggestions and SPs and downgraded all the 2- and 3-thumbs to 1-thumb ratings, and got more variety in my suggestions.

I just bought a second TiVo, and I'm going to try not doing any explicit thumbs ratings, just letting the implicit thumbs set when I record do the work. I'm hoping I'll get even better variety that way.

Posted by: phone1

quote:
Originally posted by cheerdude
I am curious if anyone does this on a regular (i.e. yearly) basis...

Yearly? Well...er..yes. Sometimes more often, even several times a week. I'm told it's normal...

Posted by: ccwf

quote:
Originally posted by cello
Or for me to be able to tell it "I love Buffy more than almost anything, but I own 4 DVDs, so for god's sake stop recording it for me!!!"

I have the exact same problem (except when TiVo loses its thumb ratings for Buffy once in a while—it's somewhat amusing to see that TiVo still thinks Buffy is a show I might like when it forgets that I gave it three thumbs up). I am hoping that once the Tracker hack matures (hack to never re-record stuff you've already watched, basically extending the 28 day rule), it will take care of this issue. Currently, it often prevents previously viewed episodes from being recorded as suggestions but might not allow other suggestions to be recorded instead during that time.

Posted by: Fustanella

I've never erased thumbs settings, and am quite pleased with the resulting suggestions.

Posted by: JPriller

My Suggestions suck. Always. I've had TiVos for two years and reset thumbs data around 4 times. They're okay for a little while, usually around week 3 afterwords the Suggestions are pretty darn good, but then it gets stuck in a rut.

At the moment it's picking nothing but Westerns. Bonanza re-runs and John Wayne movies. Before that it was WWII documentaries. Before that, nothing but home improvement. Before that, just kids shows. Blah. I've tried various things. All the kid shows are on one TiVo now and suggestions are disabled. But it hasn't helped much.

Here's my latest strategy: On the "grown up" TiVo I give one thumb up to things I like and one down to things I don't, and my wife does the same. There's nothing (yet) that one of us likes that the other hates, so there's no canceling, our interests aren't that different. But despite the only "western" influences on the TiVo being an SP for Peacemakers (now canceled, like the show) and that one western episode of Enterprise, I'm getting non-stop John Wayne.

I've got suggestions turned off, I've given up again. If anyone has any suggestions (pun not exactly intended) I'd be willing to erase thumbs data and try again.

Posted by: tomo_kun

i did it once on accident. Whoops. Not like i used TiVo sugjestions :D

Edit: this was on XMAS EVE!

Posted by: cello

Well I was inspired to reset them. I have pages and pages in suggestions now (not recorded suggestions, just suggested shows to record), all sorts of stuff. I can't wait to see what it chooses. I figured that what it was recording for me was so homogeneous anyway that if I want a million episodes of Seinfeld, I can do that myself. Not much of a loss for me at this point to reset stuff.

No westerns on the list... so far... ;)

Posted by: jtown

I've been pretty lucky with suggestsions. I never reset them and I've only gone through the list two or three times in the last 15 months. I rarely give anything a thumbs-up. More often, I'll give a thumbs-down to a suggestion that's really bad or to prevent one of my season pass/wishlist programs from being recorded as a suggestion (it happens from time to time).

It started off a bit shaky with a lot of spanish programming (I don't speak spanish) but it's gotten better. It picks a lot of good Learning to "Discover History" channel stuff that I like. After I recorded a FoxNews show, it started recording lots of news channel stuff but a handful of thumbs-down ratings stopped that fast. It throws in several Twilight Zone episodes a week, a few monster garage/junkyard wars shows a month, the occasional Reno-911, and a few other things that are decent. I probably watch half of the suggestions my machine picks up which is pretty good as far as I'm concerned.

Posted by: daveyg013

I love the suggestions. I check them at least a couple times a week. It puts some junk on the list sometimes and sometimes likes to suggest every show in one particular genre, but it's also suggested several shows I watch on a regular basis now.

My strategy is to check the suggestions list whenever I get a chance and give one thumbs up to any show I would want to watch (or I set it to record), one thumbs down to any show that I wouldn't want to watch, and leave any show alone that I'm indifferent about (if it records, I'll check it out, if it doesn't, oh well).

Also, occasionally I'll pick a channel I watch regularly and go through a few days on the guide implementing the same thumbing strategy.

Some of the stuff it ends up recording may only get 5 minutes of viewing before I get bored and delete it. Lately the suggestions have been pretty good. Plus, I'm one of those people that gets sad whenever I look at my Tivo and that red light isn't on, so suggestions keep it working hard. I feel like I must be missing something I'd like to watch over the 100+ channels I have.

Posted by: devdogaz

Just a dumb question while we're on this subject. How do you reset Thumbs? Do you have to redo guided setup or is it simply a button you push?

