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DVR scheds fixed in a New York minute

DVR scheds fixed in a New York minute

Dan Ackerman Editorial Director / Computers and Gaming
Dan Ackerman leads CNET's coverage of computers and gaming hardware. A New York native and former radio DJ, he's also a regular TV talking head and the author of "The Tetris Effect" (Hachette/PublicAffairs), a non-fiction gaming and business history book that has earned rave reviews from the New York Times, Fortune, LA Review of Books, and many other publications. "Upends the standard Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg technology-creation myth... the story shines." -- The New York Times
Expertise I've been testing and reviewing computer and gaming hardware for over 20 years, covering every console launch since the Dreamcast and every MacBook...ever. Credentials
  • Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
Dan Ackerman
Over the past few years, several TV networks, NBC in particular, have gotten into the unfortunate habit of shifting their start and end times by a minute or two. While watching your favorite show from, say, 9:01 to 9:31 isn't that big an inconvenience, try telling that to your TiVo or other DVR device, which is easily flummoxed by orders to tape two shows that overlap by a minute.

These days, even the basic cable company DVR box has two tuners, so it's less of a problem, but NBC should still be commended for going to go back to the good old days of keeping a program in its time slot, which strikes us as a pretty simple thing to do, really. Legions of time-shifting fans take to the Internet to rejoice.