Jan

14

My TIVO is an Idiot

January 14, 2008 | 1 Comment

TIVOYes that’s right…my TIVO is an idiot.

Who won the San Diego – Indianapolis game?
I don’t know because my TIVO is an idiot!

What happened on Monk Friday night?
I don’t know because my TIVO is an idiot!

I did my part…I looked the game up on the schedule
hit the handy red record button for the program

NFL

NFL Football , San Diego @ Indianapolis…cool right?
NO…because the game went past the 3hours and 30 minutes
in the schedule grid and my TIVO stopped recording with several
minutes left in the game.

Why? Because my TIVO is an idiot.

MonkAllDid Monk and Natalie solve the latest caper while driving Captain Stottlemeyer and Randy slightly koo koo?

I don’t know because my TIVO is an idiot!

My TIVO said “Monk” on the Playing Now list but it wasn’t Monk,
it was the show that came on before Monk.

I know that you’re probably saying there’s only one idiot in my
household and his name isn’t TIVO and that operator error is
most likely to blame.

Oh contraire, being a fan of Monk I am very Monkish in some ways
and one of those ways is being meticulous in the extra curricular reading
of owner’s manuals and instruction booklets.

NOWHERE in the TIVO manual does it mention that I have to out
think the TIVO and add the program after the one I want recorded,
“just in case”. I figured that one out on my own.

And while I’m on a TIVO harangue, TIVO keep your opinions to
yourself.

Badminton

Just because I want to watch the football game does not
mean that I also want to watch the badminton playoffs from Jolly Ole England.

One final thought, the makers of TIVO are idiots too. Did you hear that TIVO was miffed that everyone was using their product name as the generic term for DVRing a program? As in, “I TIVOed the game but haven’t watched it yet”?

They sent word out that talk shows and the like that they were not to use TIVOed any more.
Are you kidding me?

Coca Cola

Have they not seen the success of the brand names
that have become the generic term for products?

Kleenex and Coke to name a couple.

Oh well, I’m going to go set my DVR to record the presidential debate and the
three programs after it, just in case.

Because as you now know…my DVR is an idiot!

www.michaelontheair.com


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1 Comment so far

  1. Mike Hartman on March 25, 2009 2:00 pm

    I hate to respond to old posts, but I landed on this from one of your other posts that I landed on from google…

    I just wanted to point out that the programming schedule is the only data that Tivo has about what’s on a channel at any given moment. If the schedule says channel 12 should be showing Seinfeld and it’s actually showing the rest of your game Tivo has no way of knowing. It can’t look at what’s on the screen and somehow detect what show it is. That seems like it would be common sense.

    If your game runs later than it was scheduled to, then by definition the programming schedule won’t reflect that. It’s not like there’s someone in the press box at the game going “Quick, someone call Tivo and tell them they need to do an emergency schedule adjustment!”.

    It’s always been a good idea to add some “padding” on the end of a recording timer when grabbing a live event. This isn’t new with Tivo, it was the same way back when you needed to program a start and end time into your VCR. All Tivo does is simplify things by letting you click on a schedule block that fills in the times for you (as well as scheduling season passes, etc.).

    Until we have psychics creating the programming schedules or Tivo hires someone to stare at each possible channel 24/7 and update its schedule in real time we’re just going to have to exercise our brains a bit.

    That said, you don’t need to have Tivo record the entire following show to get that padding. When you create or edit a scheduled recording there’s an option to add padding time to the end – at least on our Series 2. I’m pretty sure it was there a year ago when this was written.

    I won’t be entirely negative. I agree with you that the suggestions could be a lot better (although if you hate them ALL there’s a setting to turn them off completely).

    The whole naming thing is ridiculously stupid, but I think they have to make at least a token effort to protect their brand from becoming generic or they can lose the trademark. Plus, even if it increases the usage of their brand name it tends to dilute the brand overall. If people refer to their crappy Comcast DVR as a Tivo the public starts to think of them as all being the same, doesn’t see the differences and advantages of the real deal, so why bother paying more for one? To use one of your examples, when I’m told to go out and buy Kleenex I give zero consideration to which brand I’m buying. They’re all more or less the same – they’re kleenex.