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Has this ever been mentioned before?
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Posted by: John494900

I know we've all asked for a "free space" indicator or something in that area but has anyone ever asked if TiVo could tell us how many hours:minutes of recording we already have on the TiVo?

Not how much we have left, but how much is recorded. I realize many people record different shows at different qualities, but have TiVo say:

You currently have 8 hours and 47 minutes of programs available, not including suggestions. (or including them if I want it to, default topic http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/wink.gif)

Can someone please tell me the downside to this because I don't see one. Again - this feature should have an on/off switch. If it'll confuse people(which I don't see how) then those people can keep it off. But for about 90% of all the people who want to know w/o counting in their head how many hours of programming they have, this would be awesome.

Thanks

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John,
A Proud and Happy TiVo: Owner, User, Informer, and Supporter!
Captain - TiVo Army!
2.0.1.z15 - Philips 30 hour
2.0.1.001 - Philips 30 hour

Posted by: pv

You would think this would be obvious, wouldn't you?

I've never understood why this feature doesn't exist either. On my upgraded unit it doesn't matter much, but back when I was living with 14 hours it would have been very helpful. PV

Posted by: TivoSanJose

Even on my DirecTivo, with 35 hours, I'm seeing that this will be useful. With having to take the unit "offline" to copy something to tape, 35 hours may fill up fast!

Larry

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Without Tivo, you might as well talk to the wife!

Posted by: Dan203

The problem with any kind of free space indicator is that it wouldn't work accurately on the DirecTiVos! Not only do they use VBR, so there is no way to know how much space a future recording will require, but they also have the option to turn DD5.1 on/off and that can have a huge impact on the space required.

This would also become a problem on the standalone units if/when they decide to turn on the SA units VBR capabilities.

Dan

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Moderator: TiVo Coffee House, Help Center & Happy Hour

Posted by: brianp6621

For the people who use all different qualities for different season pass, having a X amount of recorded time, isn't really meaningful as a space indicator(so if it isn't useful as a space indicator, what use is it?)

8 hours could mean 8 hours of best representing a nearly full 30hour unit or
8 hours could mean 8 hours of basic representing an only 1/3 full 30hour unit..
OR any wacky combination in between...

When I was using my SA TiVo I used every recording quality and NEVER knew which recordings were in what quality.

So I guess I am asking is, how does knowing only the amount of hours recorded help?? And it definately would confuse anyone who records in more than one quality....

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DSR6000R DirecTiVo hacked to 88 hours

Posted by: EdH

If you have suggestions turned on, free space is usually near zero. If an free/used space indicator were to be provided, it would have to deduct recorded suggestions from the used space and add them to the free space.

Come to think of it, maybe that's why TiVo's never done it.

Ed

Posted by: arjay

On the DirecTIVO's it'd need give just the elapsed time of the programming currently recorded. Since the total possible recording time varies the number displayed would just be a useful number, not a number which could be subtracted from another to give a time remaining figure.

Regular TIVO's would need to display a programs recorded time total in up to four sub-increments, one for each recording quality level being used. That would be a useful display and an even closer approximation to storage capacity than DirecTIVO's number.

[This message has been edited by arjay (edited 07-09-2001).]

Posted by: woheco

Well I say they just put X GB used X GB remaining. It's impossible to gauge how many HOURS of recording space are left. Just ignore suggestions and tell us how many gigabytes are available. And if Tivo thinks its users are a bunch of slack jawed morons, (which i'm starting to think it does) then at least say "you have X% free". So I can look at my 30 hour unit and if it says I have 10% free I can think to my apparently moronic self "hmmmm I better check the bottom of my list and save/until or watch anything that looks good.

It's just one of those things (30 second skip is the biggest) of which I can't for the life of me understand why it isn't in there. Tivo is like 90+% perfected, if only they would fix some of these little things, in backdoors if necessary.

Posted by: Dan203

quote:
Originally posted by woheco:
then at least say "you have X% free". So I can look at my 30 hour unit and if it says I have 10% free I can think to my apparently moronic self "hmmmm I better check the bottom of my list and save/until or watch anything that looks good.

And which quality level would that X% value be based on? They can't just say X% of the available drive space, because that would be no better then showing a GB value. Honestly, if you really think about it, there is no clean, Joe Sixpack friendly, way to implement a free space indicator.

Dan

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Moderator: TiVo Coffee House, Help Center & Happy Hour

Posted by: John494900

quote:
Originally posted by Oh2Smooth:
For the people who use all different qualities for different season pass, having a X amount of recorded time, isn't really meaningful as a space indicator(so if it isn't useful as a space indicator, what use is it?)

So I guess I am asking is, how does knowing only the amount of hours recorded help?? And it definately would confuse anyone who records in more than one quality....

But wouldn't you rather know than not know. Even if all your shows are in different quality, knowing you have 10 hours of shows is better than thinking you have 15, right? Obviously this feature would benefit the users who record most things in the same quality but it wouldn't hurt those who don't.

------------------
John,
A Proud and Happy TiVo: Owner, User, Informer, and Supporter!
Captain - TiVo Army!
2.0.1.z15 - Philips 30 hour
2.0.1.001 - Philips 30 hour

Posted by: NutMonkey

Screw Joe Sixpack! There, I've said it! I'm tired of doing without useful options because Joe Sixpack is supposedly an idiot and they might confuse him. Joe needs to get an internet connection, and read the freakin' forums!

I like the percentage idea. We're just looking for an estimate here of whether something's going to be deleted soon or not, I'm not going to be too upset if TiVo tells me I have 7 hours left and instead I only have 5.. I know Joe Sixpack might, but please see previous paragraph regarding Joe.

Posted by: craigkoh

While many of us "tech heads" think this would be a great idea, we will never see it because it will just confuse your grandma. It would clutter and confuse a clean and easy to use interface.

I bet the guys and gals in the UI department at Tivo put all kinds of things to the grandma test. Tivo is an excellent example of how you can take a computer and turn it into something that almost anyone could use. That will be the key to Tivo's success (ie: replayTV & UltimateTV are failing the grandma test).

If I had my own version of the Tivo software (2.1.craigkoh.lotsObackdoors.1b) it would have tons of useful info about what the Tivo is doing. But if you keep adding stuff to the interface you will make it harder to use for people who have a hard time with technology.

What I do think would be nice, is a back door for this info, or place it on the system info menu. I think if the Tivo doesn't already know this info, it would not be hard to figure and add into menu item somewhere, just not in now playing.

Craig

Posted by: craigkoh

quote:
Originally posted by NutMonkey:
Screw Joe Sixpack! There, I've said it! I'm tired of doing without useful options because Joe Sixpack is supposedly an idiot and they might confuse him. Joe needs to get an internet connection, and read the freakin' forums!

