But I WANT to submit to the TV brain drain -I PIT CBS AND COMCAST!!!

The BBQ Pit
1

Two points:

1/ Comcast: I have to pay extra to “lease” your freaking DVR machine and doesn’t always record the program series I set up. Misses some reruns and what not (yeah, I watch a lot of TV, so what of it?)

2/ CBS: Okay, so I understand that the NFL ran late or the debate coverage is being overanalyzed or whatever, but if you are showing a premiere of a new episode (a la THE UNIT these past two weeks), at least adjust the DVR / TIVO / whichever signal you need so that the auto recordings in this new amazing digital age don’t get cut off half way through the episode. LIKE THEY HAVE FOR THE PAST TWO WEEKS, if I need to say it again. Sheesh.

So, now here I am, avoiding the whole debate issue, the mindless drek that is (are?) reality shows and all the other BS that stands on TV…. BUT I cannot finish the last three episodes of shows I have previously recorded.

Grrr… Makes me get all punchy and shooty. Especially after they cut off my censored American TV gunfire.

I was really looking forward to watching these episodes. After all, I am an American, and I MUST WATCH FOOTBALL!!! So I record the other shows I watch “to be viewed later”. This is why I pay for it.

I used to be able to predict these things. Back in the stone age, when I used to have to use VHS tapes and feed the hamsters to run the wheels in the VCR, you could sort of predict these things. Weather warnings, add 10 minutes. Football games, add an hour at the most. News and other “hot topics” (ahem), better start with a new tape. Or at least be there in person if you could to make sure that you at least started on time.

Now, I must admit that I am not totally up on all the news about this digital TV thingie that beams down from the skies, but come on, science people… Let’s give me the pleasure of sucking off the glass tit on my own time… That’s why I pay the extra money.

Can’t all the monopolies just get along?

2

Pit CBS if you must, but not the DVR technology and Comcast. (at least not for this) Comcast can only show what the Network feeds it. It can’t dictate anything about what is sown and when.
I explain this to Directv customers about 20 times a day. We also don’t contro; the amount of commercials, or the content of programs.

3

Okay, but when are you going to do something about it?!:mad:

4

You can watch those two episodes in full on CBS’s web site.

5

I ran into a similar problem with my DVR. I wish CBS would just pull the plug on any football games that run over their scheduled time. I missed the last half of the program that I was recording. I hate professional football. Why cant we revive the old practice of executing the losing team.

6

I got lucky this past Sunday. About nine o’clock I switched my DVR (which I had already set up to record Cold Case over to CBS so I could check up on it, only to find that The Amazing Race was still on. Then I remembered that it was already football season, which explained the delay. So I set my DVR to record The Unit so I wouldn’t miss what turned out to be the last half of Cold Case.

I hate football season; it always screws up Sunday night programming.

7

The Comcast DVR has this neat little feature that you can use when you set up a series recording that allows you to end the recording on time, or even late. If you want to record Cold Case, and you know that during the NFL season there are generally two games on CBS on any Sunday, you set up your Cold Case recording as normal except for one thing.

In the create or modify series recording screen, you can show all options. The very last of the advanced options allows you to determine when to end the recording. You can set this to end on time or late. Set it to end an hour late.

Now, if you want to record The Unit after Cold Case, what I suggest is leaving the first recording alone, and tacking that hour on the end of the last show in line.

It would be very rare if the NFL game pushed the start of 60 Minutes back more than one hour, so this method gets you your shows. The only drawback is that if you’re recording two or three shows, you switch recordings in the middle of a show. It’s not that big a deal, though.

And I, for one, like the fact that they don’t cut away from the football game. I would be extremely pissed off if the Steelers got Heidi Bowled.

8

On the nose, catsix. I always manually tape Cold Case as if it were a two-hour program. Not the perfect solution, but it’s the best one available.

Don’t push back programming and end football telecasts at the scheduled time? Ummm, no…not going to happen.

Have the games preempt 60 Minutes so later programming starts on time? Seniors across the nation would set the local CBS affiliate buildings ablaze.

A possible solution would be to schedule the postgame programming until later, and use that as a buffer which could end early if needed. However, that would force 60 Minutes to start at 8:00, Cold Case at 9:00, etc. A later start to 60 Minutes would probably be met with quite a bit of resistance.

While it would be nice if the networks and the carriers got on the same page (which they’ll do eventally), manually recording it works for the time being.

9

Would be nice. Nothing like having the game end at 7:45, and at 8:30 still be waiting for the 8pm show :smack:

10

Except that Comcast consistantly fails where DirecTV doesn’t. It must be a factor of either:

A) how their DVR is programmed
B) how they are coding thier shows

I can’t count the number of times that my series pass for a show on comcast is recorded 30 times in a week even though I say “Only record new episodes”. Some of these are repeats of an initial episode on Discovery, some of these are episodes from 2 seasons ago. Tivo got around this by not re-recording an episode with the same description if it appeared in the past 14 days. Comcast just records away in a display of unabashed halfassery.

11

Amen, brother.

I will admit I’m not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but there are people who know how to prevent this.

12

No you don’t. Buy your own.

13

My Comcast DVR will only record the same new episode on additional airings if it doesn’t already have a copy on the hard disk. So if I record a show on Monday, watch it Tuesday and delete it, and that same new episode has an encore on Thursday, it records again. Otherwise, it’s skipped because the DVR knows it got that episode.

I have not had it record things from seasons past as if they were new.