Wife won't delete recordings

[timckelley]

I've got an 80 hour series two TiVo. We've several season passes, with the option: "Keep until I delete". I've watched everything I want, and am ready to delete, but my wife is severely behind on watching the programs. The TiVo is almost full now, and often when I try to schedule a new program it says it can't schedule because it's out of memory.

(Actually, it's projecting that by the time the show airs, it'll be out of memory because of the "To Do" list, but as the season's really over now, the only stuff in my To Do list are 3 season passes my wife has set up for our 3 year old son -- educational cartoons. These are also "keep until I delete", but my wife has agreed to let me archive these to VHS as soon as they record. Therefore, by the time my desired shows will air, the TiVo really won't be out of memory, but it doesn't know that. A solution is for me to wait until just before the air date, and then schedule a recording.)

My wife is unwilling to delete anything, because she wants to watch it all. (There's quite a prodigious amount recorded right now.) She also doesn't know when she'll have time to watch stuff. She won't change "Keep until I delete" to an expiration date, because she can't guarantee when she'll watch the stuff. Our TiVo is effectively no longer an 80 hour TiVo, but a 6-7 hour TiVo, and it's still shrinking. Soon I'll be TiVoless. [sounds of shocked awe]. She's jeopardizing my TiVo experience. Solutions?

[LooseWiring]

Upgrade.

Your wife preferrably, but upgrading your TiVo should work almost as well.

[LooseWiring]

Another solution is to hand her a box of blank videos and tell her to start dubbing.

Another option that won't have much of an immediate benefit is to only allow her to record shows in basic quality.

Or, buy a new TiVo.

[martinp13]

Get your wife her own TiVo. Seriously, that's what a lot of people have done. And if your schedules are that different, it probably makes the most sense.

Why not archive her stuff to VHS? Giving her the tapes doesn't cut it, since you have to essentially "watch it" to dub to VHS.

And I know you can't say it, but she's being really rude. If she's that far behind, she should tell you to go ahead and delete one of the series to make room. Besides, once it "fills up", it won't record anything else, so she'll miss some episodes.

[msu2k]

Buy her her own Tivo. If it's that big of a problem, it's worth it.

[stevel]

Get a second TiVo for your stuff.

[TiVoChick]

The extra TiVo definitely does the job. I have 2 teenage kids and our viewing habits aren't always the same -- we often want to TiVo different programs at the same time. So now we have 3 TiVos and there's no more fighting.

[timckelley]

Gosh, I'd hate to shell out for a second TiVO, but it would solve problems. I think what I may do is wait until her programs are about to delete... that may motivate her to start watching her stuff.

I'm a little confused by the order TiVo will use to decide what to delete. I hear that the first thing it deletes is the suggestions. Once that's done, I would think it would delete the ones that say "until space needed" before the ones that say "Keep until I delete". Once the former is gone, I assume it starts attacking the latter. But within those two categories, what order does it use? Note: In the season pass manager I moved shows up and down the list thinking it would affect the priority. Will it delete all episodes of one show before attacking another?

[ashu]

Originally posted by timckelley


I'm a little confused by the order TiVo will use to decide what to delete.

Mostly right, except I understand that when the entire TiVo is full of KUID shows, NOTHING will be deleted. It will just stop recording new stuff :)

I would also suggest you upgrade, but it would ...
1. Make her procrastinate more :)
2. Delay the inevitable - a full 200+ hour TiVo as opposed to an 80 hour!

I upgraded weeks ago from 80 to 80+120, and upped the recording quality (I had grown to loathe Basic Quality, and some shows don't look good enough at medium either!), so I was able to relax a week or so before it filled up again!

A second TiVo might be your better, if not cheaper option.

[Riggstonia]

forget the new tivo, get a new wife

[allan]

A second Tivo is the best choice if you can afford it. Then you won't be bothered if she fills hers with KUID (Keep Until I Delete). An alternative is to save everything to VCR. That's less time consuming than actually watching the shows, since you don't have to be sitting at the tube while it saves it. As for what gets deleted when, suggestions go first, then the Keep Until Space Needed. Basically, if it has a yellow exclaimation point, it could go anytime. The solid yellow will expire in a day. Tivo never touches the KUID's. They're there until you (or your wife) deletes them.

[Fustanella]

TiVo will never delete "Keep until I delete" shows; only humans are authorized to do that. The error you mentioned earlier demonstrates that.

[mbalgeman]

Originally posted by allan
A second Tivo is the best choice if you can afford it. Then you won't be bothered if she fills hers with KUID (Keep Until I Delete).

Until she fills up your TiVo with her KUID stuff. :) I can see the conversation now...
Wife: I can't record my show because my TiVo is full. Can you record it on your TiVo for me?
...

Honestly, with most shows being in re-runs at this point, you might just be able to ride this out for a couple weeks until the wife starts to catch up. Upgrading to a bigger hard drive will give you a bigger buffer for the next season of First Runs, so it might be worth doing it for the future.

Another option is make the kid's shows season pass "Save until space needed". That way you can set up the other shows to record, then change the kid's show's season pass back to KUID. I've never tried it, but I think that would work.

[drosoph]

Ok, get her her own TiVo ... I think you will win some points for doing so (I did) ... and it just *helps* the marriage in the long-run. We got our second and never looked back !

[dgh]

Originally posted by timckelley
Gosh, I'd hate to shell out for a second TiVO, but it would solve problems.

Have you tried running the math by her? ie time to catch up = hours recorded / (average hours available to watch TV each night - average hours of "important" stuff TiVo records each night). Is the denominator even positive? :D

[stevel]

Originally posted by dgh
Have you tried running the math by her? ie time to catch up = hours recorded / (average hours available to watch TV each night - average hours of "important" stuff TiVo records each night). Is the denominator even positive? :D I take it you're not married, if you are offering such a suggestion seriously. :D

[Mike20878]

It's a pain, but I go through and extend the keep until date on shows that are in danger of deletion. I'm trying to watch as much as I can to catch up...:(

[foo monkey]

Start deleting her programs, one at a time, but don't tell her. If she finds out, which she probably won't, apologize. She's not going to divorce you over television.

[allan]

Originally posted by foo monkey
Start deleting her programs, one at a time, but don't tell her. If she finds out, which she probably won't, apologize. She's not going to divorce you over television.
I wouldn't bet on that! Some people take their TV very seriously.

[edrock200]

Throw a 120gb drive in there to add to your 80gb.

[aaronw]

Originally posted by timckelley

I'm a little confused by the order TiVo will use to decide what to delete. I hear that the first thing it deletes is the suggestions. Once that's done, I would think it would delete the ones that say "until space needed" before the ones that say "Keep until I delete". Once the former is gone, I assume it starts attacking the latter. But within those two categories, what order does it use?

KUID means KUID, no ifs, ands, or buts. What you saw was that it did not allow you to schedule more things because it knew that it would have no space to put them. As far as within space needed, I think once all of them are showing the yellow (!) I *think* it's just in order of when the 'save until date' is, but I'm not sure - I never let myself get that far behind the TiVo because I know I'd have to spend a whole weekend trying to get up to date.

[foo monkey]

Tell her she's being selfish.

[Mike20878]

Originally posted by foo monkey
Tell her she's being selfish.

Oh, that'll fix everything! :p

Out of curiousity, what programs does she have saved? My wife had me TiVo'ing all kinds of reality crap...

Mike

[rsnaider]

Add another vote to upgrade...

I guess that could either be the wife or the TiVo. :)

[allan]

Originally posted by Mike20852
Out of curiousity, what programs does she have saved? My wife had me TiVo'ing all kinds of reality crap...

Mike
EuYuck!!:p

[JPA2825]

Why not simply tape to VHS as you watch the program? Then she gets the benefit of the 60x FF and you use less tapes b/c all the commercials are edited out. She can hardly complain about that setup.

I recommend that you put each show on a different tape in chronological order. Also be sure to tape the Now Playing Screen to make sure which one you're taping.

Finally, when I'm done watching and I want my wife to know that I've watched it, we FF to 5 min. mark. That way if I start a show that is at 5 min., I know I can delete when I'm done watching.

[Jonathan_S]

As far as within space needed, I think once all of them are showing the yellow (!) I *think* it's just in order of when the 'save until date' is, but I'm not sure

IIRC the tivo actually deletes the oldest expired show, not the show that has been expired the longest. Normally this is the same show, but if you have extended the save until date on some shows that might not be the case.

[Davidian]

Tell her that 2 shows are getting deleted every day. Let her decide if she wants to do it, or if you will have to.