I like the percentage idea. We're just looking for an estimate here of whether something's going to be deleted soon or not, I'm not going to be too upset if TiVo tells me I have 7 hours left and instead I only have 5.. I know Joe Sixpack might, but please see previous paragraph regarding Joe.

Don't forget Joe Sixpack probably makes up 60% of the revenue for Tivo Inc.

You are starting to see people talk about Tivo on talk shows and in places that don't have anything to do with tech. Like it or not, Tivo will always have a basic, clean interface with very little extra information.

Craig

Posted by: arjay

quote:
Originally posted by NutMonkey:
Screw Joe Sixpack! There, I've said it! I'm tired of doing without useful options because Joe Sixpack is supposedly an idiot and they might confuse him. Joe needs to get an internet connection, and read the freakin' forums!

You're so smart you run the risk of screwing yourself.

TIVO has a concept behind what it does. The concept includes an operating methodology and a marketing plan. It's well thought out. It has chosen to not give time status indications, nor include the 30 sec. QS feature, and to be "Joe Sixpack" friendly. It has even made some hobbiest features available to the freaks and geeks set via backdoors.

TIVO' has its shot at making itself succesful. It's not a sure thing by any means. They're not going to listen to your ideas. If they did you'd have a manual record semi boat anchor probably sooner than later.

If you're really good, why not make your own recorder?

Why are adept computer people often so lacking in English and business skills?

[This message has been edited by arjay (edited 07-09-2001).]

Posted by: scooterboy

quote:
Originally posted by Dan203:
And which quality level would that X% value be based on?

Why does that matter? Joe Sixpack can read his car's gas gauge, right? He can see his tank is half-full, whether he's about to get 8 mpg while 4-wheeling, or 20 mpg on the highway...

quote:
They can't just say X% of the available drive space, because that would be no better then showing a GB value.

X% is better because in order to understand a GB value, Joe would have to know the GB capacity of his unit.

I think it's a great idea - display % used, % free, or both. Doesn't matter what size hard drive(s) you have since it's just a percentage of the whole.

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"If you're not passing anyone, get the hell out of the passing lane!"

Posted by: arjay

What's wrong with the concept (which TIVO is unlikely to adopt in any case) with listing an actual hrs. recorded number for each level of recording quality being used?

Unless you want to translate everything into the high number equivalents for basic quality 'cause big numbers look better when pitching the product, and a single number is easiest to deal with.

Posted by: Skylooker

quote:
Originally posted by woheco:
Well I say they just put X GB used X GB remaining. It's impossible to gauge how many HOURS of recording space are left. Just ignore suggestions and tell us how many gigabytes are available.

That's not a bad idea but such a reading should be placed on an out of the way screen so as not to confuse those who might not understand the concept.

quote:
And if Tivo thinks its users are a bunch of slack jawed morons, (which i'm starting to think it does) then at least say "you have X% free".

C'mon now! I think Tivo wants the system to be as intuitive and user friendly as possible. That's how they appeal to the masses. It makes sense to keep things as simple as can be. While some advanced features would be nice, they should probably be optional to some folks.

Oh, and as stated above, the "X% free" display might be a bit confusing. GB Free is probably the best way to go (IMHO).

------------------
Hacked Phillips HDR112
Software 2.x
108+ hours.

Posted by: nexus9

Is there anything wrong with having Tivo report how much time in hours is left?

X Best Quality Hours Left
(or) Y medium Quality Hours Left
(or) Z Basic Quality Hours Left

and so on.

Is there anything wrong with Tivo also reporting on What you have already recorded?

X Hours of Best Quality recorded
(and) Y Hours N minutes of Medium Quality recorded

Some of us have seen many incredibly good programs written in just 8 k. A routine that might take-up 10 times that would still be a drop in the 16 Meg bucket, and need not slow anything down. Nex

Posted by: Clalron

Bah.

Who says it can't be figured out?

Lets see Tivo knows:

- What you plan on recording
- What the current disk space available
- What it plans on recording based on suggestion
- It knows the length of each item it is going to record
- It knows the quality settings

It knows everything it needs to know to figure out the amount of storage left - AT THIS GIVEN MOMENT.

That is the key.. the calculation is only valid for at the time it is asked. The trick is that that by the time it does the database crawl and calculation the number is likely to be invalid already. I don't know about that, but it is a possibility.

There is no reason that we can't have this.

Frankly though the bigger need is one where more/better programming is provided to us on an alert basis. Since I end up watching Tivo recordings I miss new stuff because I didn't see the advertisment or schedule for it. The Tivo Magazine really should be much better. The wish list should send a message if it finds something -- not wait for me to visit the list.

Anyway.. love my Tivo.. but it is complete crap that it is not possible to figure out storage versus time left on the device to record.

Posted by: Michael Gwynn

Scooterboy made a good point: "Why does that matter? Joe Sixpack can read his car's gas gauge, right? He can see his tank is half-full, whether he's about to get 8 mpg while 4-wheeling, or 20 mpg on the highway..."

Except that you DO see a higher percentage of... well, for instance... pickups, with flashers blinking on the side of the road, with guys with mullet haircuts carrying gas cans toward them.

At least here in Texas, anyway.

So maybe Tivos do have to be dumbed down. Maybe Joe SP really couldn't figure it out.

Posted by: Ereth

Part of it may be technical (there's many a discussion here about the minimum amount of hard disk space Tivo can take and hour shows being deleted to make room for half hour recordings) and so it couldn't be accurate.

But I bet the truth is that the real problem is psychological. People would use it, incorrectly, and then complain about how their Tivo is never right (I can hear Howard Stern now). Lets say you had the % value, and you turn your Tivo on before going out for the evening and it says you have 10% free space. Being the proud owner of a 30 hour Tivo you do some quick math and figure you've got 3 hours remaining and you can let that 2 hour movie record without losing anything, so you go on out.
A few hours later you come home, the movie recorded but one of your other shows are gone. Why? Well, maybe you didn't record at BASIC quality but at medium or higher in which case a 2 hour movie takes more than 10% of the space. Or maybe Tivo had to allocate space in such a way that it had to free more space than a simple calculation would show. Or maybe it was just too close to full and Tivo freed some space because Linux systems, like Unix systems, don't work well with full filesystems.

But you don't care about any of that, you just know that Tivo told you there was enough space and yet when you came home, that piece-of-crap had deleted a show you REALLY wanted to see and it's just damned unreliable and nobody should buy one.

And how much of THAT can Tivo absorb? The feature that you want will make a very small percentage of Tivo customers a little happy and a much larger percentage very unhappy. No sane company would implement a feature that would have that end result.

