I had an epiphany the other day about getting my TiVo to do what I want it to do when recording wish-list programs.

First, a bit of background.

My top priority in my "Season Pass" section is a wish-list for "Auto Racing". TiVo will record any sort of motor race activity ahead of anything else. This is what I want it to do.

However, since virtually every live motorsports event takes longer than the network thinks it will take, I have had to set the season pass options to record the specified program length plus an additional hour. All this works just fine, except...

There is a half-hour kids animated cartoon called "F1 Grand Prix" or some silly thing that is classified as "motor racing" and is thus picked up by my wish list. No big deal, except that sometimes it starts less than an hour and a half before a "real" motor racing program. (half an hour for the show, and the extra hour for the season pass option...) When this happens, it pre-empts the show I want to see.

A similar thing occurs with NBC's "Countdown to Green" show, a 30-minute pre-race show that goes right into the race itself. Because I have the extra hour set in the season pass option, Countdown to Green then pre-empts the motor race itself. I don't particularly want to watch the Countdown show.

So, here's what I did:

I set up specific season passes for "Countdown to Green" and the cartoon show. Not wish lists, but season passes, pointing to the specific show and TV channel. Then, I made certain that those two passes were set to the very bottom of the season pass priority list. Now, since they are seperated from the wish list motor sports recordings, they no longer share the high priority of the wish list, and the wish list recordings trump them.

It would be so much easier if TiVo just had a "negative wish list" function, so I could tell it to never record certain things...

tanstaafl.