[edrock200]

Tell her you got an error message that the Tivo is very tired of holding all that information and that it will begin to drop some of it soon if it's not watched or deleted. The message also warned that save until I delete is very stressful for the Tivo and causes wierd problems. It then said that no guide data will be downloaded because it's too full. It's filled up it's long term memory and now everything is being stored in short term memory. It's a very critical situation!
:):):):):)

[Timber]

Delete her stuff and blame it on a TiVo bug!

-=Tim=-

[Polcamilla]

Okay, she's kind of in denial here, but what I think would *REALLY* help is a brief lesson on the different save options available.

Keep At Most = 1 - 5 or ALL

-This is the most BRILLIANT delete option of all, particularly for kids' shows. I'm really confused that she's having your archive the kids shows to tape. How many kids' shows does she have on tape already? How old are your kids? Do they *really* care which particular episode they're watching (and if they do, are they actually not old enough to understand how to watch/delete, themselves?). In our house, we use Keep At Most extensively for my 2 1/2 yr. old's shows. Since we know how many are being kept, we know exactly how many hours his stuff takes up. And since he doesn't care *which* episodes he watches, we know that he'll always have an episode (or two or five) to watch and that they'll be different, so we don't get sick of seeing the same thing over and over and over. We also never have to delete these shows when he's done watching because we know they'll be overwritten by new shows when the new shows air (and, not deleted BEFORE then). And, of course, if we are taping 3 shows at KAM=1, then we know his stuff takes up 1 1/2 hrs. of space on our TiVo. It will never take up *more* than 1 1/2 hrs. of space and nothing that we watch will ever get deleted for his shows because his older shows are getting deleted to make the space for the new show.

- Save Until = <Date>, Space Needed, I Delete

Most of the shows spouse and I care about are 'Save Until Space Needed'. We have a 60 hr. box and stuff tends not to get deleted until it's about 2 weeks old (actually, right now we have all of Firefly sitting at the bottom of our TiVo and still have stuff lasting two weeks---I think it's because we're watching less TV than when we first got our TiVo). We delete things when we're finished with them and sometimes delete things unwatched if we know we're not going to watch them (sitcom reruns, etc.). If a show we *really* care about gets down within the last 10 or so programs and we haven't watched it, I'll switch it to 'Save Until I Delete'. Then, when we *do* watch TV, we start at the BOTTOM of the list, watching the SUID programs first, then the SUSN. Sunday I did a marathon session of 'American Dreams' and got caught up for the season after not watching it in over a month. We have about two months worth of new Smallvilles to catch up on. Most of the SUSN stuff has a yellow dot with a ! in it by the time we watch it, so we don't use that to gauge its deletion likelyhood, but instead go by how close to the bottom it is. If it's the 5th show from the bottom, 1 hr. long, and the 4 things under it are 1/2 hr. sitcoms, then I know I need to watch it soon, because we've only got about 2 hrs. of recording time before it goes poof!

If stuff has been sitting for a *long* time as SUID at the bottom of the TiVo *or* gets to the bottom without me noticing and gets deleted before it's watched or switched to SUID, then I just decide we didn't *really* care enough about it to make it a priority and let it go. Plus, I figure that *everything* will show up in syndication or on DVD someday.

(I also have a few things set at KAM=2, primarily HGTV stuff and similar things that don't have any kind of story arc across episodes. I tried setting my 'Friends' reruns that way once and switched it because the different stations *do* show them in order and I'd get annoyed if I didn't have one in sequence if I was watching them.)

If your wife really has that much stuff on the TiVo and she's not watching any of it, sounds like she wouldn't've had the chance to watch it if she was TiVoless and she's just hoarding shows because she can and not really thinking about what she wants to do with it. Just like money is useless if not *eventually* spent, TV is useless if not eventually watched.

I'd teach her how to use the delete options a bit more intelligently and let her get a feel for how long stuff tends to stay on her TiVo under 'normal' circumstances (setting everything to SUID isn't really considered normal usage since the TiVo was never designed to archive television). Once she has a sense for how long shows tend to last and figures out how to really prioritize the shows she cares about and make time at some point in her life for them, she may do better. If she just can't do that, then I feel sorry for you, because if she's hoarding TV then I'm sure she's hoarding other things in her life too, and I can say from personal experience that this kind of behavior usually brings a lot more frustration and discontent than satisfaction. Have her check out www.flylady.net and good luck!

[allan]

One thing your wife hasn't caught on to yet. It's probably not possible to watch everything Tivo records! The best she can hope for is to watch the best shows in Now Playing. Something will either get deleted, or not recorded in the first place for lack of space.

[jzawilski]

As a wife and as a future TiVo-er, I say give her this TiVo (warmly and without resentment) and buy a new one for yourself. It's the most healthy answer for your marriage!

[Joey303]

Jzawilski: best suggestion yet!

[bkc56]

I've done several of the things suggested in this thread.

First, we have two Tivo's. One is for my wife's stuff and the kid's stuff. If it fill up, I don't have to stress about it. ;) The other Tivo is for my stuff and the stuff that both my wife and I watch.

Next, both Tivo's have been upgraded with more space, but of course that only delays the problem.

Third, on the my/our Tivo, I record everything as KUID. If it's my show, I watch and delete it. If it's our show and we watch it together it's deleted. If I watch it I change it to 'yellow-dot' for her to watch and delete. The key idea here is that if she falls to far behind (and she's WAY behind right now) the some of the old stuff will simply vanish without failing to record anything new.

Having lived through one Tivo (and the stress I felt as it filled up) the only long-term solution (if your wife doesn't see-the-light) will be to get a second Tivo.

[Azure]

Definitely give her the current TiVo and tell her she's responsible for it. Explain the situation, that once it's filled, it will stop recording. Then buy yourself a new TiVo, with more space of course, and forbid her to record anything on it. :)

[MediaLivingRoom]

Get a DVD-Recorder.

or wait for a US version of the Sony NDR-XR1

[samkuhn]

You really should upgrade your Tivo to a large drive size. A 120-160GB drive will cost about $70-$120 and will more than double your space. The process is reasonably straightforward. Visit the upgrade forum.

I would suggest that you help your wife ween herself from keep-until-I-delete. Maybe a bit of negotiation to only use that on her three most favorite shows, and the rest go under "delete when space is needed". My wife and I have a 40+120 and it allows us to keep shows for 1-2 months before they delete, depending on how much other junk we watch. You could also ask her to not use KUID, but instead just keep reseting the delete date on the shows. At least that way it will be a bit of a nuisance to continually reset the timer on 30 shows, and a reminder that the tivo is full of shows that aren't being watched. Recording at lower quality will also free up some space, if you can tolerate it.

[hokiepolk]

I agree...buy yourself your own TIVO, and tell your wife she has an early anniversary present.

[steuert]

If you buy another TiVo, it will probably just be a matter of time until she fills that one up. She just can't bear the idea of erasing something she "might" want to look at in the future. Reminds me of a friend who taped hundreds of hours of TV movies to watch after he retired, but then never watched one.

If you must humor her, then IMHO probably the best answer is to transfer the TiVo recordings to something with removable media, such as a VCR or DVD recorder. When she sees the actual cost and inconvenience of keeping all this old junk around, maybe she will realize that, if she hasn't gotten around to watching a recording after a few weeks, she probably never will; and that in any event "it's only TV" and hardly worth archiving forever.

[wa2joc]

Separate TiVo's are like separate bathrooms - the secret to a happy marriage. :)

[Fustanella]

This really boils down to whether he has his wife set to "Keep Until I Delete" or if he entered into one of those til-death-do-us-part things. :D

[dgh]

Well clearly she's not "save until space needed" or she'd be gone already :D

[martinp13]

Be sure you let us know what the decision is, and how it works out. :) We're nosy that way.

[Turtle]

If it were me, I'd dump the wife. Already done that twice,
wait......oops....they both dumped me. But I'm living
happily with my 3 tivos.
turtle

[sw10025]

Fellow Member of the "Tivo Pigs" Anonymous Survivors' Club

Well, as a woman, I feel kind of funny even suggesting that this be done to another woman, but it sounds like buying another Tivo will only delay, not solve the problem. She's definitely in denial that she'll ever have time to watch all those programs, not with a small child(ren) she won't. My mother is also a "Tivo pig". I bought the original 30 hour Tivo for both my parents as a joint Christmas present, but my father was never allowed to use it, not without a lot of bitching on her part. They upgraded to an 80 hour Tivo during the promotion a couple of months ago, and I said something to my father about maybe now he would get to use it, and he said "Don't be ridiculous. She'll just hog the new Tivo." Sure enough, he doesn't even have an hour recording on the new Tivo because the relentless nag wouldn't allow it without excessive bitching.

