Tivo and Season Passes
Posted by: tfabris
Tivo and Season Passes - 05/10/2005 21:22
Okay, so hockey is back. YAY! FINALLY!
My preferred hockey coverage is HDNET. What I want to do is tell the HD-Tivo to record all the first-run-only hockey games on HDNET.
So I go to tonight's game and hit "Season Pass", "First Run Only". You'd think, with a name like "Season Pass", the feature would be designed to work with sports. Grr.
It only sets up to record games between those exact two teams. Not all of the hockey season.
I think, possibly, it's because the names of the programs on HDNET aren't the sport, such as, "NHL Hockey", but rather, the exact team name, "Phoenix Coyotes @ Vancouver Canucks". So when I hit season pass, the team names are what it's looking for rather than the sport in general.
Aside from moving to Canada to get CBC coverage, does anyone have any ideas about how to handle this?
Posted by: hybrid8
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 05/10/2005 21:57
I can't suggest anything to work around it with TiVo other than making a bunch of manual reccuring recording entries. Or a WishList. Unfortunately, I'm not up on current TiVo versions to give much more specific help (older TiVo software didn't have wishlist capabilities that were extremely flexible.) If you can restrict a wishlist to a particular channel that would be a good start.
But I can tell you why what you're trying to do isn't working. I'm pretty positive the TiVo creates its season pass using the EPG data's ShowID. You would think that regardless of the teams playing, and therefore the possibility of alternating titles, the ShowID would remain constant if it's a regular program slot.
For instance, CBC's "Hockey Night in Canada" likely has a unique ShowID, regardless of the teams playing.
I'm running SageTV now as my full-time TV. I think even with that program I'd be stuck unless I used a specific repeating timeslot (and then it would be either once per week or every day - not ideal).
Bruno
Posted by: Dignan
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 05/10/2005 22:04
That was going to be my suggestion, I'd say you could set up a keyword wishlist for "hockey." You'd still have to go through and manually select programs to record, but it's a step easier than scrolling through the time slots on the channel.
But thanks for alerting us! I've been interested in what hockey looks like in HD, so I'll check it out.
Posted by: Waterman981
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 05/10/2005 23:23
You can set up keyword wishlists to record automatically. I do that for a couple of my wishlists, then about once every one or 2 weeks I examine my todo list and delete stuff I don't want. I want everything to do with U2, and get a program about the U2 spyplane... close, but not quite what I want.
The closest thing I could find was a thread on
Football Season Passes but skimming it looked like the same type of issue.
Posted by: AndrewT
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 00:02
I agree that wishlists sound like your best bet here. Search
www.tivocommunity.com for "advanced wishlists" and hopefully you'll be in safe hands - with advanced wishlists you can logically 'AND' multiple wishlist parameters to make a more selective wishlist.
Posted by: Dignan
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 02:53
Quote:
You can set up keyword wishlists to record automatically. I do that for a couple of my wishlists, then about once every one or 2 weeks I examine my todo list and delete stuff I don't want. I want everything to do with U2, and get a program about the U2 spyplane... close, but not quite what I want.
Oh I know you can automatically record wishlist shows, but I don't think he'd want to do that in this instance. I guess it would work either way - either you manually add each recording you want or you manually stop each recording you don't.
You're right, your way is probably easier.
Posted by: gbeer
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 03:16
Wish lists are more versatile than just looking for keywords. Filters like movies and or movies of a certain genera. I haven't looked recently but you should check the sports catagory to see if there is a Hockey filter.
Posted by: matthew_k
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 04:01
As a ReplayTV user, I should stay out of this thread... But when have I let that stop me? Anyways, this brings up a question I've always had. Tivo users have always talked about how great season passes are, and us replay people got an equivalent a few years ago. However, I never trust it, and always reccord everything, because I'd much rather delete a rerun than miss a new episode.
Do you generally trust season passes to work properly?
Matthew
Posted by: drakino
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 05:09
Quote:
As a ReplayTV user, I should stay out of this thread...
I probably shoud too, but what the heck.
Menu - Find Shows - "Team Name" - Title - "Create Theme Channel". Done.
I use that for quite a few things. My friend finds it handy for recording classic Star Trek on any channel, as he creates a theme channel to only record shows with a certain actor from the show. Since "Star Trek" on a ReplayTV would record the classic series, TNG, DS9, Voyaher and Enterprise. Replay decided not to use an exact match search in the theme channels (the closest thing I can associate to whatever a TiVO season pass is). I find they work well enough, but there is still the manual deleting of extra shows if something doesn't have a show description to key in the Replay that it is a duplicate.