Posted by: arjay

quote:
Originally posted by nexus9:
Is there anything wrong with having Tivo report how much time in hours is left?

X Best Quality Hours Left
(or) Y medium Quality Hours Left
(or) Z Basic Quality Hours Left

and so on.

Yes, there's something "wrong" in doing that. The number is only good for right now not necessarily 5 minutes from now when a new Suggestion may be recorded. TIVO has chosen wisely, IMHO, not to display such numbers either in time or percentages.

quote:

Is there anything wrong with Tivo also reporting on What you have already recorded?

X Hours of Best Quality recorded
(and) Y Hours N minutes of Medium Quality recorded

This approach would be much more reasonable for TIVO to take. They still may chose not to. But at least showing the number of hours already recorded doesn't give false illusions about what may happen in the future.

Ereth's post above is right on.

[This message has been edited by arjay (edited 07-10-2001).]

Posted by: BrettStah

A fuel gauge in a car is a bad analogy. Cars don't automatically burn fuel in the middle of the night because it was told that you like chocolate ice cream. But Tivos (via auto-record wishlists) will happily record a marathon of Tom Cruise movies that TBS may decide to show.

If your Tivo told you that you had 10% free space (assuming Basic quality on a 30 hour Tivo), does that mean that you can safely schedule it to record 3 hours of new shows without having anything deleted? Not necessarily. You have to check the To Do list to see when the Tivo will be using some or all of that 10% of space.

If my car's fuel gauge tells me I have a certain amount of fuel left, I know how far I can drive tomorrow without filling up. If my Tivo would show me that I have a certain amount of free space left, I would not know how much I can record tomorrow (without losing things) unless I also checked my To Do List.

PS There have been very long threads on this topic in the Suggestions forum... pie charts, graphs, etc.!

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BrettStah
Semper ubi
sub ubi

[This message has been edited by BrettStah (edited 07-10-2001).]

Posted by: F1 TiVoholic

quote:
Originally posted by craigkoh:
Don't forget Joe Sixpack probably makes up 60% of the revenue for Tivo Inc.

Anyone who doubts the reasoning behind appealing to Joe Sixpack should take a look at the success of NASCAR...

Posted by: malore

quote:
Originally posted by BrettStah:
A fuel gauge in a car is a bad analogy. Cars don't automatically burn fuel in the middle of the night because it was told that you like chocolate ice cream. But Tivos (via auto-record wishlists) will happily record a marathon of Tom Cruise movies that TBS may decide to show.

The fuel gauge is a great analogy. I was thinking of it myself even before reading it from someone else. TiVo has a place that shows what programs are planned to be recorded. So the Tom Cruise movie marathon doesn't have to catch you by surprise. I wouldn't look at my fuel gauge without taking the trip length into consideration.

Posted by: woheco

quote:
Originally posted by Dan203:
And which quality level would that X% value be based on? They can't just say X% of the available drive space, because that would be no better then showing a GB value.

It doesn't matter what quality your recording at, the percentage would be based on space used/available.

quote:
Originally posted by NutMonkey:
Screw Joe Sixpack! There, I've said it! I'm tired of doing without useful options because Joe Sixpack is supposedly an idiot and they might confuse him. Joe needs to get an internet connection, and read the freakin' forums!
[/B]

Haha right on

quote:
Originally posted by scooterboy:
Why does that matter? Joe Sixpack can read his car's gas gauge, right? He can see his tank is half-full, whether he's about to get 8 mpg while 4-wheeling, or 20 mpg on the highway...
[/B]

Good example, people got by with vcrs even though tapes were of different length and there were 3 recording qualities.

Now don't tell me this is confusing,
http://www.avsforum.com/ubbtivo/image_uploads/tivospace.jpg

Sorry I only had a few minutes to make this. It had to be shrunk down to fit into the image but the red bar says 58% and indicates your recordings, while the grey portion of the bar represents suggestions.

Now go find this "joe sixpack" and ask him what he thinks.

Posted by: 9thTee

woheco: Looks good to me.

It amazes me that when this topic comes up that you get people trying to explain why you don't want this. Technically it is easy to figure. If stupid people can't handle it, put it on a hard to reach screen but for heavens sake, show the amount of space remaining. Even batteries now days have a little gauge on them that shows how much power is remaining.

Mark

Posted by: Otto

I have no problem with a gauge of some sort, but I'd rather tackle the issue head on and ask this... What information does this impart to you that will help you? How will it help you? What benefit does Joe Sixpack derive from such a gauge?

Really, all the answers I've seen thus far are something along the lines of "so I know when shows will be deleted automatically" to which I have to answer "it's a computer in there, it is perfectly capable of displaying an exact time that the show will be deleted, why not make it possible for you get the actual info you are looking for directly instead?"

I just fail to see the benefit of a fuel gauge on the thing when it's possible to much more directly address whatever information such a gauge would indirectly impart to you.

------------------
Everything I say is my opinion and not necessarily a statement of fact. Deal with it.
Otto, Zen TiVo Master - Moderator - AVS Tivo Forums - Tivo Underground, Tivo Coffee House
"The way of the portable computer user is as a stony path strewn with plugs and sockets, all the wrong size..." -- Terry Pratchett

Posted by: pv

[QUOTE]Originally posted by woheco:
Now don't tell me this is confusing

It isn't (though if I was going to do this, I'd probably run a green bar across the bottom, exactly like the play status bar, just for consistency's sake), but there were a lot of good points made here.

I can see how someone might be bothered if the "fuel gauge" read full (hey, that's confusing already - does a full bar mean you have lots of free space, or none?), and they know one of their shows is coming up. Maybe you need a multi-colored bar. Red for all your actual recordings, green for additional space taken up by suggestions, and blank for truly free space. PV

Posted by: BrettStah

quote:
Originally posted by malore:
The fuel gauge is a great analogy. I was thinking of it myself even before reading it from someone else. TiVo has a place that shows what programs are planned to be recorded. So the Tom Cruise movie marathon doesn't have to catch you by surprise. I wouldn't look at my fuel gauge without taking the trip length into consideration.

But your car doesn't autmatically go on trips without someone explicitly driving it. Tivos can and commonly do record things on its own. I agree that many people, if given a free space indicator, could successfully use it. But in my opinion, it doesn't give the information that most people really want. Namely, "When will the Tivo start to delete stuff?" Sure, we can take the free space, go into the To Do List, and figure out when the free space will reach zero. But I'd rather have the Tivo do it.

------------------
BrettStah
Semper ubi
sub ubi

Posted by: NutMonkey

quote:
But you don't care about any of that, you just know that Tivo told you there was enough space and yet
when you came home, that piece-of-crap had deleted a show you REALLY wanted to see and it's just
damned unreliable and nobody should buy one.