My suggestion: change the "save" date from "save until I delete" to "save until Saturday" on some of her less favorite programs, or the oldest recordings, and say nothing. It might motivate her to watch them if she sees those exclamation points, and if it doesn't, or she doesn't even get to the TV to notice them, well, its not like YOU deleted them. The machine deleted them, not you. That'll take care of the immediate need. For the long term, summer will help, but next fall, consider changing "save until I delete" to "save 7 days" -- that'll probably keep at least a couple of weeks worth of each program, unless you have an excessive number of season passes.

The advice given earlier about the childrens' programs is also excellent -- kids want to watch the program. They don't care about the episode. As long as they have some, and some turnover, they're happy.

[timckelley]

Wow... so many responses. I feel I should give more background. We just got our TiVo a couple of months ago, and before that, we used to use a VCR to manually tape shows to watch later. We built up quite a backlog of tapes at the time of the TiVo purchase. My wife actually has watched part of the tape backlog, and a little bit of the TiVO backlog, but she still definitely has more tape backlog to watch, not to mention a whole bunch of TiVo backlog.

We have a 3 1/2 year old son, which keeps her very busy; that's why she has trouble watching the backlog. I myself have completely caught up and have no backlog. Here's why:

1) I have less shows on my list than she does. Several of her shows I simply refuse to watch because I've made a decision on how many shows I want to watch, based on how many hours I'm willing to spend watching TV. My list is not small, however, but it's smaller than hers.

2) I do most of my watching late at night after both my wife and son have gone to sleep. Sometimes I just stay up later, other times I go to sleep when they do, but wake up in the middle of the night and can't sleep, so I watch then too. So I personally have no tape or TiVo backlog.

Another thing... we temporarily have a reprieve because the seasons are over and mostly reruns are being shown now, so our To Do list is fairly small. One problem is that we have 3 season passes for kid shows, and sometimes they run marathons (even now), and then the To Do list gets big. (They're KUID-all episodes.) Right now, if I try to schedule something more than 2 or 3 days out it says the memory is full. That was a really neat suggestion somebody made about temporarily changing the season passes to KU space needed, schedule my show, then change the season passes back to KUID. I think I'll try that.

Recall that we offload the kids shows to tape as soon as we can. This really does seem silly to me. My son actually doesn't like the shows because he's too young to appreciate them. But my wife wants to save them on tape for the day that he'll like them. So far, we recorded about 6-12 episodes per season pass. She doesn't want any of them missed. I think I should have a frank talk with her and suggest that when the time comes for him to appreciate such shows, there will be plenty available at that time in the guide data (maybe not *that* show, but some appropriate shows), and we can TiVo them then. But she doesn't always think logically in these areas, so we'll see how that conversation goes.

One more thing I worry about. We got our TiVo in the middle of a season. What happens next year when a new season starts? If my wife doesn't keep up, there's going to be awfully large number of episodes she'll want stored. Maybe upgrading is an option, if the new buffer is large enough to last through the season so that she can catch up in the summer.

[timckelley]

P.S. I hope my wife doesn't discover this thread. Fortunately she doesn't know about this forum.

[timckelley]

New question about deletion.

Suppose all your suggestions are gone, and the only thing in your TiVo memory are season passes, some with KUID, and some with KU space needed. Suppose your TiVo is full and it needs to record something. Of course it won't touch the KUID, so it attacks the other. Will it delete in chronological order of when they were recorded, or will it first delete all shows lowest in the season pass manager list first before going to a different series? I'm assuming that's why we're able to move shows up and down in the season pass manager.

[bmackiew]

Count me in for the idea of having separate TiVos. My wife and I did just fine with one TiVo, as long as there was nothing she liked to watch. Once one of her friends introduced her to HGTV, it all went to hell in a handbasket, and I suddenly had far more home decorating shows on my drive than I thought a human could watch.

And I was right. She can't watch them all. So I got myself a DirecTiVo, and gave her the standalone to do whatever she wanted with. She has total responsibility for getting her shows off the drive, whether it's by watching and deleting, deleting without watching, or doing nothing and watching her shows get overwritten. Removing myself from the equation made our lives much easier, and she's become more involved in deciding what shows have a higher priority to her - just like it should be.

Now I need to get one for my daughter, and life will be even better. Clifford and The Wire don't really mix.

Bill

[timckelley]

I should say also that as of the last few days my wife has increased the available memory by watching a little bit, and changing some shows to worst quality. So instead of being down to our last 2-3 hours, we've got about 7-8 hours of room on it. I still say that her rate of freeing up is going to have to increase when the new season starts in Fall. Here's what I think my options are:

1) get a second TiVo
2) upgrade our current one
3) archive more to tape
4) when the Fall comes and we become in imminent danger of filling up the TiVO with KUID causing shows not to record, I need to negotiate an agreement with her to change KUID to something else.

If an old episode gets deleted, I say it's more important for me not to miss a new episode than for her not to miss an old episode, especially if I'm keeping up and she's not.

Truthfully though, she does feel guilty for not keeping up, but she really wants to see all her backlogged shows.

[timckelley]

I like the second TiVo idea, but it's so expensive! $250 for the TiVO, $300 for the lifetime service. Total $550 layout for a second TiVo. That's a little hard to digest.

[TiMo Tim]

Originally posted by timckelley
Recall that we offload the kids shows to tape as soon as we can. This really does seem silly to me. My son actually doesn't like the shows because he's too young to appreciate them. But my wife wants to save them on tape for the day that he'll like them. So far, we recorded about 6-12 episodes per season pass. She doesn't want any of them missed. I think I should have a frank talk with her and suggest that when the time comes for him to appreciate such shows, there will be plenty available at that time in the guide data (maybe not *that* show, but some appropriate shows), and we can TiVo them then. But she doesn't always think logically in these areas, so we'll see how that conversation goes.
Just out of curiosity (as the father of 2-yr-old and 4.5-yr-old boys), what kinds of shows is she recording?

We've done what a few others here have suggested: keep at most = 1, delete when space needed. We've got about 6-10 season passes for them, and all are set up this way. Our 4.5-yr-old loves Rescue Heroes, which is only on once per week-- but he'll watch the same episode every morning after he's ready for school. Our 2-yr-old says "Watch Bear [in the big Blue House]" and there it is for him. Yes, they're TiVo-spoiled.

We recently had our Sony series 1 serviced (failing hard drive), and had to be without the TiVo for about 2 weeks. It was a big shock to the system for our sons (and my wife!). They're much better now, though.

I've had to tighten up some of my wife's season passes, too. I had to limit her to 3 "Trading Spaces", and maybe 3 "30 Minute Meals". Marathons of Trading Spaces would fill up the list quickly. I also moved it down in priority, below all of our prime-time passes. Otherwise, it was pre-empting some good shows.

Good luck with the fight!

BTW, my opinion (since you don't want to shell out for another TiVo) is to put a stop to all the archiving. Nothing gets a default of KUID. If you need to keep it longer, use it sparingly. With summer here, you'll be spending more time not watching TV, so it's not going to get any better. Also, go back & adjust recording quality on shows that aren't worthy of the space (unless it's unwatchable on a big-screen).

Tim

[allan]

Originally posted by timckelley
New question about deletion.

Suppose all your suggestions are gone, and the only thing in your TiVo memory are season passes, some with KUID, and some with KU space needed. Suppose your TiVo is full and it needs to record something. Of course it won't touch the KUID, so it attacks the other. Will it delete in chronological order of when they were recorded, or will it first delete all shows lowest in the season pass manager list first before going to a different series? I'm assume that's why we're able to move shows up and down in the season pass manager.

I think it's in order of when the shows were recorded, oldest first. I don't think the priority on Season Passes has any effect on when it's deleted. It just determines which show gets recorded if you have 2 shows at the same time.

[timckelley]

>> Just out of curiosity (as the father of 2-yr-old and 4.5-yr-old boys), what kinds of shows is she recording? <<

The three shows are:

Liberty's Kids
Cyberchase
Between the Lions

>> We've done what a few others here have suggested: keep at most = 1, delete when space needed. <<

That's not really applicable to us because our son currently has no interest in any of the three shows. He also doesn't know how to talk yet because he's autistic, and doesn't do much TV requesting except for some video tapes he watches repeatedly. (He's currently 3 1/2 years old. My mother's pretty sure I was partially autistic too, and in fact I didn't speak until until was 4 or 5 years old.) I guess I should ask my wife how many episodes we really need to archive for a child who might never want to watch them. I think she's feels these shows are educational and for that reason she thinks he should watch them.