[quoteDo you generally trust season passes to work properly?
Matthew
The only time mine has messed up is when DirecTV messed up the program schedule. This has only happened twice that I know of. The Tonight Show started at 11:28, ended at 11:33 for some reason, resumed at 11:33 and ended at the normal time. So Tivo saw this as two runnings of the same show, not as one show that was mistakenly cut in two. Clearly DirecTV's fault. But other than that, I have it set to record only new episodes of Family Guy and South Park. So if I ever see an episode recorded, I know it's new. Works every time, especially for popular shows like that.
Posted by: Tim
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 11:34
Quote:
Okay, so hockey is back. YAY! FINALLY!
My preferred hockey coverage is HDNET. What I want to do is tell the HD-Tivo to record all the first-run-only hockey games on HDNET.
How would that handle nights like last night? It was the first time since the expansion era that all teams played on the same night. I suppose it would be a 'first on gets recorded' type of deal.
I haven't bothered learning much about the Tivo other than season passes so far. I guess I need to start taking a look at wishlists and see if I can get all the Coyotes games and Blackhawks games.
Posted by: JBjorgen
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 11:41
Quote:
Do you generally trust season passes to work properly?
Yes. The only time I've been burned so far is when I don't check the priority of my season passes and one of my favorite shows gets lower priority than a show I only watch when bored.
Posted by: Attack
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 12:18
Quote:
I haven't bothered learning much about the Tivo other than season passes so far. I guess I need to start taking a look at wishlist and see if I can get all the Coyotes games and Blackhawks games.
TiVo's Advanced Wishlists
Enable 30 second skip on the TiVo
Sort the TiVo's Now Playing List
I don't know what version software is on the HD-TiVo and I also can't remember what version software you need to each of these TiVo hacks. I'm running three SA series 1 TiVo's running the 3.0 software. I use both the 30 second skip and the Sort hack. I've not found a use for the Advanced Wishlist since I've only made one wishlist. Sports -> Auto Racing, "World Rally" as the keyword.
Quote:
Sports -> Auto Racing, "World Rally" as the keyword.
My kind of guy!
Posted by: Tim
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 12:36
I tried some of the hacks listed a few months ago in a thread about DirecTivo, but I couldn't get any of them to work. I just assumed that it was because it was a brand new machine and different brand than what was listed. I was particularly interested in the 30 sec commercial hack.
I will take a look at the advanced wishlists. Thanks!
- Tim
Edit: Had playlist instead of wishlist. Pavlovian response for this forum I guess
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 12:57
Quote:
Do you generally trust season passes to work properly?
Yes. I barely use anything else, I get all the programs I want (with a few irritating exceptions) and I almost never record anything manually.
The irritating exceptions are when the DirecTV guide data isn't good enough, and that's because Tribune Media's data isn't good enough and that's because the channel doesn't provide good enough data to them. In particular, this means USA Network doesn't provide correct First-Run/Rerun information for its original shows, so I have to pay attention to when the Monk and Dead Zone seasons start and reenable the Season Pass, at which point I get the new shows and some reruns, especially when they decide to run a marathon. Comedy Central used to be this way, too (you'd get like a hundred South Parks and Daily Shows a day) but they seem to have fixed that now. (Actually, they were even worse; the TiVo couldn't even tell if it was the same episode, so it'd record the same episode a dozen times.)
Posted by: Dignan
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 13:13
I'm very suprised that the 30 second skip didn't work on yours. I thought that worked on every version of Tivo by any company. It's software based, after all, so it shouldn't matter who made it. Are you certain you did it correctly? I find that the best way to do it is to play a recorded video and then enter the keystrokes, so that when you press the "3-0" it doesn't start changing the channel.
I think the ReplayTV v Tivo arguments that are starting are a little misplaced. The heart of the problem here is that the program data that is supplied to Tivo isn't what was expected or wanted, so Tony had to work around it somehow.
Quote:
Wish lists are more versatile than just looking for keywords. Filters like movies and or movies of a certain genera. I haven't looked recently but you should check the sports catagory to see if there is a Hockey filter.
I know about advanced filters, I was just offering an umbrella suggestion. Your method would also work, but it would still additionally record sports shows that mentioned hockey. It's a good suggestion though, as it is narrowing the field to only sports shows that mention hockey. But who knows, maybe you want to record The Mighty Ducks 4 
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 13:19
Actually, I think program category is a feature of the regular, non-Advanced Wishlists.