Don't you think this happens now? I know I personally have come home, finally sat down to watch a program I hadn't had time to watch, and found that it had been deleted because I didn't realize the TiVo was almost full. Usually I judge by the size of the list so if it ends up recording a bunch of movies instead of TV shows it often sneaks up on me.. If there was a guage right there on the playlist that said "Estimated space taken: 90%" then I would know that I need to watch or SUID the programs at the bottom of the list. Joe told me he has this problem all the time also.

quote:
And how much of THAT can Tivo absorb? The feature that you want will make a very small percentage of
Tivo customers a little happy and a much larger percentage very unhappy. No sane company would
implement a feature that would have that end result.

I think you accidently wrote that backwards. It's a feature that would make 90% of the customers happy and would potentially annoy a tiny percentage. You're talking about a very contrived example where someone would see a guage that reads 90%, would calculate that he has 3 hours left of recording space, and either not take recording quality into account or not realize that there was a program to be recorded in front of it or not realize that this is a rough estimate, then think that it's ok to not watch the program at the end of his list, and then blame TiVo for his mistakes when the program gets deleted before he can watch it. I think the case I outlined above is probably causing much more Tivo-annoyance than this one would.

Also, anyone have any hard data on accuracy? If the TiVo said "There's 5.3 hours of recording space left at basic quality" what do you think the margin of error would be? If it currently had exactly 10 hours at basic quality and 50% of the mfs partition was taken up, would the time left be 10 hours, give or take 1 hour? Or give or take 10 minutes? If it keeps a certain amount of the filesystem free, couldn't this be taken into account?

Posted by: NutMonkey

quote:
While many of us "tech heads" think this would be a great idea, we will never see it because it will just
confuse your grandma. It would clutter and confuse a clean and easy to use interface.

I don't understand why we can't have it both ways. Look at Mac OS X. Grandma can use it, and there's a completely optional Unix core for people that want it. My previous suggestion was putting a tivo.conf file that you would have to get to a shell prompt to edit. However, I think that would be too difficult for people who have never used UNIX.

New suggestion: How about putting in some nice options that you can only enable by going to the TiVo website (like the ReplayTV thingy) and setting up. The TiVo would then be configured during the next dial-in. And it would pop up a screen saying you can't call support if you change them and give dire warnings about how you can make your TiVo unusable if you don't know what you're doing and whatnot.. And have an option to have the default configuration downloaded on the next call. So you could go to the website and change GasGauge=false to GasGauge=true for your TiVo service number..

Posted by: Ereth

Nutmonkey,
I didn't write it backwards. I meant it the way I said it. I think it would annoy most Tivo owners, including you, eventually, because it would never be right (ok, possibly it might be right accidentally sometime, like a broken clock).
The contrived scenario is the one you have to invent to make it useful. The reality is that you wouldn't check it every half hour and so it would be changing constantly without your knowledge.
Most likely usage: Someone checks it before going to bed and doesn't check it again until they get home from work the following evening. That's 16-18 hours between the time they check it and the time they want to do something and that's plenty of time for Tivo to have expired multiple shows and recorded multiple suggestions.
In fact, because any sort of gauge doesn't take into account the suggestions and To Do list, it's a misleading value. It will give you a false sense of security. Look at how quick people are to come here and complain about the slightest thing ("My Tivo broke out of warranty", "Tivo recorded a show as a suggestion and didn't get part 2", Tivo records every episode of <name of show>, even with First Run Only selected", "I didn't pay my bill and they turned my service off!","How do we join those class action lawsuits?") Give someone a REASON to believe their show will be there and they will complain like crazy when it isn't. NOW when your show is gone you realize you didn't plan ahead and it's YOUR fault. If you put a gauge there, suddenly its TIVOs fault.

To make a truly accurate gauge would require a complex timeline scale, as discussed before, showing the space remaining as time progresses ("You have 30% free space at 10 PM, 20% Free Space at 11 PM, 10% Free Space at 12 AM, 0% Free Space at 1 AM, 20% Free Space at 2 AM, 0% Free Space at 3 AM", etc, as shows are recorded and erased).

We live in a country where people complain that it's the manufacturer of the coffees fault if they get burned. Can openers come with warnings and directions. Plastic Bags have warnings not to let your children play with them. Halloween Costumes have warnings that the cape does not allow you to fly, for heavens sake! Why should Tivo give you a weapon to use against them? All it would do is give you one more reason to complain ("Tivo said I had enough space so I recorded a show and my wife is divorcing me because it deleted her stories to do it!")

Who needs the headache?

Posted by: woheco

Tivo could put the space indicator in a beta and see what kind of feedback they get. It's kind of a sissy approach but if that's what it takes throw it in an upcoming beta.

Again though theres no reason this couldn't be a backdoor at the very least (I like NutMonkey's suggestion as well). I can't help but smile about all this debate over whether this simple little bar will confuse people.

Posted by: Dan203

OK let me explain to you the #1 reason why I think TiVo has not implemented this feature, and never will... VBR!

VBR is already in use on the DirecTiVos, and is a possible future feature on standalone units, and with VBR it is absolutely impossible to know how much space a future recording will require. Sure they could use worst case or average bitrates, but then it goes from an accurate gauge of remaining space to a speculative guess, and in my opinion that completely negates the point of having a free space indicator in the first place. Now you're probably thinking, OK then just tell me how much is already recorded and I'll figure it out! OK, but what use is that information if you don't know how much your unit can hold? With VBR this feature will, in most cases, result in more negatives (i.e. when it guesses wrong) then positives.

Now you're saying... But standalone TiVos don't use VBR yet! The problem is that they could! If TiVo adds a free space indicator now, and then removes it later because it doesn't work with VBR, think of how many pissed off customer they would have calling CS.

Now all that being said... I have absolutely no idea what TiVo has planned for future software releases. For all I know they've given up on VBR and decided to develop the free space indicator instead. Or maybe they've got better ideas on what to spend their development dollars on. Who knows?

Dan

------------------
Moderator: TiVo Coffee House, Help Center & Happy Hour

[This message has been edited by Dan203 (edited 07-10-2001).]

Posted by: martinp13

quote:
Originally posted by woheco:
Now don't tell me this is confusing,
http://www.avsforum.com/ubbtivo/image_uploads/tivospace.jpg

Now go find this "joe sixpack" and ask him what he thinks.