[phone1]

Yes I agree about the second TiVo, but don't tell your wife. Rent the "other" TiVo it's own apartment and visit it on your lunch hour and weekends. Oh yes, there will need to be the occasional over night "business trip" during sweeps week, your favorite playoffs, etc. :)

[Mike20878]

I tried setting my Wiggles SP to delete when space needed and KAM=5 yet I still have more than 5 in my now playing list. Will it only limit them to 5 when it needs space?

Thanks,
Mike

[zaknafein]

Tim,

I have nothing to add, but just wanted to say thanks for your intellegent, well-thought out posts.

You clearly have a deep understanding of the subtle nuances of the TiVo's behavior. It's refreshing to see someone post a question, and have all their facts straight.

[CrispyCritter]

Originally posted by Mike20852
I tried setting my Wiggles SP to delete when space needed and KAM=5 yet I still have more than 5 in my now playing list. Will it only limit them to 5 when it needs space? The episodes that existed before you last changed the expiration options on the SP, and any episodes for which you have manually changed the expiration date, will not count towards the 5. You shouldn't get more than 5 otherwise.

[mmascari]

Originally posted by CrispyCritter
The episodes that existed before you last changed the expiration options on the SP, and any episodes for which you have manually changed the expiration date, will not count towards the 5. You shouldn't get more than 5 otherwise.

If you change just the KAM and not the expiration, it will delete shows. I've seen instances where I change the KAM number and shows were deleted. For instance, it was 5 and I had 4 shows but haven't looked at any of them, and none are SUID. After changing the KAM number to 2, only 2 shows are left.

On the other hand, as mentioned, if you change the expiration date for a specific show, it's not counted, and I've seen this as well.

[Polcamilla]

Originally posted by timckelley
>> Just out of curiosity (as the father of 2-yr-old and 4.5-yr-old boys), what kinds of shows is she recording? <<

The three shows are:

Liberty's Kids
Cyberchase
Between the Lions


I understand how difficult it is for your wife, wanting to provide your son with the most encouragement and stimulation she can, but if he's not interested in these shows now and even *MIGHT* be later, I can guarantee she'll have no lack of options when he does show an interest.

Any kids' show that is halfway decent and even vaguely educational does not get dropped lightly. With three networks doing an intense amount of educational kids programming (PBS, Nickelodeon, and Noggin), content is definitely at a premium. They'll rotate great shows in and out of the schedule and repackage them as needed. I've taped a *lot* of vintage 70's Sesame Street for my toddler (because I loathe what they've done to Sesame Street recently) and have a current wishlist for The Electric Company so I can hoard up a bunch of the Spiderman clips and pass them on to a TiVo-less friend whose son is crazy about Spiderman. I'm not familiar with the first two shows your wife is saving but Between The Lions is a big one and I'd be shocked if it they stopped broadcasting it in the next few years.

As for her own shows, more and more programs are being offered by-the-season on DVD (for rental or purchase). When my husband and I get around to watching Buffy, this is probably how we're going to do it. She might consider just letting a few shows go for now and buying them instead of hand-archiving them so she can have them on hand for later. This is what we'll probably end up doing for Firefly (well, except, renting, not buying). And, again, one never knows when some cheesy program or another is going to get picked up by a cable channel (think Max Headroom on TechTV).

I do really think the problem is that she needs to find a way to let go of all the archiving. It sounds like she has a very full and busy life and she just doesn't need the guilt she's feeling every time she walks past or looks at the TV. Gently remind her that it is only television and that it's okay turn her back on imaginary characters in artificial circumstances.

Good luck!

[Leon WIlkinson]

Originally posted by timckelley


My wife is unwilling to delete anything, because she wants to watch it all. (There's quite a prodigious amount recorded right now.) She also doesn't know when she'll have time to watch stuff. She won't change "Keep until I delete" to an expiration date, because she can't guarantee when she'll watch the stuff. Our TiVo is effectively no longer an 80 hour TiVo, but a 6-7 hour TiVo, and it's still shrinking. Soon I'll be TiVoless. [sounds of shocked awe]. She's jeopardizing my TiVo experience. Solutions?


Find out how many hours of shows are keep until I delete... then subtract that from your 80 hours and that is what TiVo uses to tell you when things MIGHT delete.


So dub some shows then keep them and set the expiration to see when they delete/worn of pending so that could give some room and might get her to let you change the expiration( 2weeks ahead) once a week on all the shows instead

You and her need to live on the edge and just risk "your" shows ;).

Or fight fire with fire and set yours the same way so it won't record at all. If she fights dirty this might not be one of the first five options! :D

[LynnL999]

I was faced with a space problem after going on vacation during sweeps, during which a long miniseries also recorded.

To keep other stuff recording, I decided to take a cold hard look at my SP list. Some of the stuff on there that I had as KUID really didn't need to be -- for example, any of the Law & Order shows. I like them, but I won't die if I miss an episode. Anything I miss now will show up on regular reruns or TNT eventually, and it doesn't matter what order you watch that show in, or if you miss an episode. So those became keep until space needed.

I looked at my other SP's similarly, and learned that I really only had a few that I truly wanted as Record All, KUID. The rest could go if they absolutely had to, and I'd be sure of always having space for the shows that were really my top priorities.

I also had a few shows recording daily on default quality (Medium) which really could be in Basic, e.g., The Screensavers, to save more space. I don't know if either of these suggestions might help, but I hope so.

Another thing to consider with the kids' TV shows is that I'm sure kids TV won't be immune to the explosion of TV shows on DVD. (In fact kids' TV seems particularly ripe for that medium.) A $19.95 per month Netflix subscription seems to me a far more practical way to have access to such shows, without archiving yourself into a house full of tapes stacked all over :)

Good luck,
Lynn

[timckelley]

Originally posted by samkuhn
You really should upgrade your Tivo to a large drive size. A 120-160GB drive will cost about $70-$120 and will more than double your space. The process is reasonably straightforward. Visit the upgrade forum.


I just visited the upgrade forum, and unfortunately they tell me that my type of TiVo (series 2 80 hours) is designed to only hold one drive. They say there's risk of excessive heat and overtaxing the power supply if I try to add a second drive. There's the option of replacing, rather than adding, but then I won't get as much space. I wonder how large a drive I could put in there and what it would cost.

Also, the installation instructions look pretty complicated. I have installed hard drives and RAM memory, but that's about the extent of my computer hardware expertise. (I am an applications programmer, though.) I'm wondering how hard this upgrade would be.

[stevel]

Installation is easy - if you can install a hard drive in a PC. I suggest you visit www.weaknees.com for info on upgrade kits, including brackets and a fix for the power supply problem.

[Thom]

If you don't mind getting a Series 1 TiVo, try http://www.servicedvr.com/Extra/BuyExtraTivo.asp for an inexpensive standalone.

I recommend getting the HDR112; then buy a mounting bracket for a 2nd drive from http://www.9thtee.com/tivomtgbracket.htm; then buy and install a 2nd drive.

- Thom

[martinp13]

Yes, I know a second TiVo is expensive, but probly cheaper than a divorce. ;) Kidding of course, but I think it would help.

Frankly, KUID should only be used when it's a one-shot show or series that you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO SEE. If a show with a (!) gets deleted eventually, guess what: you didn't care enough about the show to watch it. :) It took me a while to realize this, but a few forced deletions made me realize that I didn't really care that the shows had been deleted! :D

One thing you might try is to get her to watch one show/episode a night, and you watch it with her, even if you've seen it or don't care about it. Maybe right before bed, or at least after the kiddo is down for the night. Given the nature of TiVo, you can clear out a series at a time rather than have to jump around.

[FlashStash]

Originally posted by edrock200
Throw a 120gb drive AT HER to add to your 80gb.

That's how I read this the first time...that might work too! ;D

FS

[joekarglo]

No, No, No! You guys are missing the forest looking at the trees. It is not acceptable to let Tivo rule your life by forcing you to watch more tv to "catch up." Tivo lets us rule the world of tv. All any hard drive is supposed to do is make sure there are plenty of your favorite shows available any time, day or night and especially on weekends. If it erases some unwatched, it is only to replace them with other good stuff. Relax!

