No, I mean a long-established Season Pass and it'll only manage to record the last 59 minutes.


Clarify, please. Is the recording itself only 59 minutes long instead of the expected 60 minutes? If it is in fact the full 60 minutes, then in all likelihood the broadcaster started the program a minute early. That is, the show was scheduled to start at 8pm and actually started at 7:59pm. Tivo, of course, started recording at 8pm just as it was supposed to do.

NBC network (I think it was NBC) a couple of years ago thought they'd be clever and scheduled some of their shows to begin a minute before the hour, on the theory that they would lock people in a minute earlier and they wouldn't surf around the other channels looking for something better. That meant that for TiVo users, NBCs "early-start" show had to compete not just against the 8pm shows, but also against the 7pm shows as well. NBC discontinued that policy after a lot of people complained, but in my case it was too late. I had already deleted every season pass from my TiVo that had an early start time, and I have never, ever watched any of those shows again, even though NBC discontinued the practice.

As for your stations (perhaps) starting shows a minute early sometimes... I'll trade you TV stations any time. Here in Alaska, all the network programming is time-shifted, which means that the local TV stations can play the shows any time they like, which means they put in extra commercials and start the programs late -- as much as six to eight minutes late quite frequently. So now when I start to watch a show on my TiVo, the first thing I do is click to the end of the show, and if there aren't credits rolling, I delete the show without watching it. Probably 25% of everything I record gets deleted that way.

tanstaafl.

No, it's clearly one-hour shows, properly scheduled, for which it's failing to record the first minute or so. It hasn't happened in a while, but I seem to remember that it actually marks it as "partial" on the, uh, details screen.

Quote:
No, it's clearly one-hour shows, properly scheduled, for which it's failing to record the first minute or so. It hasn't happened in a while, but I seem to remember that it actually marks it as "partial" on the, uh, details screen.

It's a known problem. The recordings start based on the broadcast time for the channel the tuner is currently set to. Needless to say, if the time (and the shows) on the channel you want to record is running a bit early...

No, he's saying he knows it's specifically NOT that problem. The schedule says to record from 8 to 9, but the unit is only getting the show from 8:01 to 9, with the first minute missing and the show info saying that the recording is "partial".

Interesting. I've heard that TivoToGo is a little spotty, but this could put a bit of a cramp in selling TV shows through the iTunes store. It just narrows the number of people willing to pay $2 for a show they could see or record to a DVR for free.

In fact, the most recent episode of Prison Break it only managed to record the last 34 minutes.

Can do. Is the issue the simple fact that suggestions are on, or is it that the recordings take up so much space?

I didn't mean to suggest that suggestion recordings were taking precedence somehow, but that a completely full drive (which is what happens when you leave suggestions on and don't clear them out would accomplish) might cause the TiVo to be sluggish. I do remember that upgrading the hard drive on my older DirecTiVo caused everything to slow down significantly.

I'd guess it was too many season passes and/or autorecord wishlists.


Doubtful.

I routinely run my TiVo with 50 or more season passes, and I have never had any problems like you describe.

tanstaafl.

a completely full drive ... might cause the TiVo to be sluggish.

No.

Before TiVo starts a recording, it checks to see that there is enough hard drive space available to record the program at whatever quality settings you have specified.

If there is not enough room, it does not do the recording at all, and posts a messgae to that effect in the "To Do List".

tanstaafl.

Did you go thru every station and thumbs up and down all the shows on the stations you watch? If you did this it could be working hard on getting you suggestions or it could even be recording HDTV and that is causing other things to slow down.

Since I just had this (F###ing power company) happen. Do you have your DirectTiVo on a UPS? My UPS didn't outlast the power outage tonight and when the power came back on the TiVo started recording shows from the middle. It doesn't say anywhere in the history of why it didn't start on time.

Yeah, I've had that happen, but I know that it didn't happen this time, because my alpha-sort option was still on. When the power goes (or it reboots for any reason) I have to reenter the special code. Good guess, though.

Argh. Okay, people, I've had a TiVo since the Series 1 units. I know how it's supposed to work.

You're not following me. I'm not suggesting that it didn't record it because it didn't have enough space, but the fact that the drive is 99% full might have an effect on the speed of the system in general.

I wouldn't have expected it to be 30 minutes slow, but I can totally believe that there is some slowness issue that is causing it to start recordings a little bit late. When it can sometimes take a minute for it to go back to the Main Menu, I can believe that it might have as much trouble getting around to start recording on time.

Oh, another issue is that it hasn't been plugged up to a phone line in months.