I noticed with some grumpiness this morning that although my digital cable had adjusted correctly to the new daylight savings time, my DVR settings did not, so my show recordings are all off by an hour — instead of recording Desperate Housewives, then Gray’s Anatomy, my DVR recorded Gray’s Anatomy and the evening news instead. Combined with the general wonkiness of the DVR’s recording in general, this didn’t make me happy. I have to go in an tweak my settings in ways that I should not have to, or I occasionally will miss something.
I know must have happened because I had the selection of “record all episodes of this show in this time slot” instead of “record all episodes of this show at all times.” But the second setting results in recording five versions of the same episode, or causing repeated episodes to “bump” other original airings of shows off the schedule without warning. I have no way to tell it to prioritize one show over another, and it doesn’t tell me if it has bumped a show off my recording schedule, so I don’t know to go back and add it in later. That’s broken.
With some other video recording programs, you can tell the recorder to get every episode of a show, but to only record any episode one time, so the when a network re-airs a program, the DVR sees it’s a duplicate episode and ignores it. You can also program them to prioritize one show over another if the schedule moves around and you accidentally try to record more than two things at once. And they will tell you what show was bumped off the schedule, so you can go back and re-set it to record the next week
I have some friends who were showing off their satellite TV/Tivo combination package, which currently weighs in at less money every month that my cable, with more features and reliability, including the ability to transfer shows from one TV to another, so I could move a show upstairs to the bedroom to watch it. I hate to go to all the trouble of doing that, but given that I’m paying more for less service, it might be time to make the switch.
Daylight Savings Time and Cable
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Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll have to check the DVR when I get home. I’d hate to miss 24! LOL
Steph,
I loved my tivo, but still like the dvr better. I can record 2 programs at once, which is a nice feature. The odd thing is my dvr didn’t change like yours, but my time has been going back and forth today. Weird, huh? So I did get Housewives recorded and have it saved, so you can come over and watch it if you want. My power went out 37 minutes into Grey’s Anatomy, please help, I need to know how it ended!
TIVO now offers a box with two tuners in it, so you can record more than one show at the same time…
http://www.tivo.com/2.1.3.asp
desperate housewives jumped the Shark a few months back
maybe your machine figured it out…
Time to get yourself a cheap shuttle pc and turn it into a Myth box.
Yeah, a couple friends have Myth set up and swear by it, but in reality they fuss with the box and the upgrades and blah blah blah more than I have to massage my damn DVR settings, which isn’t the direction I want to go. I want to wind my robots up and let them go, without having to tweak them all the time. If it requires me to make adjustments, it’s not worth it.
And as for Desperate Housewives jumping the shark — that’s for me to decide, not the retarded DVR 😀 I’m the arbiter of what’s cool, after all.
I’ve had DirecTV for about 12 years, and I got my first DirecDVR with Tivo a few years ago. I liked it so much I now have a second one. However, the good old days of satellite TV are over (the DirecDVR with Tivo is gone, too — replaced by an internally developed DVR), and I’m no longer the evangelist for it that I used to be. Dish Network is no picnic, either.
I’ll be happy to tell you all about DirecTV if you ever consider making the switch. I had a long talk with some reps at the last CES, and I can tell what their current service is like as well as their plans for the future. It may very well end up being a good move for you, but it’s not the slam dunk for almost everyone I think it used to be.