[timckelley]

Originally posted by joekarglo
No, No, No! You guys are missing the forest looking at the trees. It is not acceptable to let Tivo rule your life by forcing you to watch more tv to "catch up." Tivo lets us rule the world of tv. All any hard drive is supposed to do is make sure there are plenty of your favorite shows available any time, day or night and especially on weekends. If it erases some unwatched, it is only to replace them with other good stuff. Relax!

But I have a problem with your statement. First let me update you all on the status with my wife. She has started making progress watching her shows and deleting them. (Sigh of relief) But, now that she's seen her newfound space, she has increased her rate of finding new shows to record. Fortunately, many of these are not KUID. (Sigh of relief). But some are KUID, and as I speak, I'm again within a couple of hours of losing my TiVo space, because almost everything on it (minus a couple of hours) is being taken up with KUID shows. (Gasp of horror).

So my problem with your post is that if the TiVo gets filled up with KUID, that means it won't record anything, and once I've seen all my stuff, I'll have to nothing to watch any on TiVo! (Gasp of horror.) The TiVo in effect, will be useless to me until she deletes some KUID.

The problem is, she's developed this hobby that I don't completely empathize with. She likes to record all sorts of classic movies (i.e. movies that might be old, but in her opinion, are really good), and then archive them to VHS. She doesn't always keep up with her job of taping them off though. (I'm sure our house has in excess of 100 VHS tapes as I speak.) However, the majority of the KUID is still just current series that she's trying to keep up with.

I'm tending to think if I upgrade, it will only delay the problem. The new space could still eventually be wiped out with KUID. So I'm starting to think that two TiVo's might be the best answer. I have a question about this, though: In general, there are three types of recordings re record:

Stuff I want to see
Stuff she wants to see
Stuff we both want to see.

The third category is not a small category, and so how to we negotiate whose TiVo gets this third category? If some goes on mine, and some on hers (i.e. we split it), the stuff that's on mine could conceivably backlog if she doesn't watch it.

[timckelley]

New question. In the meanwhile, I'm thinking I could have a defense to preserve a little bit of the TiVo until the day we get a second. Suppose I take one of my favorite series, and say "Keep at most 2 episodes", and "Keep until I delete". What exactly would this do? If two episodes are already recorded, and a third comes up, will it automatically delete the older of the two and then record the third, so that I'd again have two? If so, this is perfect: I'd always have a recent episode to watch. But this doesn't sound quite right. KUID means don't delete until the user explicitly deletes. So how could Keep at most 2 episodes, coupled with KUID ever delete, even to make room for the new episode? Could somebody explain this functionality to me?

[skanter]

Solution #1: Get a new wife.

Solution #2: Get a 120G upgrade kit from Weaknees and keep the wife.

[ac3dd]

Stuff I want to see
Stuff she wants to see
Stuff we both want to see.

The third category is not a small category, and so how to we negotiate whose TiVo gets this third category? If some goes on mine, and some on hers (i.e. we split it), the stuff that's on mine could conceivably backlog if she doesn't watch it.

For stuff you both want to see, both of you would record it on each of your TiVos, because you won't necessarily watch it at the same time. If you watch it together, delete it from both as soon as you're done.

The problem comes though if you both want to watch it but hers doesn't have space to record it. Then you'll just have to put your foot down, and either she'll have to watch it with you or miss it. If she still can't live with such exceedingly reasonable arrangements, you and she have bigger problems going on than TiVo. But my uneducated guess is that she will be sensible enough to respect that arrangement, especially if you give her the TiVo with the bigger hard drive :D.

[tivoman]

Originally posted by timckelley
New question. In the meanwhile, I'm thinking I could have a defense to preserve a little bit of the TiVo until the day we get a second. Suppose I take one of my favorite series, and say "Keep at most 2 episodes", and "Keep until I delete". What exactly would this do? If two episodes are already recorded, and a third comes up, will it automatically delete the older of the two and then record the third, so that I'd again have two? If so, this is perfect: I'd always have a recent episode to watch. But this doesn't sound quite right. KUID means don't delete until the user explicitly deletes. So how could Keep at most 2 episodes, coupled with KUID ever delete, even to make room for the new episode? Could somebody explain this functionality to me?

Hello there,

It wouldn't record the third show, you have to set it to "Keep Until Space Needed" then It will do what you said in your post. It will record the most recent two episodes. I do this with the morning and evening news where it only keeps one episode until the next showing.

Good luck,
TiVoMan

[jautor]

This (at best) will only temporarily solve space issues, but I've used the technique several times when going on vacation...

If you've got movies or other programs that tend to get repeated (e.g. cable shows, movies, etc.), you may be able to re-record the same thing in the future - basically freeing up some space for a few weeks.

For instance, I had quite a number of movies recorded from HBO sitting in Now Playing. I was going to be gone for a week, and the ToDo List showed me that several things in NP would be deleted by the time I got back (I always leave suggestions turned on, as that's an easy way to judge how much actual space is left - works better on the DirecTiVo, but anyway...). So I took a look through Now Playing, and picked out the longest programs (most disk space consumed), and did a title search. Lo and behold, there was the same movie(s) in the schedule, with showings out almost two weeks from now. Easy decision - I'm not going to watch it this week, and so I deleted the movie, and scheduled it to record again - using the airtime that was out the furthest in the future...

I was able to repeat the process several times, and managed to free up 10-15 hours of space, with the same movies back on the TiVo two weeks later. No missed shows while I was on vacation, and nothing deleted that I intended to watch... (Oh, yeah, I've already upgraded, and of course, the TiVo is *still* full of stuff I want to watch - eventually)...


Jeff

[TampaThunder]

Now understand timckelley that my last name is also Kelley so you must be family and I wouldn't make such a unique suggestion unless we were related so here goes:

There was this post just last week - http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1206630&highlight=wife+delete#post1206630 - where pinion8d complains that his wife deletes everything. Get a hold of him and offer a trade. :D :up:

[rtype]

I have the same sort of problem, only it's all me. :)

Here's how I'm addressing my problem.

1. I have an upgrade planned to 240 hours. I've seen you guys say this just delays the problem, but read the other steps first. The main things having so many hours will allow me to do are:
a. keep my movies/specials until I have time to watch them
b. record all of a series I intend to watch in order until I get the episodes I'm missing (in my case, I want to watch Sopranos beginning to end)

2. Pick the shows I absolutely want to watch, set them to record all and keep until I delete. For me, this is only three shows: Enterprise, South Park and CSI, so I'm not likely to get a big backlog here.

3. Other shows I want, set to keep 5 at most and delete as space is needed. This allows me to grab shows in syndication like The Simpsons and just watch them as it's convenient. If it deletes one I haven't seen before I get to it, no big--I'll have 4 others recorded at any given time and I'll delete the ones I know I have seen (or don't want to see again) as soon as I have time to mess with Tivo again. If the order doesn't matter and they're being run in syndication, all you really want here is to be able to watch one whenever you feel like it--this solves that problem.

Chances are you've got some stuff in category 2 that you can bump the priority down to category 3 there.

[timckelley]

Originally posted by skanter
Solution #1: Get a new wife.

Solution #2: Get a 120G upgrade kit from Weaknees and keep the wife.

I read where it's kind of difficult to upgrade 80 hour series 2 without replacing (as opposed to adding) a hard drive. So it become more expensive, and I don't think I can even so much as double my space. (If what I've read is right.)

[timckelley]

Originally posted by tivoman
Hello there,

It wouldn't record the third show, you have to set it to "Keep Until Space Needed" then It will do what you said in your post. It will record the most recent two episodes. I do this with the morning and evening news where it only keeps one episode until the next showing.

Good luck,
TiVoMan

Well, darn! That means if the hard drive fills up with KUID and then I have KAM=2 with KUSN, that means that before the 3rd episode comes up, my space becomes vulnerable to one my wife's KUID episodes on the To Do list. I.e. my space could get confiscated by my wife's list. So this solution idea of mine is not very good.

[timckelley]

Originally posted by ac3dd
For stuff you both want to see, both of you would record it on each of your TiVos, because you won't necessarily watch it at the same time. If you watch it together, delete it from both as soon as you're done.



I've approached my wife on this subject, and she thinks it's a waste to record the same show on both TiVos. She thinks that since it's using up twice the amount of HD space it could if it were just on one TiVo, that that's a waste. But she's not 100% close-minded on this. She further has suggested that category 3 be put on my TiVo. I'm hoping she was joking... I guess I'll ask her to explain that comment. Afterall, if I tend to watch things earlier than she, it would make sense to put category 3 on hers, because then I could watch it quick, and then I wouldn't be bottlenecking her with regards to holding up the release of space. Conversely, should quite conceivably bottleneck me, if category 3 were on my TiVo. Of course, there's another problem with putting category 3 on her TiVo: If she fills up her TiVo, it could stop recording new episodes, which could impact me in sitations like "Enterprise", and other shows where I don't want to miss any episodes. Putting it on both TiVos is starting to make sense to me.

