Why isn't my DVR smarter?
Having spent Tuesday evening in New Jersey attending a big Acer/Gateway press event at the Liberty Science Center, I arrived home to find the first back-from-hiatus episode of Fox's sci-fi (or is that "syfy"?) show, Fringe, waiting on my Time Warner Cable DVR (hey, that's far from the nerdiest thing that goes on in the CNET halls).
Here's the problem, you've got this DVR set to "evil."
Unfortunately, the preceding program, a purportedly popular show called American Idol, ran long (once a relative rarity on network TV outside of sports broadcasts, but becoming more common with live episodes of reality shows), meaning the DVR recording was offset by about 9 minutes. The end result -- the episode cut off early, and right in the middle of a dramatic door-opening reveal. Several Twitter and Facebook updates from other viewers confirmed this was a widespread problem.
The question naturally arises: Since my cable company has access to all this TV show schedule metadata, why can't Fox push through an update when a live show runs long (something I'm told has happened before on Idol), allowing my cable provider to update its program guide, so that a DVR will know to offset its recording time?
Fortunately, the last few minutes of the program were only a Hulu click away, but it's telling that I find it easier to keep up with programs on Hulu than to cross my fingers and hope the DVR works correctly. I'm curious -- has anyone else had similar problems with their TiVo, PC-based PVR setup, or cable provider?
Update: A reader who says he works for Time Warner cable offered this explanation of the problem:
I work for Time Warner in their technical department. Guide data is published 14 days in advanced so there is no way to publish an update to lets say about 100,000 set top boxes (stb), and successfully push it out to all STB's, especially on late notice. You can configure your recordings to run longer via the recording options from guide(highlight the show and hit ok/select) and change the end time.
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It's really frustrating when you come home and 5-10 minutes of your fav show is chopped because of stupid American Idol!
The worst part? We don't Hulu up here, and I'm not sure if there even is a Canadian alternative... we can't even watch the shows online because of our IP and brodcast rights.
Could anyone help me out with that legally? ;)
At the risk of sounding like a DVR snob it is the lack of features in cable company provided DVRs that prompted me to invest in Tivo units. Now if I could just do something about those darn FCC recording flags that prevent me from backing up content - an evil side effect of the digital conversion.
At the risk of sounding like a New York City snob. Where do you guys live that your primitive cable companies force you to pay 2 to 3 hundred dollars for a Tivo and pay for the monthly service (or lifetime service). I guess it true everything about New York is better.
My TiVo does a good job with schedule changes that come with a few days notice (like how some episodes of Battlestar Galactica ran 9 or 11 minutes long, it didn't skip a beat), and some of the predictable things (like how the credits gag on Scrubs always crosses the hour mark by exactly 4 seconds) can be fixed by manual adjustment, but I just wish that when you set a show to record, it starts and stops the recording based on a live flag that is sent over the line.
So a show is scheduled to start at a certain time, but will begin recording early if a "signal" is sent along the line, telling the TiVo that the show is beginning. Also, the show won't stop until another signal is sent, telling the TiVo that the show is over. Maybe, if no signal is sent, the show will automatically end 5 minutes after the scheduled time or something.
It's not that complicated...
The other thing I would like is a trim function, so that I can be cautious when recording a show by setting 5 extra minutes, and then delete the 2 or 3 extra minutes I didn't really need later. Also, when I record a live event I want to hold on to, like, say, the presidential inauguration, I can delete the "pre/post-roll" without deleting the whole recording, so I don't have 4 extra hours of HD footage on my TiVo sitting around like deadweight.
If, as another CNET story alludes to, technology allows me to wave my hands around to change the channel on my TV, why can't the cable providers actively update their programming data? Is it really that hard?
Andrewnoah
I run into the same problems as in the article after over time sporting events too, sometimes up to 45+ minutes. I haven't gotten around to recording the show that comes on afterwards, I've just watched it online, which really makes me wonder why I bother paying for cable and a DVR.
I have always had this problem ever since VRCs came out. It's not just a DVR problem.
The solution is simple. If you are recording one program, or several, always add 15 minutes to the start and end of recording.
Sure, your recording will be a half hour longer (boo hoo), but you will get your entire show.
And don't whine about it making your recordings longer or taking up too much room on your hard drive. With a VCR I used to do this, and there's not as much space on a VHS tape as there is on a hard drive.
I have a DVR now, but it just uses a DVDr/rw and not a hard drive. So, I use a DVD RAM disc and guess how many of my recorded shows I've missed or lost portions of?
None. Deal with it.
Why can't the network/providers update the metadata more often? I'm tired of my DVR recording every freakin episode of South Park when I have it set to only record "new" episodes.
And also sometimes a show (PTI on ESPN) will be pushed to ESPN 2 because of some kind of breaking news or sports event that runs long. When I get home to watch PTI (which can no longer be accessed on ESPN.com without paying), all I get is a recording of a bottom crawl reading: PTI is airing on ESPN2. Thanks, try telling my DVR that.
Brandon
If you are like Riverdome and have stone age DVR then maybe you should move from Utah!
I had the same issues with my DVR from Insight Cable (uses Time Warner Cable network in Columbus). Having moved, we decided to try a different cable provider. We chose AT&T Uverse.
The AT&T system makes the changes as the programs shifts during the day for whatever reason. Only when a planned recorded program starts and is interrupted by the news or govt does it show the unintended programming. But if a game runs longer and pushes other shows back, the AT&T DVR will record the planned show in it's entirety.
Incidently, something like that would also give control to the broadcasters. Suppose they didn't want you to record a show, they could transmit these "bookends" intermittently to just stop your recording. You'd have to either keep restart your recording or go back to the old method of defining a start and stop time.
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by whycali
April 8, 2009 11:15 AM PDT
- Anybody that watches prime time Sunday shows on CBS knows that the network could not care less if you get 30 minutes of Without a Trace and 30 of The Unit.
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by ikramerica--2008
April 8, 2009 1:00 PM PDT
- Because Football has better ratings and more ad revenue. So does 60 minutes. So they won't lose either part of either of those shows.
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by doclee7123
April 20, 2009 6:54 AM PDT
- Yes. The same thing happens using DirecTV. I have actually set the Unit to record with an extra hour because of that. I wouldn't think that the metadata push would be all that difficult. When I go online and set a DVR to record from DirecTV.com, it takes less than a few seconds to update that specific DVR and start the recording. I would think that a bulk meta data listing update push wouldn't be that difficult to do.
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