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 13:44
Quote:
Do you generally trust season passes to work properly?
Yes. Usually, when I want to get all first-run episodes of a series, all I have to do is say Season Pass, First Run Only, and it Just Works.
In fact, the instance that I'm having trouble with, the reason I started this thread, is the only time I've had trouble doing that.
The other time, when I wanted to get all episodes of West Wing when Bravo started re-running them (and therefore they weren't first-run-only), I was pretty easily able to use the season pass feature (combined with a little fiddling of the Upcoming Episodes screen) to do what I needed.
Quote:
I'm very suprised that the 30 second skip didn't work on yours. Are you certain you did it correctly? I find that the best way to do it is to play a recorded video
In my experience, that's the most common reason for the 30 second skip trick to fail. You have to make sure you're playing a recorded video from the Now Playing list before it'll work. Either that or you skipped one of the "selects" in the key sequence. The sequence, if you want to try it again, is:
- Go to the Now Playing list.
- Select and play something.
- Press: SELECT, PLAY, SELECT, 3, 0, SELECT.
If you've got sounds turned on, you should hear BONG BONG BONG at that point.
Anyway, thanks everyone for the tips. I'll follow the link to Advanced Wish Lists and see if that works for me.
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 14:03
Hm. According to one of those links, I can't get advanced wishlists without enabling backdoor, and I can't enable backdoor on my S2 HD DirecTivo without hardware hacking, something I'm not prepared to do right now. And even then, I'm not sure what kind of ANDs I'd be able to do that'd get me what I wanted.
Starting to sound like my only option is to print the HDNet hockey schedule and manually select the games I want to watch.
Posted by: Dignan
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 14:04
Quote:
Do you generally trust season passes to work properly?
I meant to respond to that as well: yes, in every instance yes.
I've never had a single problem with this. The only problem with recording first run shows is when networks are lazy. Comedy Central is infuriating in this regard. It is impossible to record the Daily Show in this manner, because they appear to almost randomly supply information for their episodes.
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 14:22
Quote:
It is impossible to record the Daily Show in this manner, because they appear to almost randomly supply information for their episodes.
I've been meaning to ask about this. I keep going into the episode list and unchecking all the episodes that aren't first-run, i.e., everything that isn't an 8pm weekday show. But one thing I've noticed is that as you get closer to the actual air time of a given show, they update the DirecTV information with the name of that night's guest. So I'm wondering if the Tivo is catching that at update-time, and if I hadn't manually fiddled with it, if it would have Done The Right Thing anyway.
Anyone know if this is the case?
Posted by: matthew_k
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 14:27
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The only problem with recording first run shows is when networks are lazy.
Quote:
Yes. I barely use anything else, I get all the programs I want (with a few irritating exceptions)
Quote:
Works every time, especially for popular shows like that.
Most everyone says yes and then goes on to qualify it to a "well, mainly". I'm NOT trying to start a Replay vs Tivo thread. As far as I know they both use the same flawed guide data. As I suspected, it sounds like I could trust them for big shows, but not for smaller shows on small networks?
Matthew
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 14:32
USA Network seems to be the only one with consistently flawed data. I've not personally had any problem with Comedy Central shows of late, but others might. Everything else is perfect.
The only problem I have with the TiVo about this is when there's a conflict. You can select which show is preferred, but sometimes shows change slots and you might not have set the preferences right. It'd be nice if it would prompt you when that happened so that you could verify that it was going to do the right thing or let you change it. If you're vigilant, this will never happen, but I'm certainly not that vigilant.
Posted by: Tim
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 14:34
Quote:
Quote:
I'm very suprised that the 30 second skip didn't work on yours. Are you certain you did it correctly? I find that the best way to do it is to play a recorded video
In my experience, that's the most common reason for the 30 second skip trick to fail. You have to make sure you're playing a recorded video from the Now Playing list before it'll work. Either that or you skipped one of the "selects" in the key sequence. The sequence, if you want to try it again, is:
- Go to the Now Playing list.
- Select and play something.
- Press: SELECT, PLAY, SELECT, 3, 0, SELECT.
If you've got sounds turned on, you should hear BONG BONG BONG at that point.
Thank both of you for the tips on that, I'll try it when I get home tonight. I never really gave it a second thought when it didn't work. I guess it is because the player is a Phillips (no clue what model) and I don't remember seeing it listed on that page of compiled hints/tips/hacks. I'll have to go back and check out it again.