[ac3dd]

Putting mutually desired programs on both does use up some more space, but it solves many of the conflicting scenarios. Remember that once the first one of you watches a program, it gets deleted from that particular box so it's not as if it's taking up double the space forever. And if you watch it together, deleting it frees up twice the space :D. If you put the commonly wanted shows on just one box, you're back to the original problem again.

Similarly, having two cars instead of one will cost you more in gas and insurance (in addition to the obvious cost of the car itself), but if the scheduling and locations of your workplaces and other activities are quite disparate, the extra car goes a long way in reducing the location and timing conflicts.

[gobiewankenobi]

Not to sound archaic, but give her a good vcr. It sounds like her viewing habits would be better supported by that than the Tivo.
1. It sounds like she knows what she wants to tape.
2. She pretty much knows when it's on.
3. She doesn't have the time to watch it right away.
4. She plans on putting the shows on tape anyway.
Keep the stuff you want to watch and both of you want to watch on the Tivo.
JAS

[Zirak]

Switch wives with the guy over in this thread:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=118564&highlight=wife+delete

[timckelley]

Originally posted by gobiewankenobi
Not to sound archaic, but give her a good vcr. It sounds like her viewing habits would be better supported by that than the Tivo.
1. It sounds like she knows what she wants to tape.
2. She pretty much knows when it's on.
3. She doesn't have the time to watch it right away.
4. She plans on putting the shows on tape anyway.
Keep the stuff you want to watch and both of you want to watch on the Tivo.
JAS

No, actually my wife has good points about why she likes TiVo better than VCR.

1. Often the VCR misses her show due to last minute program changes
2. She can more easily control which shows, and in which order they go on tape. She likes to put similar things on the same tape. I suppose she could keep her tapes labled, so she'd know which tape to put in for recording, but that doesn't solve the ordering problem within a tape.
3. If a tape runs to the end (which heppens more than you'd think) during a recording, she'd be out of luck if it wasn't on TiVo. With TiVo she can restart the show and put in a new tape.
4. Some shows she really intends to watch and not put to tape.... she just hasn't gotten around to it.

[saintpuhn]

these recordings are movies? netflix?

[timckelley]

Originally posted by saintpuhn
these recordings are movies? netflix?

Some are movies; some are series.

[teknikel]

Anything you want to see you should record on yours. You won't run out of space as soon as she would. And you have more control of what you want to watch. If you guys have more than 40 hours of stuff you both want to watch and you have 40 hrs of stuff just you want to watch, then lord help you.

kel

[gschoen]

Can this thread really have gone on this long??? Don't use KUID at all - whatever is oldest will be deleted when space is needed. If you haven't watched it yet, you were probably watching programs that were more desirable to you instead. And if it does get deleted, oh well. It's TV, that's why we have reruns. The Tivo is supposed to make TV revolve around your schedule, not you around TVs. I don't ever expect to watch most of the 130 hrs currently on my Tivo. If you don't have time to watch all the programs it's probably because you have a life and something better to be doing and should be happy. You can take satisfaction every time Tivo deletes something that it's validating you have a life other than TV. Perhaps for every 100 deletions, you can throw a "I have a life other than TV party."

Okay just kidding. But does your wife really thing she'll ever be able to watch all those 100s of video tapes? If this is a big issue between you then look out for what's to come!

[timckelley]

I have not been able to talk my wife out of using KUID. She really does think she'll eventually see all the old recordings - that or offload them to tape. By the way, even though it's an 80 hour TiVo, that's at basic quality. The time length goes way down for higher qualities. As for, does she think she'll see all 100 video tapes? Possibly not, but everything that sits on TiVo, she either wants to see or offload. But she won't say when she'll do it, because of the other things that keep her busy. Therefore: KUID. She stands by that decision.

By the way, our suggestions folder now hovers around zero, because of how filled up our TiVo is. And only a few shows sit without KUID (mostly mine). The good news is, when I come downstairs to watch TiVo late at night, and find no suggestions to watch, nor any new episodes of my limited list, often I can find one of my wife's shows to entertain me. (Our tastes have some overlap.) At least my wife's list of shows has not stagnated, because she is watching/offloading/deleting.... it's just that her ToDo list replaces what she deletes fairly promptly, not leaving me much room for any To Do list of my own.

[Thom]

You're not going to be able to change your wife's habits in this.

Either buy yourself your own TiVo, or buy one for her.

Regarding shows you both want to see, just make a simple rule: The TiVo "owner" decides how long the show stays on their TiVo.

Thus, in the case of a mutual show recorded on your TiVo, it will stay on the TiVo until either (a) both of you have watched it and then manually deleted it, or (b) the TiVo software automatically deleted it (to free space), even though she hadn't gotten around to watching it yet. (If you are in the habit of keeping your Now Playing List well-pruned, this would mean she had several days or weeks to sit down and watch it.)

Separate TiVos will keep things running smoothly, and that's worth a lot.

You can buy a refurbished Series 1 (with warranty and all accessories) for $90, and it can mount two hard drives.

- Thom

[timckelley]

Originally posted by Thom
You're not going to be able to change your wife's habits in this.

Either buy yourself your own TiVo, or buy one for her.

You can buy a refurbished Series 1 (with warranty and all accessories) for $90, and it can mount two hard drives.

- Thom

Where would I find this? Is ebay a good place to shop? What downfalls are there for the series 1 software vs. the series 2 software? I guess the big expense will be paying the monthly service twice. Somehow it doesn't seem fair that I should have to pay twice for the same guide data be loaded on two machines in the same house.

[Glen Graham]

Tim...

Sadly, and I hate to sound mean and phrase it like this, but your wife appears to have both control and hoarding issues.

She is controlling because she is steadfastly refusing to "share" the capacity on the drive. This is demeaning -- and if you refused to let her use the one family car (to go get her hair cut) because you might want to drive it around block later... SHE would consider that abuse.

Secondly, as more space was freed up, she hoarded it by setting more things to record.

Then, she has those one hundred or so tapes.

So, in a nutshell, your wife needs help. You're right - increasing capacity will not help, she'll hoard more and become more obsessive.

If/when you get your own TiVo, she will fill hers up, and see space on yours -- and then either set some stuff to record on yours, or complain to you that YOU are being mean and unfair to HER (because you have extra space and are not sharing).

Sorry again to sound harsh.

In the meantime, divide the capacity of your TiVo in two. Each of you gets to schedule ONLY enough recordings to fill your half. Fair? Yes. Will she agree? Not a chance in hell -- because (see above), she is not respecting you or your right to use the TiVo EQUALLY.

If anything is for you two to share, you each deduct half from your share of the capacity. IF you have to put it all in "your share", then you are 100% allowed to delete it the moment you watch it.

Lastly, her setting everything to KUID and hoarding to tape... is very very indicative of problems that undoubtedly go beyond the scope of this forum. Either she has some unspoken grudge against you (thus she refuses to share), or she has an obsessive-compulsive disorder (making her feel the urge to hoard) that she cannot keep in check and should honestly consult professional help for.

Lastly, she is not entirely to blame -- you are enabling her by not standing up and insisting on your fair share of the use of the TiVo.

Perhaps you would benefit if the TiVo "broke" and had to be sent back for repair (a couple of weeks)... harsh, but might help open her eyes to her obsessive-compulsive disorder.

[Glen Graham]

Originally posted by timckelley
Where would I find this? Is ebay a good place to shop? What downfalls are there for the series 1 software vs. the series 2 software? I guess the big expense will be paying the monthly service twice. Somehow it doesn't seem fair that I should have to pay twice for the same guide data be loaded on two machines in the same house.

On the other hand, to answer your questions:

eBay is, by and large, good. Often you can find units that already have a "lifetime" agreement.

Series 1 units are "stuck" on the last level of software -- no Home Media, no "Folders"... but other than that, work just fine. They have the advantage of being easily upgradable to 2 drives -- any 2 you want (so if it comes with a 30, you can add an extra 120 GB instead of having to replace it).

Let you wife have that unit, since it can easier hold more capacity.

Paying twice... get Lifetime, or consider it a small cost for a marriage. Bump your cable down a notch if you need to to save money.