Joe Sixpack thinks "Hot damn... that lil' TiVo recorded Sex in the City! Let's watch it!" http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

------------------
> Martin
Plain Philips 30 TiVo
"YOU... SHOULD... HAVE... BOUGHT... A... SQUIRREL"

Posted by: brianp6621

quote:
Originally posted by woheco:

Now don't tell me this is confusing,
http://www.avsforum.com/ubbtivo/image_uploads/tivospace.jpg

It is confusing to me because what is Sex IN the city? The series is sex and the city so why does your screen shot show sex IN the city??

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DSR6000R DirecTiVo hacked to 88 hours

Posted by: theVidiot

In my case, my Tivo is always full. What might be interesting is letting you know how many hours there are in "!" programs. These are programs "on the bubble" and represent "free space" as they can get clobbered at any time.

I for one can't really see how this type of info would be useful. What would you do if you knew that there were 3 hours free? Tivo seems to manage it's space rather well, and although interesting, I, for one, don't see the real value added here.

Posted by: Joe Sixpak

quote:
Originally posted by martinp13:

Originally posted by woheco:
]Now don't tell me this is confusing,
http://www.avsforum.com/ubbtivo/image_uploads/tivospace.jpg

Now go find this "joe sixpack" and ask him what he thinks.

Joe Sixpack thinks "Hot damn... that lil' TiVo recorded Sex in the City! Let's watch it!" http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

Damn man I coudnt said it any better!

Posted by: wrakoski

Well, I'm a technodweeb like a lot of other people here. I sure would like to see a free space indicator of some kind. However, when I really think about what I would/could do with the information, I realize that it wouldn't really benefit the overall operation of my Tivo.

While I realize that it might be helpful, with the VBR stuff you can't be exact. If you can't be exact, why even try?

I think the logic behind no indicator is that it probably would cause more problems than it would solve. I don't think there is a single person that has a Tivo/DirecTivo that would give it up because it doesn't have a free space indicator. However, how many of us would call or post here if the indicator misled us about recording a show or movie? Probably a lot.

It's all about adding value where necessary. Come on, they gave us great features to manage our space, what more do you want?

Warren

Posted by: F1 TiVoholic

quote:
Originally posted by wrakoski:
Come on, they gave us great features to manage our space, what more do you want?

That's how I see it.

Posted by: NutMonkey

quote:
I didn't write it backwards. I meant it the way I said it. I think it would annoy most Tivo owners, including
you, eventually, because it would never be right (ok, possibly it might be right accidentally sometime, like a
broken clock).

A lot of people are assuming that the gauge would be wildly innaccurate, but I haven't seen any evidence to support this. How do you know that if the gauge reads 90% and you have a 30 hour TiVo, that you definitely can't get anywhere close to 3 hours of recording time before it deletes a program? What evidence do you have to support the idea that in every conceivable way of implementing the gauge, it would never be right (or only right coincedentally)?

My theorem (NutMonkey's theorem of TiVo-annoyance):
X < Y
where:
X = number of people that would be annoyed by the TiVo deleting a program they thought it was going to keep because of calculations they made based on the gauge
Y = number of people currently annoyed when the TiVo deletes programs and they didn't know it was full because there's no gauge.

This assumes the gauge would be fairly accurate (again I haven't seen any reason why it wouldn't be), let's say 10% error. Meaning that the TiVo might delete programs if the gauge reads more than 90% (including the program you just recorded). Obviously if the TiVo said 20% and deleted programs that would cause more annoyance.

Posted by: smak

The question to use a chess analogy is IS TIVO THINKING 3 MOVES AHEAD. I think it does.

What I mean is, does Tivo think to itself, it's 9 o clock and i have no space for West Wing, I must delete the oldest program.

I don't think that's how it works. I think based on the to-do list that it currently has, for whatever guide data date it's through, it knows what needs to be done for the entire to-do list period. That's why you can have nothing on your hard drive, and try to add something a week from now and it'll tell you it can't because of space limitations. It's talking about the limitations at that time, not now!

That's why a time used, or a time free status isn't useful, but knowing what will be deleted and when is.

Even if the free time indicator takes into account all the recording levels, it still only can give you basic knowledge. There's a big difference in a machine that has 20 hours of space that will record 2 hours of shows in the next 2 days, and a machine with 20 hours that will record 15 hours of shows in the next 2 days.

I think the Tivo knows when everything in Now Playing will be deleted (or at least the expired stuff), and should rightfully tell us when.

The next shows to be deleted will be:

Friends at 9:00 am on Saturday 7/14/01 due to ABC Golf Tournament.
ESPN Sportcenter at 10:30 am on Saturday 7/14/01 due to ABC Golf tournament.

The reason people clamor for the free space or how much spaced indicators is to know whether they need to delete shows, watch shows, or give extra time to shows.

I know if i get home and i see 10 suggestions on my box, i know i can watch a DVD, but if all suggestions are gone, I know i need to do some purging.

If i could look someplace and see what show was going to be deleted next and when, that would tell me what i need to know.

-smak-

Posted by: arjay

quote:
Originally posted by woheco:

Now don't tell me this is confusing,
http://www.avsforum.com/ubbtivo/image_uploads/tivospace.jpg

Sorry I only had a few minutes to make this. It had to be shrunk down to fit into the image but the red bar says 58% and indicates your recordings, while the grey portion of the bar represents suggestions.

It's so simple looking, true. But it only gives useful information for the time it's on the screen. If anything changes (as is the norm with TIVO) it's wrong and thus misleading. There's no simple way out of that conundrum. TIVO is automated to the point where a capacity gauge isn't appropriate for it. It'd make perfect sense for a digital recorder without the TIVO service which is used for manual recording.

TIVO is a clever package. Its development team seems to be guided by an overall concept which is very true to itself. It functions extremely well operationally within the limits of the concept. It's unlike any other video disc recorder currently out there. To maximize its usefullness it does require that you buy into its overall concept. That's not a bad thing.

Posted by: arjay

This topic is one of the great all time TIVO debates. Here is one of the most extensive of the discussions about this issue. There are many more.

Truly space/time issues reach almost Einsteinian proportions in disussions of the relative importance of various considerations.

[This message has been edited by arjay (edited 07-10-2001).]

Posted by: Dan203

quote:
Originally posted by Ereth:
Ok, we know, from the Underground, that the MFS partition is used in such a way that Tivo cannot grab a small chunk. The smallest amount it can take is, I believe, a gigabyte. Not quite an hour. What does that mean? Well, it means that half-hour shows are the most wasteful of space, for one thing. If you fill your Tivo with half-hour sitcoms, you will run out of space and have things deleted before someone who records only 2 hour movies.

That is so NOT true!!!! I've run numerous space tests over the last year, and I can tell you for a fact that it does not matter if you have one 30 hour recording, thirty one hour recordings or sixty 30 minute recordings, the unit still holds the same amount. Hell there was one time I had my 14 hour unit full of 5 and 10 minute manual recordings.(in High)

Dan

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Moderator: TiVo Coffee House, Help Center & Happy Hour

Posted by: Ereth

My apologies then, I must've misread something. I'll edit the original post.

