Fuck Comcast’s Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HD DVR box! In addition to a bunch of niggling little flaws, tonight I found out that if I’ve set it to record Boston Legal at 10 pm, and NBC decides to start it at 10:01, the box doesn’t consider that the same “time slot.” Okay, so missing the first 20 minutes of of one episode of BL isn’t the end of the world, but isn’t this really stupid?!?
And while I’m at it, why can’t the hardware makers and the program guide programmers work out something so that when a show is delayed, say by a previous sports event, or a presidential news conference, the DVR records the whole program in its late starting time, and doesn’t lose the last 20 minutes?
And finally, fuck NBC for starting BL at 10:01 in the first place!
This is the reason I don’t want one of these things. I still don’t get why it’s so hard to have a normal old timer on the fucking thing. I’d buy a Tivo, but I don’t want to pay the money per month, it’s not worth it to me. And the boxes that you build yourself don’t come with a timer either? How hard is it to make a timer?
Let me get this straight, as I don’t have one of these things but was thinking of getting one: you can’t simply program it, “tape this channel from this time to that time”?
Better still, you can set it to record a particular on whatever channel it is shown. I just select say “Modern Marvels” and anytime it comes on it gets recorded. I do it for all the shows I like to watch then go to the menu whenever and there is a list of all the shows for me to watch anytime I want. The best part is skipping all commercials. If there is something on live TV I just hit record then either go do something else or watch something I have already reorded then go back to watch the previous show skipping all the commercials.
Nope, TIVO (and DVRs) were supposed to be the answer to for people who couldn’t programs their VCRs. Just find your program on the menu, press record; voila, record a show or a whole season, just like that. Unfortunately TV marketers sell commercials base on ratings, therefore the want you watching. The solution, start the program early or late.
No, there is a manual timer mode, but it’s much simpler to use the program guide and say, I want to record every episode of Boston Legal at 10 pm. But the box is not smart enough to know that when NBC programs it to start at 10:01 instead of 10, it’s the same show at (almost) the same time. (The show wasn’t unexpectedly delayed by a minute; if that had happened, I would have gotten the recording. The network let the previous show run a minute long, and started BL at 10:01.)
You can also tell the DVR to record a show whenever it is broadcast, and that would have gotten this episode. But I usually don’t use that option because many of the shows I watch are rebroadcast many times throughout the week, and I don’t want six copies of the same show clogging up the hard disk. But since BL isn’t rebroadcast at different times, that would have worked last night. (I said this was a lame rant.)
But who knew that NBC was going to start the damn show at 10:01, for Og’s sake!
So Edward, it’s not as bad as you think. But regarding the boxes you build yourself, I don’t think there’s any way you could get those (or a standard Tivo box) to receive the digital and/or scrambled channels the cable company sends out. Since I have all the movie channels and the HD channels, making my own DVR box isn’t an option. I’m stuck with whatever Comcast makes available. At least until Verizon decides to hook up the Fiber Optic lines they’ve already strung through the neighborhood, but haven’t activated yet. Then it’s bye-bye Comcast and good riddance!
That’s odd. With our TiVo, we just tell it to record a certain program, and if it’s one we know will be starting late, we just add extra time to the recording. The Amazing Race, for instance, is being run late after football nearly every week, so we just add half an hour to the recording time and it starts recording at 8:00 when the show is schedule to start and continues recording till 9:30, regardless of when the show is actually on.
So your Comcast DVR won’t just start at the scheduled time? Weird.
Yes, this is part of the war between the Big 3 broadcast channels and Tivo. In this instance, the dudes who are wrong is NBC (or CBS or ABC) not Comcast. NBC deliberately starts/ends several of their shows at odd times to throw off Tivoing. However, even I, who still uses a dark-ages VCR to record shows, can be thrown off by odd-minute times. The local Sunday-paper and the Cable channel guide all present the various shows in even-timed blocks. Thus, I can often lose the last couple of minutes of Lost due to my checking is and seeing that it’s on 9PM>10PM, but it actually ends @10:02PM.
So, this is not the fault of Comcast, but rather the Broadcast channles. Email them and let them know.
I guess there is, but I could never find in the online directions, and no one else has ever told me that they do have just timers. I’ve always had the same types of problems you have with the crappy VCR+ or whatever it is not recording shows, so now I just record a couple of minutes before and a few minutes after and I’m done.