[Thom]

Originally posted by timckelley
Where would I find this? Is ebay a good place to shop? What downfalls are there for the series 1 software vs. the series 2 software? I guess the big expense will be paying the monthly service twice. Somehow it doesn't seem fair that I should have to pay twice for the same guide data be loaded on two machines in the same house.

www.servicedvr.com

(link also mentioned in my first reply in this thread)

[martinp13]

Tim, I have something (http://martinp13.virtualave.net/audio/tivofull.wav) you can use soon. :)

[timckelley]

Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but I was pretty surprised just now when I visited weaknees.com . It seems that things have changed in the last month or so regarding upgradabiltity of TiVo series 2 - 80 hours.

I was initially turned off from this idea because of the weak power supply and cramped quarters for holding two hard drives in my model, but it looks like recent developments have licked this problem. Their upgrade kits include a device for staggering the startup times for the two drives, allowing the weaker power supply to be sufficient, and also cooler, quieter fans to keep the two drives cool, despite their close proximity. They say it'll even be cooler than my one drive currently is!

Now, I'm having a hard decision. I was leaning towards a his and her TiVo to solve our problems, but it looks like upgrading is a lot cheaper. For $209, plus $19 extra if I want the advanced cooling pak, I can add a 120 G to my current setup. This would give me almost 63 hours Best Quality, or almost 229 hours basic quality. (I'm assuming this includes the time on my current HD, but I'm not completely sure about that. Even greater if it's in addition!)

If I get a separate TiVo, it sounds like I need to spend at least $90 to get an old series 1 with not much space, plus $299 for a lifetime contract, plus more $ to upgrade it. (Unless somebody out there is willing to sell me a series 1 already with LifeTime for a really low price.)

I'd like to save $ and do an upgrade, but I'm kind of afraid my wife could fill this up to. Before I do this, I would need a plan/agreement between my wife and I... some way for her not to infringe on my half on the TiVo space. I wonder how doable that is?

[janry]

Three Steps:

(1) Upgrade existing TiVo and tell wife it is all hers.
(2) Buy yourself a new TiVo.
(3) Upgrade your new TiVo.

You can never have enough TiVo.

[Glen Graham]

Not sure what the final price is (auction ends in 2 days), but currently a 14-hour Series 1 with lifetime is $210 on e-bay

Click here (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3031997931&category=298)

It is worth about $350, so it may yet be a decent deal (you can stick any old drive in it instead of the 15-GB that is there)

There is also another one (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3032729209&category=11725) with a "Buy It Now" for $399

[abobrow]

Dear Tivo Community-

Please help me avoid solving a problem in my marriage. My wife puts the thermostat at one setting but I want it at a different setting. Help! What should I do??

Are there thermostats that can keep a house at two different temperatures at the same time? If so, where do I get them? Is there another way of measuring the warmth of a house, besides using temperature? Please help!!!

[rtype]

Originally posted by abobrow
Dear Tivo Community-

Please help me avoid solving a problem in my marriage. My wife puts the thermostat at one setting but I want it at a different setting. Help! What should I do??

Are there thermostats that can keep a house at two different temperatures at the same time? If so, where do I get them? Is there another way of measuring the warmth of a house, besides using temperature? Please help!!!

Dear abobrow

Remind your wife that when she entered into the institution of marriage, she agreed to two understood principles. The first principle states that a woman shall not have possession or otherwise seek to restrict the usage of her husband's television remote control. The second states that a woman shall not adjust, tamper with or otherwise impede her husband's ability to set the thermostat.

Because these principles are understood and were perhaps not explicitly stated in your marriage agreement, many women have come to the conclusion that this agreement is by and large unenforcable. If she brings this to your attention, remind her that she did agree to these conditions of marriage whether they were explicitly stated or not. Also, you may remind her that if she chooses to continue to ignore this warning that you may choose to ignore two or more of the conditions of marriage which you agreed to that she may also find unenforcable.

If she understands the implication of your warning and chooses to suspend her interference with your operation of the television remote control and thermostat, you may, if you choose, decide to provide her with a gift of a blanket or a quilt kit in lieu of jewelry or other gift items at your next occasion.

Good luck with retraining your spouse. Remember that if things don't work out, newer models are available.

[abobrow]

Actually it was a joke, but thanks for your opinions.

[rtype]

Originally posted by abobrow
Actually it was a joke, but thanks for your opinions.
Whew, I'm glad you told me. My response was completely serious.

[abobrow]

Okay, I get it now. Sorry I mistook you for one of the people who are actually trying to solve this guy's problem. Irony is a tricky thing in print.

[TiVoPrince]

When you get to 9 TiVos (700 hours) and two viewers, the problems just sort of disappear.

[Thom]

Originally posted by timckelley

.
.
.
Now, I'm having a hard decision. I was leaning towards a his and her TiVo to solve our problems, but it looks like upgrading is a lot cheaper.
.
.
.
I'd like to save $ and do an upgrade, but I'm kind of afraid my wife could fill this up to. Before I do this, I would need a plan/agreement between my wife and I... some way for her not to infringe on my half on the TiVo space. I wonder how doable that is?

Your wife's habits are not going to change. If she would/could, she already would have done so. Once you've upgraded your single TiVo, it just allows her to wait longer before watching her shows.

The only true solution to this is his and her TiVos. Note that once her TiVo fills up, she will want to begin using your TiVo. For peace in the family, allow her to do that, but insist that none of her shows be Keep Until I Delete. If she doesn't watch them/save them before they expire, well, she had her chance. And make sure all your shows are KUID, so that her shows don't bump your shows.

Upgrading your single TiVo is just delaying the inevitable.

- Thom

[jsharper]

Originally posted by timckelley
plus $299 for a lifetime contract,

Might I highly suggest switching to DirecTV and going the DirecTiVo combo route... $5/mo service fee covers all the tivos you have. and there are no quality settings since it saves the digital bitstream verbatim from the satellite.... so if you upgrade to 100 hrs, you actually get close to 100 hours at "perfect" quality.

[HeatherA]

We've worked this out in my house. 2 adults, 1 teen, 1 pre-teen very different viewing habits.

I have a 109 hour Tivo in my office/family room that I am in charge of. No one is allowed to mess with it except me. They may watch, but they may NOT delete anything. (Cable/Sat)

We have a 101 hour Tivo in the living room that the kids can set up season passes on as well as some from husband. All 3 have complete control over this and have had to figure out common courtesys to make sure they don't step on each others toes (Cable/Sat)

We have a 40 hour ReplayTV in the bedroom that we picked up for a song and use for backup and a few of husbands shows. Husband and I are the only ones that mess with this one. (Cable Only)

Works well and most everyone is happy. The only problems we run into are the kids fighting over who has the most season passes.

It's complicated but it works and we're a happy TV viewing family

:D

[Azure]

I'm in agreement with pretty much everyone else here. Your wife is not going to change. One TiVo is NOT going to solve your problems, no matter HOW many hours of capacity it has. Two TiVos is the only solution. And I agree, let her record on your TiVo, with the rules being all of her shows are a lower priority than yours, none of them can be KUID, and none of them can be Keep All. Surely you see that this is the only way. How can you convince yourself that upgrading your existing TiVo will work? You freed up space on your TiVo and she saw the extra space and added more shows to her To Do List. It really is too bad you don't have DirecTiVos though. We have 6 for 4 people to use. One of them with 220 hours. At a cost of $700 total.

[smark]

SHE'S STILL ALIVE?!

[allan]

I agree. One Tivo, no matter how big, is just postponing the problem. His & hers IS more expensive, but it sounds like the only option.

[Joey303]

Another TiVo? I don't think it's the answer.

I totally identify with the wife. Mind you, I don't side with her, but I can identify with her. And, as someone with her precise habits, I've got to admit that it's a symptom of a deeper personality problem and could probably benefit from some help.

Maybe she would benefit from watching Oprah or Dr. Phil, if she's not really interested in tackling the problem with a professional. Actually, she's probably TiVo-ing those shows already ;) Oprah recently did a show on de-cluttering your house (and your life), which encouraged me to rent a dumpster and do the same. It's a good feeling . . . and a small start. Use this TiVo problem to work on the larger issue. Together. When all is said and done, she'll feel better about this letting-go of this KUID craziness . . . and better about herself, too. And, with a little nudging from you to help her get started, your relationship may improve, too. I know that I'm very grateful for the push and the support that I received.

Or, just buy another TiVo.

[Sleestak]

Tell her the Tivo had an "accident".