Posted by: daveyg013

Somewhere in the Tivo Setup menus I think it says "Reset Suggestions" or something simple like that.

Posted by: Redleg

For the first year we turned suggestions off, because we knew what we wanted to watch. We only turned them on as an ad hoc free space indicator, but since then we've been happy they're there and used them much more than I ever thought we would.

I've never reset them, and they've always worked well, even considering the variety of shows we like -- both our TiVos pick up a good mix of sci fi, sit coms, game shows, talk shows, and kids shows, even Sportscenter. Our "strategy" is nothing special -- just rate the shows we like with a thumb, give the shows we don't like a down, and give our few favorites two or three thumbs.

Posted by: Eoghann

quote:
Originally posted by Redleg
For the first year we turned suggestions off, because we knew what we wanted to watch.

I've seen variations on this comment all over the place and its time I asked. Why turn off suggestions (yes I realise you've since turned them back on)?

What do you gain exactly? As I understand it Tivo will never record a suggestion if you have anything at all on an auto-record wishlist, season pass or manual recording that conflicts with it.

Nor will it record over any of the programs on your system with a suggestion.

Turning suggestions off doesn't reduce the machine's workload either since technically its always recording something.

It doesn't decrease your workload either since you don't have to delete them as they will delete themselves whenever space is needed.

So even if the suggestions aren't very accurate, you don't seem to gain anything by turning them off and there is always the possibility (however small) that they might catch something of interest to you.

So, beyond an obsessive compulsive need to control everything a Tivo does, do you need or want to turn them off? Anyone?

Posted by: devdogaz

With an upgraded HD on a S1, the NP list can get pretty long. Adding Suggestions to that only makes it longer and more cumbersone to scroll through. Also, I already record way more stuff than I could ever watch. I don't need the TiVo to give me more things.

Posted by: Fustanella

I use Redleg's method, with three-thumbs-down for most religious and all paid-programming or shopping titles we happen to come across. Kudos to the veteran-newbie thread for that bit of advice - it's worked great.

I have an upgraded HD on a S1. It's perky enough.

Posted by: Redleg

quote:
Originally posted by Eoghann
I've seen variations on this comment all over the place and its time I asked. Why turn off suggestions (yes I realise you've since turned them back on)?

I agree with your sentiment now, of course -- they are at worst harmless and at best quite valuable. In our case, it was all part of the process of learning how TiVo works. ("What's it recording? Did you ask it to record this?") This was on a Series 1, which didn't have grouping -- they're much less obtrusive in a folder by themselves on Series 2.

We've been fortunate with them on ours, as they occasionally catch shows we've meant to record but forgot (or recorded upstairs, when we wanted to record it downstairs too, saving us a transfer).

Posted by: bobsoron

quote:
Originally posted by Eoghann
I've seen variations on this comment all over the place and its time I asked. Why turn off suggestions (yes I realise you've since turned them back on)?

Because I'm not desperate for new things to watch. With only a few exceptions -- and getting fewer all the time (I'm down from a high of nearly 50 SPs to seven) -- I've got better things to do if I'm home. I always thought the suggested programs were stupid choices; the few I watched confirmed that -- enough of a sample for me -- and I see no need to let it run in the hopes that among the clutter it adds to Now Showing, after four years, it might actually find something worth watching.

Posted by: ccwf

quote:
Originally posted by devdogaz
With an upgraded HD on a S1, the NP list can get pretty long. Adding Suggestions to that only makes it longer and more cumbersone to scroll through.

The suggestions can be sorted to appear in a cluster at the very end of Now Playing.

Another reason some turn them off is because they watch a lot of TV that isn't through the TiVo (e.g., those watching HD). Suggestions can cause the channel to change and, when not watching through TiVo, one won't see the advance warning.

Posted by: dylanemcgregor

quote:
Originally posted by ccwf
The suggestions can be sorted to appear in a cluster at the very end of Now Playing.

Another reason some turn them off is because they watch a lot of TV that isn't through the TiVo (e.g., those watching HD). Suggestions can cause the channel to change and, when not watching through TiVo, one won't see the advance warning.

This was my parent's reasoning sort of. They've started leaving the TV on DMX (the digital music channels through the cable) while they were doing stuff around the house. With suggestions turned on it would end up changing the channels all the time.

I used to love TiVo's suggestions on my unit. I swear it was prescient, it seemed to always know to record "An intimate night with Britney Spears" the day I'd be having all the guys over. And the next morning there would be a great teen comedy to ease me through the hangover. All of that is gone now since I had to upgrade my hard drive after the original failed. I just hope that someday, through the luck of the gods, I might get that magical formula back again...:p

-Dylan