I also only have cable for recording shows. If there was a cheap way to record digital I’d dump my cable right now. We live close enough to DC that we get really nice looking reception from an antenna. I don’t know why the cable companies have to scramble the local HD channels but they do and I think it sucks. If I paid $1800 for a nice TV then I shouldn’t have to pay the extra money a month just for them to unscrable the signal for me.
If I know a program is likely to be delayed, I can either manually record a longer stretch, or set it to record the program after the scheduled show (which will give me two separate recordings, but is simpler than the manual mode.) And if I wanted to go to the trouble of saying record channel 4 for an hour starting at 10 pm, I could do that, too. But again, it’s simpler to tell it: record Boston Legal at 10. I would just like it if the box was smart enough to say, “Hey, it’s 10:01 and Boston Legal is on. I guess I should record it.”
But noooooooooooo! It’s got to be all literal, and say, “Well, 10 o’clock and no Boston Legal. Back to sleep!”
Umm, not entirely correct. I have a couple of Dish Network PVRs and I can just click on a show and and request it to start 1 or how ever many minutes early and have it run late. It can also be programmed from scratch to start and stop when ever you want it too. I don’t miss anything anymore.
Cite? Why would it be in ABC’s interest for me not to have a recording of BL? Even though I do zip through the commercials, some percentage of DVR owners doesn’t and isn’t it better to keep people watching your shows than screw them?
I was thinking the one minute late thing was intended to keep people tuned in to the end of the previous show past the start of a rival show on another network. That way they’re more likely to stick with the next show on your channel instead of jumping.
I don’t get this part. Mine is set to record BL and it did. BL is scheduled to start at 10 so mine started to record at 10. When other shows come on after a sports event that goes long it still starts recording at the scheduled time and I get the end of the game. Tivo doesn’t know whats actually being broadcast it just goes by what is scheduled. So if the schedule says BL at 10 it will start recording at 10 on that channel regardless of what is actually being broadcast.
Last night the program guide for my system said that BL started at 10:01, not 10. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know if that’s when it actually did start. Check your recording: is there a minute of the show before BL?
Either Tivo is smart enough to do what I want the Comcast box to do, or someone at Tivo’s programming department realized that a 10:01 start time would screw people up, and intentionally left the program guide at 10, or they didn’t get the memo on the 10:01 start time, and accidentally helped you out.
With Tivo, you can do more than “zip” past the ads.
http://news.com.com/2100-1024_3-5200073.html
*A majority of national advertisers plan to cut spending on TV commercials by 20 percent in the next five years, when they believe that ad-skipping devices like TiVo will take hold in households, according to a new survey. *
NBC started it last year, as a way to eek out a bit more advertising dollar per big ticket show, with the side effect of messing up TiVos across the land, but it looks like other networks are jumping onto the same bandwagon.
“It’s not clear if this is being done specifically to screw with TiVo-like devices, or if broadcasters simply can’t keep shows within their customary time constraints, but a number of shows are running a minute or two over, screwing up systems designed to record in half-hour or hour increments. If broadcasters really are doing it to mess with TiVo, it’s a short-sighted policy only bound to anger viewers and make them not want to watch shows. Of course, the real response is for DVR makers to be able to record in odd time increments to make sure shows are fully recorded, and make use of multiple tuners to handle periods of overlap. Broadcasters, instead of trying to block out TiVo and others, should provide the type of metadata those devices need to accurately record the full show. Of course, instead of doing that, TV execs seem to think they need to “fight back” against these devices that let people watch TV the way they want to.”
Now, I concede that the Networks have not admitted that they are screwing with showtimes just to screw with Tivo. But they do consider Tivo a huge problem, and they started screwing with showtimes around the time Tivo got popular.
I’ll check it. But if BL was scheduled to start at 10:33 it would get recorded Starting at 10:33. I just set it to record BL I don’t tell it what time. It will record whatever is being broadcast during that scheduled time slot. Sometimes the schedule is wrong especially late night re-runs of scrubs. Schedule says “scrubs” it get recorded when I play it sometimes t is “Sex in the City”, I hit the info button it says it is scrbs when it clearly is not. Seams to me we have different systems. Mine records what is scheduled regardless of what is being broadcast.
With TiVo, you just tell it to record a show (although you can specify to only record new episodes). The only reason it wouldn’t record at 10:01 would be if you had more conflicts with higher priority recordings at the same time than you had tuners.
My guess is that your problem was telling your DVR to record the show only at that time slot, instead of every time it comes on. Computers are too stupid to know that 10:00 and 10:01 are basically the same time, so the one minute shift was enough for it to decide that was a different time slot than you originally set up.