Posted by: woheco

Using a percentage means that it does not matter if you record in High, Basic, CBR, or VBR. It quite simply checks and sees that there are 20 gigs used of a 30 gig unit. Then displays a little bar that says 66%. That's the whole reason a percentage system is immune to recording quality (which was the old debate of why a free space indicator couldn't be done) and now people like to mention VBR, which might not even exist (though I do hope it does).

Again though just try it out in a beta and see what people think. I would even recommend another solution that while not as good, could be usefull. They could simply add another Icon instead of just the yellow !, Tivo could add a red circle or something that means this show will be deleted within say, 3 hours.

Also this is a little off topic but am I the only one that would like to see like a checkmark or something over in the empty space to the right side of the screen after you've watched something?

Posted by: Dan203

quote:
Originally posted by woheco:
Using a percentage means that it does not matter if you record in High, Basic, CBR, or VBR. It quite simply checks and sees that there are 20 gigs used of a 30 gig unit. Then displays a little bar that says 66%. That's the whole reason a percentage system is immune to recording quality (which was the old debate of why a free space indicator couldn't be done) and now people like to mention VBR, which might not even exist (though I do hope it does).

OK, but what good would that do? Say this meter says your drive is 90% full, what does that tell you? Knowing the bitrates I can tell you that if it's a 30 hour unit it will easily hold another 3+ hours of Basic, but will not even hold one hour of Best without deleting something! And if I didn't know that, then it would tell me absolutely nothing!

As for the comment on VBR it does exist! It's in use right now on the DirecTiVo units! And since TiVo develops both version of software from the same basic codebase, so any large feature like this has to work on both units or not at all.

Dan

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Moderator: TiVo Coffee House, Help Center & Happy Hour

Posted by: NutMonkey

quote:
OK, but what good would that do?

What harm would it do? Obviously a lot of people want it. I understand that there are some people convinced that it would be useless, but I don't understand why people are so against putting this feature in for people who want it. I don't personally find suggestions useful but I'm not for taking them out..

Here's a use for it. I take a look at the "Now Playing" screen in the morning before I go to work, and see that my TiVo is 90% full. I then go and delete those repeats of Sports Night that I had recorded but have already seen so that the movie I haven't gotten around to watching at the bottom of the list doesn't get deleted. Or it says 20% full and I don't do anything so I can watch those repeats if I have the time and nothing else to watch. Because I know from lots of previous experience that the percentage only goes up 20 points at most while I'm at work. This scenario works for VBR recording also. Because all I want is an estimate. And if I forget that I had set the TiVo up to record the Clint Eastwood marathon on TBS during the day and my movie gets deleted, I'm going to be upset with myself for forgetting and not TiVo for giving me a misleading gauge. Also, see my theorem in a previous post.

Posted by: Otto

Ereth: Actually, the smallest space unit that it grabs from MFS is a megabyte, I believe. I'm working from memory here..

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Everything I say is my opinion and not necessarily a statement of fact. Deal with it.
Otto, Zen TiVo Master - Moderator - AVS Tivo Forums - Tivo Underground, Tivo Coffee House
"The way of the portable computer user is as a stony path strewn with plugs and sockets, all the wrong size..." -- Terry Pratchett

Posted by: Otto

Here's my suggestion: I'd like every show to display a time that it will be deleted (*really deleted*, not just expired) if nothing changes (i.e. you don't change anything in the ToDo list, you don't manually record anything, you don't delete anything, etc). If/when you make changes, that number would change as well. It's not hard to calcuate this number on the fly: You take the current contents of Now Playing, you start going forwards in time adding the contents of the todo list, once you have the total capacity full with the show you are calculating for as the oldest show, the next recording will delete it. That's the time it goes bye-bye.

That seems like a hell of a lot more useful number than a free space indicator, and it imparts the same info, with much more accuracy.

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Everything I say is my opinion and not necessarily a statement of fact. Deal with it.
Otto, Zen TiVo Master - Moderator - AVS Tivo Forums - Tivo Underground, Tivo Coffee House
"The way of the portable computer user is as a stony path strewn with plugs and sockets, all the wrong size..." -- Terry Pratchett

Posted by: loubob57

I keep asking what action do you take when the free space is running low? Do you delete shows you don't want to watch, quickly watch a bunch of shows so you can delete them, roll some shows off to tape to save them? Some of these things you should be doing all along.

If you bother to look at the Now Playing list every once-in-a-while you can see if there are a lot of yellow or exclamation icons. If you absolutely don't want to miss one of those then SUID it! If there are a bunch of suggestion icons in the list, you have lots of "free" space. If there aren't any suggestions (and you didn't turn them off), maybe it is getting full.

But there are some folks that end up setting everything to SUID because they don't want TiVo to delete any of it. If you do this and don't get around to watching and deleting this stuff, DUH - TiVo's eventually gonna run out of space and quit recording!

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Philips 30 Hour TiVo Running 2.0.1

Posted by: Dan203

quote:
Originally posted by NutMonkey:
Here's a use for it. I take a look at the "Now Playing" screen in the morning before I go to work, and see that my TiVo is 90% full. I then go and delete those repeats of Sports Night that I had recorded but have already seen so that the movie I haven't gotten around to watching at the bottom of the list doesn't get deleted.

If you're worried that movie is going to be deleted extend it! Honestly I don't know why people are so concerned about knowing when expired recordings are going to get deleted, when TiVo offers a very simple way to prevent it. If there is not enough space for you to extend it the software will tell you that it's going to have to delete something else. If you don't like what it wants to delete then delete something yourself. In fact 2.0.1 even has a way to shorten the life span of new recordings, so if you're unsure if something is going to make it, but don't want to delete something just in case, simply shorten it's expiration date instead and if the space is needed it will be deleted first.

As for why I'm against it... I think it's a waste of development resources. I've seen a lot more useful suggestions (i.e. Boolean Wish Lists, Save multiple to VCR, etc..) that, even though I might not personally use them, I think would be a much better use of TiVo's development time.

Dan

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Moderator: TiVo Coffee House, Help Center & Happy Hour

Posted by: Dan203

quote:
Originally posted by Otto:
Here's my suggestion: I'd like every show to display a time that it will be deleted (*really deleted*, not just expired) if nothing changes (i.e. you don't change anything in the ToDo list, you don't manually record anything, you don't delete anything, etc). If/when you make changes, that number would change as well. It's not hard to calcuate this number on the fly: You take the current contents of Now Playing, you start going forwards in time adding the contents of the todo list, once you have the total capacity full with the show you are calculating for as the oldest show, the next recording will delete it. That's the time it goes bye-bye.

