I have DVR at home (about the same thing as TiVo) and for the most part, am quite happy with it. For instance, it taped Monk for me Friday and I had no idea Monk was back with new episodes!
At any rate, sometimes my DVR makes me want to scream.
For instance, Heroes on NBC…either the show is really 1 hour and 1 minute long, or my DVR is off by a minute, but only on this show! Thankfully, I tape the show following Heroes, so I have been able to see that missing minute, but it still drives me crazy. I thought the schedules were programmed so that the DVR would tape a show, even if it does run a minute or two overtime - or am I wrong in that assumption?
Also - is it just my DVR, but sometimes the voice and picture get out of sync and I have to to a quick re-wind or fast forward to get them back in sync.
DVR’s record according to the schedule. If the schedule says the show is one from 10:00- 11:15, that’s what the DVR records. If the show is scheduled for 8-9, but doesn’t start until 8:30 because a football game ran over by a half hour, you lose the half-hour. My cable company’s program guide lists lots of shows starting at odd times, and in fact when I looked at NBC’s website, it seems there are no more 10 pm programs- they’re all 10:01. Which means the program before is from 9- 10:01. The problem might be with your schedule.My DVR has an option to record for extra minutes, which is how I now avoid the football problem.
The voice and picture also sometimes get out of sync on my DVR.
For a few years now the networks have been running some shows a minute or two longer; say from 9:00 to 10:01 instead of just 9:00 to 10:00. I’ve seen three different suggestions as to the reasoning.
It keeps you tuned to whatever network you are on. The idea here is that if the show you are watching ends at 10:01, any shows that started exactly at 10:00 on other network are already under way. Since you (presumably) don’t want to watch a show that you have already missed the beginning of, you will stay where you are and just watch whatever comes up next.
It allows the network to sell an extra minute of commercial time. The amount the networks charge for a commercial is based on the ratings for the show during which the commercial airs. If a network has a show with much higher ratings than others on during the same evening then by increasing the length of the higher rated show by a minute or two then they are able to sell an additional minute or two of commercials at the higher rate.
They do it just to annoy owners of TiVos and other DVRs to force them to watch the show “live” instead of time-shifting it. The way some DVRs work (and TiVo used to, though they have changed it now) is that if two shows “overlapped” then only one of them would be recorded. So, if you wanted to record a show at 9:00 on one network and another show at 10:00 on another, if the first show did not end until 10:01 then the DVR would not record the 10:00 show because it “overlapped” with the other. (TiVo now records the entire show with the highest priority and what it can of the lower priority show. DirecTiVos have two tuners and so were always able to record both anyway.)
TiVo now seems to get the correct schedule and records from 8:59 to 10:01 if that is how the show is scheduled. TiVo also has the ability to manually “pad” recordings and tell it to record a few extra minutes at the start or end of the scheduled program time. This is how we usually get around football delays; we just pad everything by an extra hour or two…
I think 1 & 2 are probably the most likely. The schedule my TiVo uses usually has the correct schedule and correctly records the show, including the extra minute or two.
If the audio and video are out of sync, usually you can just stop the playback and rewind and fast forward to get them back in sync. It’s the new equivalent of slapping the side of the TV.
There was a new Monk episode? :smack: Wish I’d have caught that. I didn’t see it publicized. And the repeat doesn’t come on until next Sunday. Looking over USA’s website, there will be another new episode, “Mr. Monk and the Leper,” on December 22. I’ll definitely set the DVR for that one.
I understand Comcast has made an agreement with TiVo to use TiVo’s software on Comcast cable boxes. I can’t wait for that to go into effect.
Reminds me of when I was a kid, moving the antenna for dad, or getting up to change the channel (kids don’t know that remotes didn’t exist back then). But ya know, slapping that television on the side always seemed to work, didn’t it!