Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Washington, DC
Posts: 7659

I just discovered a "new" feature on my TiVo. Of course it really isn't new, it's been there all along, but I never used it: manual recording.

Yes, I've always known I could manually record, but I never bothered checking out the feautre, because, why tell it to record Sunday night at 8 on Fox when I could just tell it to record the Simpsons.

But I've also had the "Season Pass" problem with shows like Sportscenter or Talk Soup -- that are on multiple times a day. Espeically Talk Soup, because it is the same thing each and every time, and TiVo would record all of them if I got a Season Pass.

I would do the Save Until I Delete/Keep at Most 1 trick, but then I wouldn't get the new episode every day.

I always looked down my nose at Manual record, because I didn't think that it would give me the program data. It would just say, HBO Sunday 9-10. I was wrong.


I finally "discovered" that I can manually record Comedy Central M-F at 230 PM, and get the episode of "Beat the Geeks" without it recording the 2-3 other times it is on during the day, AND it shows the guide episode as "Beat the Geeks."

I'm sure most of the experts on here already knew about manually record, but I didn't realize that if there is a show on the same time each day, and that you can't get a season pass b/c it's also on multiple times a day and the guide data sucks, Manual Record actually woirks pretty well.

Gosh, I love my TiVo.

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Registered: Jan 2001
Location: Boulder, CO
Posts: 55

I found that manual recordings are great for those pay-per-view sports like College B-Ball or NFL ST. They pad with so much time that they conflict with a later game or they burn through space for no good reason. (6 hours for an NFL game, 4 hours for a B-Ball game?) So I record a more reasonable amount of time with a little pad and complaints about space or conflicts go away.

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Registered: Apr 2001
Location: Dallas (or L.A.)
Posts: 15821

Yup. And it's documented in the manual too.

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Jeff
Proud to use my TiVo improperly
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Yay, Smeek! Smeek rules! -- JediCowboyD
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Registered: Dec 2001
Location: Chicagoland
Posts: 8

This is a really good thing to do when there's a marathon of your favorite program. For example, next week there's a Daria marathon on MTV. MTV schmucks don't have their clocks set right so if you recorded the shows individually then the beginning of the second show would be at the end of the first show.

Not good if you want to dump it to tape. So my plan is to record the whole block as one and edit out the commercials as I go.

Fortunately the Alias marathon didn't have that problem.

p.s. don't forget to tell your To Do list not to also record the individual episodes.

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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Nashville, TN
Posts: 1700

Two opportunities for improvement.

1) Allow choosing a manual recording after clicking rec while in the guide.

2) Manual recordings should ALWAYS be on the channel they are set up on.

I have ABC on Antenna and Satellite. There is no way I can figure out to force TiVo to record one program on Antenna while it defaults to the satellite channel.

Why would I want to do this?
1) To force Football to record over the air. A little more static in the background, but the running looks better.
2) So TiVo can record one show on the Antenna while my DishPVR records another on the satellite.

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Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Living in a four letter world.
Posts: 697

One handy trick I've found for some of the ESPN and ESPN2 programs is that for some programs they designate the first airing of the program as "live". So if you do a Wish List for the title of the program and specify Show Type -> Live it records only that first airing each day.

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Registered: May 2001
Location: Denver, CO
Posts: 443

It's great for just about any show on E! or ComedyCentral.

But, Why, oh WHY can't they remove the word "Manual:" from the Now Playing list???? It spoils concentration when quickly eyeballing down the list and takes up valuable space in the Title field of that screen . . .

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Registered: Apr 2001
Location: Dallas (or L.A.)
Posts: 15821

quote:

---

Originally posted by JP Honeywell
This is a really good thing to do when there's a marathon of your favorite program. For example, next week there's a Daria marathon on MTV. MTV schmucks don't have their clocks set right so if you recorded the shows individually then the beginning of the second show would be at the end of the first show.

---

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Jeff
Proud to use my TiVo improperly
President of the TiVoShanan Fan Club
Yay, Smeek! Smeek rules! -- JediCowboyD
jsmeeker, you will live in a dark place someday....where they do not allow TiVo. -- nachonaco

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Registered: Sep 2001
Location: Tallahassee, FL, USA
Posts: 811

Another way to handle programs like football that you know are going to run over but not by how much is use a minimal pad on the show itself and schedule additional manual recordings in 15 minute increments.

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