Thanks again.
- Tim
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 14:36
All of the TiVo units are actually identical regardless of manufacturer, with the exception of the Sony ones, and I don't think they've done them since S1.
Posted by: JBjorgen
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 16:31
A friend of mine has a S2 TiVo and DVD player in one that doesn't even have the 30-second skip button on the remote. You can enter the code and hear the Bong Bong Bong but then you can't use the new feature. Weird, eh?
EDIT: It's the Toshiba SD-H400. Here's a pic of the remote:
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 16:39
Ah. Well, if your friend ever gets a One For All universal remote, I know the advanced function codes to assign that button.
Posted by: Attack
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 16:56
Looking at that remote, I'm sure that it is the button to the right of that yellow button.
Posted by: hybrid8
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 17:03
Nope, that's the SLOW button.
I would think it would be stuck to the SKIP button but that may very well be DVD specific. That's a pretty worthless remote layout, especially for a TiVo. Yuck.
Bruno
Posted by: Dignan
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 17:42
Quote:
Quote:
The only problem with recording first run shows is when networks are lazy.
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Yes. I barely use anything else, I get all the programs I want (with a few irritating exceptions)
Quote:
Works every time, especially for popular shows like that.
Most everyone says yes and then goes on to qualify it to a "well, mainly".
Well, yeah! My contention is that Tivo is flawless in its handling of recordings of accurately described shows, but I have to qualify that by saying that this depends on the shows being accurately described.
Quote:
The only problem I have with the TiVo about this is when there's a conflict.
I agree with that. The biggest problem I see is this sort of instance which only occurs on DirecTivos: you're looking through the program guide, and select a show to be recorded. But there are already two shows being recorded at that time. The problem is that it gives you an option that only works on single-tuner Tivos. It shows you one of the two shows that are being recorded at that time, and lets you either skip the new recording, or cancel that one. What I usually end up doing is going into the To Do list and deciding which of the two shows, if any, I'd like to cancel.
Does anyone know anything more about this? For example, how does it pick which show to give you as an option? Is it based on the Season Pass order? That would at least make a little sense. I would bet that it was a programming limitation, as there really aren't any UI differences between a DirecTivo and a standalone.
Posted by: hybrid8
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 17:57
Doesn't it ask you about the second recording if you choose to continue the first? I thought it did this. It's been a while though. At least that's something SageTV got right.
Bruno
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 18:28
I'm pretty sure that it asks you about the lowest-priority show. That is, if you don't want to cancel the lower priority show, then you probably don't want to cancel the higher-priority one, either. But I could be wrong. I've never done any tests.
That all works well on paper, but in reality, no one goes through and prioritizes the entire season pass list, and the priorities of those shows might be backwards since you never had to make a choice before.
I do know that it only asks you about one of the two shows, though. It definitely doesn't ask you which of the shows you'd like to cancel, or even tell you what the other show is. Fortunately, it's pretty easy to find out.
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 22:38
Quote:
That all works well on paper, but in reality, no one goes through and prioritizes the entire season pass list,
I do.
Posted by: Tim
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 06/10/2005 23:17
Quote:
- Go to the Now Playing list.
- Select and play something.
- Press: SELECT, PLAY, SELECT, 3, 0, SELECT.
If you've got sounds turned on, you should hear BONG BONG BONG at that point.
You guys are wonderful. The trick worked, and I now have the 30 sec commercial skip. Yay! 
Posted by: Attack
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 07/10/2005 02:11
Quote:
That all works well on paper, but in reality, no one goes through and prioritizes the entire season pass list.
I sorted the order of my Season Passes on my 1st TiVo (Jan-01') after creating them. Now I update them on all three of my TiVo's.
I'm sure that many people update them since TivoWebPlus has two different Season Pass Managers.
Posted by: gbeer
Re: Tivo and Season Passes - 07/10/2005 02:51
It depends on how the season pass was saved. Some record a specific show on a specific channel. For example the new season of TOH started tonight. My season pass would have missed it. Since corrected.
Beyond that kind of thing, The season passes are only as good as the guide data, which is generated by a third party. Shows that are listed with a generic description, may be treated has being currently or previously recorded, and so be skipped 4 weeks out of 5.
Even recording all episodes can sometimes be dangerous. I have an SG-1 wishlist that catches every episode on every channel. Mondays string of 5 reruns generally will overwrite last Friday's new episode.
The point of this is not to run down tivo but to recognize there are many ways create season passes, and they can be hammers or finely tuned.