You don't think this would be to taxing for the system? All I can think about when I hear this suggestion is how long it takes to exit the Season Pass Manager. It seems to me that figuring out the exact date and time every single recording in the To Do list is going to be deleted, every time something is added to the To Do list, a recording is extended, a Season pass is added, a recording is cut short by a cable outage, a user changes the quality of a To Do list item, etc... would be very hard on the system and would cause either serious delays throughout the UI or recording glitches (read: shuttering). But then again maybe it's not as complex as I think.

Dan

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Moderator: TiVo Coffee House, Help Center & Happy Hour

Posted by: Ereth

quote:
Originally posted by Otto:
Ereth: Actually, the smallest space unit that it grabs from MFS is a megabyte, I believe. I'm working from memory here..

Thanks, Otto. My own memory betrayed me then, but only by a LOT! http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif

My argument was flawed, so I removed it. I appreciate the correction (hey, I can admit when I'm wrong!)

Posted by: malore

quote:
Originally posted by Dan203:
If you're worried that movie is going to be deleted extend it! Honestly I don't know why people are so concerned about knowing when expired recordings are going to get deleted, when TiVo offers a very simple way to prevent it. ...

Although TiVo has finally given us close to one click delete, I really would like to be able to turn off the worthless message boxes that tell me something has been done and to press select. Since the program is removed from the Now Showing it's pretty obvious it has been deleted, I don't need a message saying it has, if it offered to undo than maybe there would be some point. However, the process to extend a program is much longer. You first have to look at the recorded program info which takes time to bring up, then add one or more days and press select and then wait some more while TiVo figures out if it can do this without needing to delete something else earlier. Then I'm pretty sure it shows another worthless message box saying the expiration time has been changed. Doing this for several shows is tedious. So having either a gauge or as Otto suggested the exact time a program will be deleted would help me to know if I have to go through all the trouble of extending the expiration time at all.

[This message has been edited by malore (edited 07-11-2001).]

Posted by: arjay

quote:
Originally posted by loubob57:
...what action do you take when the free space is running low? Do you delete shows you don't want to watch, quickly watch a bunch of shows so you can delete them, roll some shows off to tape to save them? Some of these things you should be doing all along.

Damn, I thought you were supposed to train your TIVO with the "thumbs" buttons; it sounds like it's training you? I don't wanna' work so hard.

(That's one of the reasons why I don't timeshift everything; one natural way of dealing with scheduling conflicts and recording capacity problems is to miss the show altogether when it first airs and not worry about it and go on to somethin' else.)

I'm kinda' low tech though I appreciate hi-tech if it does the work I want done without complicating my life!

Posted by: arjay

quote:
Originally posted by Dan203:
I've seen a lot more useful suggestions (i.e. Boolean Wish Lists....)

The dictionary definition of boolean logic doesn't help me much; from a practical user's standpoint what would Boolean Wishlists provide?

Posted by: Dan203

quote:
Originally posted by arjay:
Damn, I thought you were supposed to train your TIVO with the "thumbs" buttons; it sounds like it's training you? I don't wanna' work so hard.

Some people seem to make it more complicated then it has to be! Personally if I want to make sure a show I know I want to watch doesn't get deleted I extend it by a few extra days. After that if it expires and is deleted then obviously I didn't want to watch it that bad, and it's no great loss.

Dan

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Moderator: TiVo Coffee House, Help Center & Happy Hour

Posted by: Bilbrey

quote:
Originally posted by Otto:
I have no problem with a gauge of some sort, but I'd rather tackle the issue head on and ask this... What information does this impart to you that will help you? How will it help you? What benefit does Joe Sixpack derive from such a gauge?

Actually, my wife would like a gauge for one simple reason... To motivate her to make time to sit down and watch some shows.

She does not have suggestions turned on, so the only programs she watches are ones she has specifically asked for. And she is busy with school activities with the kids, Girl Scouts, etc. and would like to know how full TiVo is getting so she knows to sit down, watch a few favorite shows, delete them, and get back on with life...

http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif
Brett

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Experience is the one thing you get, right after you need it.

Posted by: Dan203

quote:
Originally posted by arjay:
The dictionary definition of boolean logic doesn't help me much; from a practical user's standpoint what would Boolean Wishlists provide?

Boolean is the ability to add AND, OR & NOT statements. So for example you wanted to make a Wish List for Adam Sandler, but didn't want every single syndicated episode of SNL he was in then you could do..

"ADAM SANDLER" NOT "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE"

and it would pick up any movie, talk show, etc.. he was in without picking up 10 episodes of SNL a day.http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif

Dan

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Moderator: TiVo Coffee House, Help Center & Happy Hour

Posted by: arjay

quote:
Originally posted by Bilbrey:
Actually, my wife would like a gauge for one simple reason... To motivate her to make time to sit down and watch some shows.

Aha, the infamous PVR backend problem! Making time to watch the recorded shows. That's my problem with timeshifting; one that didn't exist before PVRs or VCRs.

There's over a hundred channels all showing scads of shows continually. (That wan't true when VCRs first came out.) A lot of 'em are interesting; some more than others. Since there's really not enough time to watch all the most interesting ones it's just as easy to watch the most interesting one that's on right now and let the rest go.

Of course there are shows that are really special, and those are worth TIVOshifting. But a lotta' stuff is interesting but not special.
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Thanks for your explanation of Boolean Wishlists, Dan.

[This message has been edited by arjay (edited 07-11-2001).]

Posted by: BrettStah

quote:
Originally posted by Bilbrey:
Actually, my wife would like a gauge for one simple reason... To motivate her to make time to sit down and watch some shows.

She does not have suggestions turned on, so the only programs she watches are ones she has specifically asked for. And she is busy with school activities with the kids, Girl Scouts, etc. and would like to know how full TiVo is getting so she knows to sit down, watch a few favorite shows, delete them, and get back on with life...

http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif
Brett

I think that if she could quickly see that her oldest show is scheduled to be deleted in 4 hours, she would get enough motivation...

And of course, with the current software, I'm sure you've told her that if she turns on suggestions, and waits a week or so, she can roughly gauge how much room is left by looking at how many suggestions are available in Now Playing. She doesn't have to ever watch any suggestion that is recorded.

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BrettStah
Semper ubi
sub ubi

Posted by: Bilbrey

BrettStah,

Always wear under wear???

Tell me that can't be right. http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif

Brett

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Experience is the one thing you get, right after you need it.

Posted by: NutMonkey

quote:
Boolean is the ability to add AND, OR & NOT statements. So for example you wanted to make a Wish List for Adam Sandler, but didn't want every single syndicated episode of SNL he was in then you could do..

"ADAM SANDLER" NOT "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE"

Bah! This is a useless feature! You can just have it record all Adam Sandler and then delete the SNL yourself. I don't want TiVo wasting development time on this!

Actually, that'd be cool, I'm just trying to make a point about how annoying that is.. http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif

Posted by: NutMonkey

quote:
Here's my suggestion: I'd like every show to display a time that it will be deleted (*really deleted*, not just expired) if nothing changes (i.e. you don't change anything in the ToDo list, you don't manually record anything, you don't delete anything, etc). If/when you make changes, that number would change as well. It's not hard to calcuate this number on the fly: You take the current contents of Now Playing, you start going forwards in time adding the contents of the todo list, once you have the total capacity full with the show you are calculating for as the oldest show, the next recording will delete it. That's the time it goes bye-bye.

This would be cool. My only question would be how often does the todo list change at the last minute? For example, how often would the TiVo show that a program was going to be deleted tomorrow at 5:00pm, and then downloads guide data, finds a program to record that day and deletes the program that was going to be deleted the next day? My guess would be rarely but it seems like certain channels especially seem to not give accurate guide data too much in advance. Like you have a wishlist for the Florida Gators (as well you should since they are the greatest college football team) and sports schedules are often decided at the last minute it seems..

Posted by: BrettStah

quote:
Originally posted by Bilbrey:

BrettStah,

Always wear under wear???

Tell me that can't be right. http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif

Brett

You're right! The same phrase is on one of my T-Shirts. My favorite shirt says, "STOP PLATE TECTONICS". I love when someone (usually a checkout person at Home Depot or Walmart) looks at it, and a quizzical look appears on their face. If they ask me to explain, I say something like this: "You know how earthquakes happen? Two different section of the Earth's crust rubbing together? Well, I'm against that."

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BrettStah
Semper ubi
sub ubi

Posted by: BrettStah

quote:
Originally posted by NutMonkey:
This would be cool. My only question would be how often does the todo list change at the last minute? For example, how often would the TiVo show that a program was going to be deleted tomorrow at 5:00pm, and then downloads guide data, finds a program to record that day and deletes the program that was going to be deleted the next day? My guess would be rarely but it seems like certain channels especially seem to not give accurate guide data too much in advance. Like you have a wishlist for the Florida Gators (as well you should since they are the greatest college football team) and sports schedules are often decided at the last minute it seems..

I would guess that the schedule doesn't change much at the last minute. But if it did, it would throw any type of gauge off.

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BrettStah
Semper ubi
sub ubi

[This message has been edited by BrettStah (edited 07-12-2001).]

Posted by: arjay

under wear???

Over there!

Wood
Bob
Mass

Figure it out. http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/wink.gif

Bob Underwood
Andover, Mass.

[This message has been edited by arjay (edited 07-12-2001).]

Posted by: Dan203

quote:
Originally posted by NutMonkey:
Bah! This is a useless feature!

Actually I agree! I never use Wish Lists, so I would probably never use this. However I think it would be much more useful to most people then a meter that displays available hard drive space in a % value that means absolutely nothing in the scheme of the four available recording qualities.

That being said I got an interesting idea from Samsara yesterday. He suggested that TiVo put a small variable in the program description screen, over by the run time, listing the GB value of that recording. With that and a variable in the System Information screen listing the units record time in GB (excluding the buffer, reserve space, software, etc...) an advanced user could easily figure out how much space they have left on their unit, while Grandma is none the wiser and TiVo doesn't have to spend weeks developing a UI for a useless meter.http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif

Dan

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Moderator: TiVo Coffee House, Help Center & Happy Hour

Posted by: smak

quote:
Originally posted by Dan203:
You don't think this would be to taxing for the system? All I can think about when I hear this suggestion is how long it takes to exit the Season Pass Manager. It seems to me that figuring out the exact date and time every single recording in the To Do list is going to be deleted, every time something is added to the To Do list, a recording is extended, a Season pass is added, a recording is cut short by a cable outage, a user changes the quality of a To Do list item, etc... would be very hard on the system and would cause either serious delays throughout the UI or recording glitches (read: shuttering). But then again maybe it's not as complex as I think.

Dan

I actually don't think it's taxing at all. Everytime i go to schedule a recording, Tivo is figuring out if there will be enough space to record it at that time, or whether it needs to expire things early. I think Tivo knows when everything will be deleted, it just doesn't show it anywhere.

I still say that the reason people want a free time indicator is that they want to know what they need to do. Do they need to watch stuff, delete stuff, extend the time of stuff, do nothing or what. I say that knowing that something i don't want to delete will delete in an hour, or will delete in 30 hours would be short and to the point of what i want to know.

-smak-

Posted by: Michael Gwynn

Maybe it's just us.

Maybe we're all that type of personality that has to control everything.

Maybe Joe Sixpack is just fine with thinking..."Well, my Tivo SAYS it's gonna delete this show on Saturday July 18th, so I'd better watch it now."

But he'll be so pleased, like a little child at Christmas, when he wakes up on Sunday July 19th and sees that his fishing show ep is still there, after all. He won't question his Tivo, he'll think it's a little gift.

Posted by: badcrc

I don't really feel that a percentage gauge would help anyone very much, but I wouldn't mind having it. BUT, I think something that would be very useful, is when you go into the info screen for a recording in Now Playing if it would display the percentage of space used by that recording.

Often times I have quite a few shows set to SUID, and as they start to pile up I realize that some shows are expiring quickly. If I knew that one show recorded on high/best was taking up more space than say three other medium quality shows, I could delete just that one show. Basically it would help in the decision process for what to cleanup I think. Anyway that surely couldn't be difficult to put "This recording is using XX% of your recording space" on the info screen.

Posted by: MighTiVo

quote:
Originally posted by woheco:
Sorry I only had a few minutes to make this. It had to be shrunk down to fit into the image but the red bar says 58% and indicates your recordings, while the grey portion of the bar represents suggestions.
[/B]

That is exactly what I asked for about a month after I started using my TiVo and I still want one 9 months later.

Why? So I cn have some insight into what the TiVo has. Not a detailed look at what it is going to record, what it is going to delete, that is way too complicated.

I want a quick look into the operation so I can get a feel for the need to delete programs I don't really want in order to assure programs I want don't get deleted.

Sure I can manage this by tweaking save until etc. but that is too much work. It is much easier to see that TiVo is getting full and delete a bunch of reruns I probably will never watch anyway..... Now that is simple and direct!

Maybe a bug, but I DO loose yellow ! programs when sugestions stay!!!! However this is not the basis for a guage request.