[mclark11]

THERE WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH TIME TO WATCH EVERYTHING. I ALMOST HAD THE SAME PROBLEM TO MYSELF. I'VE DECIDED THAT it's better to live a life they catch up to tivo. So instead of watching more to catch up, I'm watching LESS.
The solution is get a life. In fact the reason she can't catch up is cause she has a life. Just tell her to forget what she's missing, cathing up on garbage is not worth missing on life. (And I mean that because you're probably seeing the good stuff and puttin off the garbage because it's not really worth watching in the first place)

[NFLnut]

Originally posted by martinp13
Get your wife her own TiVo. Seriously, that's what a lot of people have done.

I agree with this post!

That's what I did three years ago. My wife and I watch a lot of the same things, but she still watches some stuff that I would never watch ("Sense and Sensibility," etc). Some of our suggestions combined were getting a little scary ("Kill the Monster" :eek: ) so I bought her one too.

[Mars Rocket]

Originally posted by mclark11
The solution is get a life.

"Life"? What is this "life" thing you speak of?




:D

[robertj49]

You should never have shown here the keep until I delete choice. Most of my stuff is just recorded, and if I haven't watched it soon enough I have so much other stuff that I don't even realize it's gone. I'm upgraded to 120 hours, though. Upgrade your unit, and record everything (especially your wife's stuff, so she gets the message!!) at basic. That alone is work a few dozen extra hours, and it's really not that bad for most shows...

[Rolnikov]

We've got a phrase in our house for missed programs: one in the bank.

Any episode of a program that you miss is one in the bank - because tv is never gone for good - it'll always be repeated, and if you miss an episode of Frasier this week, when you see it in one, two or twenty years' time you'll be thrilled to have a brand new episode.

I see tv as a river, flowing continuously past, and tivo lets us slow down a particular bit of that river, where there's good fishing! But you can't stop the water flowing... try to build a dam and you'll feel the stress.

I would change everything on your tivo to keep until space needed, and let things take their natural course. And every time something has been deleted, say with a cheer: that's one in the bank!

Or if you can't countenance that, you need to get rid of the tivo, and the video. Pretend you have gambling debts and need to sell them. Otherwise the stress will kill you both - tv is important!

[ccwf]

Originally posted by Rolnikov
Any episode of a program that you miss is one in the bank - because tv is never gone for good - it'll always be repeated, and if you miss an episode of Frasier this week, when you see it in one, two or twenty years' time you'll be thrilled to have a brand new episode. I look forward to the day when this is true, but for now it isn't. Shows which usually don't get repeated every few years include most sports and other live events, series so short-lived they didn't make it into syndication, and special shows like the Buffy Musical episode (which is repeated, but not in its entirety). (Also, currently most repeats of foreign-language series are on $$ channels and not subtitled.)

Anyways, back to the point of the original thread: you need a second TiVo. I myself have a 246+hr TiVo and can assure you that having a bigger TiVo will just delay problems for a while. Eventually, recording habits must change or the same old problems will recur. I myself used KUID/SUID a lot when I first upgraded my TiVo, eventually ran out of space, and was forced to change my own habits. I now KUID less than a handful of shows and manually push back the expiration dates of other important, unwatched shows every few days.

[mclark11]

You can use KUID to your advantage. Record the show but specify only record 1 show (Default is 5), therefore if you don't watch it and delete it, it will no longer record new shows. This will be good for stopping Tivo recording those childrens program. Once you have one, it will stop recording.

[ThreeSoFar]

Multiple TiVos, here, and we love it. All over 100 hours, less actually since we default to High Quality since we have so much space. There's never any fear of losing stuff off the bottom of the list.

[Raspewtin]

Originally posted by timckelley
My wife is unwilling to delete anything, because she wants to watch it all. (There's quite a prodigious amount recorded right now.) She also doesn't know when she'll have time to watch stuff.

Jeez I have to deal with this also. The get a 2nd Tivo thing is a great idea, unless she thinks that's too much stuff for just watching TV and the better soln is to watch less television and be more productive (as in my case). It's working bit by bit though for me (the muscle atrophy seems to have slowed), so perhaps you'll benefit from this whole thing.

[macmedic]

The only problem I have now that we bought a second TiVo is that I'm stuck in the bedroom watching my shows!!!
Yes I have HMO but it doesn't help when hers is FULL of KUID shows.

To add insult to injury she has also claimed ownership of MY MX-700!

I guess that's the price you pay when you have a tech-savy wife...

[ThreeSoFar]

Then make her upgrade hers so it doesn't fill as easily. And make sure she's using basic quality for shows where that makes sense (talk shows, etc.)

[Dajad]

Suggestion 1: Get her to read this thread and then talk about it like adults!

Suggestion 2: Take the total amount of time you TiVo records ... agree that she can use 50% of that time for whatever she wants and nothing more ... if she uses 50% of the space, you have a right to delete the bottom shows in Now Playing until her used space is back to 50%.

Suggestion 3. Go back to Suggestion 1 and follow it over and over until this is worked out! The most basic skill of any relationship is communication! Great communication takes plenty of practice. It sounds like the you are going to get lots of practice on this topic!

...Dale

P.S. Suggestion 4: If all of the above fail ... ask for a TiVo (for your own personal use) for your next birthday present ... in other words, let her pay for the second TiVo it if she's not willing to be reasonable.

[timckelley]

Well, I suppose I should update my status. I still think I'll get a 2nd TiVo but haven't gotten around to it. For the last couple of months, I haven't had much of a problem, because my wife has finally deleted a lot of her stuff! But the way she did this is by offloading to VCR, rather than to watch it. She buys VHS tapes like crazy these days, and it's starting to take up a lot of room in our TV room. The good news, is the TiVo has lots of space on it now.

But as we speak, the new season has just started, and many, many of our season passes are about to commence finding and recording new shows. The next month will be definitely be a good test of our TiVo watching strategy/ability. Wish us luck!

For the last few months, I suppose I haven't been terribly bothered by the prospect of losing shows because the TV season was in it's dormant state. But now that September is here, I'll be ticked if one of my shows doesn't get recorded.

As usual, I have no backlog... i.e., there are no shows of mine on the Now Playing that I haven't already watched. I do a lot of late night TiVo watching as my wife sleeps, and so I do a good job of keeping up with it.

[ThreeSoFar]

You need another one.

And you probably need at least one of them to be upgraded to 100+ hours.

[timckelley]

3 Tivos? Out of curiosity, I wonder if there's any 2 person households out there with 3 Tivos.

[LiveBlues]

It's just me and my wife at home and we have 4.

[Mchero]

Originally posted by timckelley
Gosh, I'd hate to shell out for a second TiVO,

Just got an email from Tivo, They are dropping the price thru December!

http://www.tivo.com/2.0.asp

:up:

[timckelley]

Oh no!!! I thought we had it under control. My wife had totally caught up and emptied Now Playing. Now she's gone mad and recorded every Xmas special (including cooking shows that cook Xmas dishes) she could get her hands on, and now Suggestions = 0! Much of our Now Playing is 'Keep Until I Delete', but not all, thankfully. She says she's going to make an effort to clean out this stuff, but I worry that the To Do List may add new Xmas stuff as fast as she can clear it out. Am I doomed?

[allan]

Originally posted by timckelley
Am I doomed?

Yes!

[martinp13]

Hey, it's Xmas time... time to buy her a TiVo of her own. Maybe even the Pioneer so she can record and burn stuff to DVD. :) You could leave it with TiVo Basic and use non-recording Wishlists on your other TiVo to alert you to things to manually record on the Pioneer.

[djbrown]

Originally posted by timckelley
Am I doomed?

Tell her you are Jewish and the Christmas programming offends you.

[machem]

Have you bought another one yet! Isn't it worth $300 not to have this hanging over your head? We broke down and bought one (our first) this weekend, and even though we can't afford it (like anything else), we did it, and we're excited.

It is true I just sat down and read this whole thread, but I have to say that if it has been going on for this long, and you are still stressed about it, the additional time you will add to your life by not being stressed will be well worth it.

[JYoung]

You're still dealing with this???? :eek:

It's been six months!!!!

The way I look at this, here are your choices:

Get another TiVo.
Upgrade your current one.
See a marriage counselor as you and your wife have communication issues.
File for divorce and sue for custody of the TiVo.

[BadTVAddict]

Not more Tivo time, but more time to watch it!

Reading the comments, it's so obvious how male dominated this forum is. Why is your wife so far behind? And why are you so caught up? Perhaps if you could take care of some of the kid duties, or even maybe clean up a bit and give her say an hour or two a day to catch up on her Tivo, then this issue would magically evaporate.

And you might even discover that since she's less stressed AND you're helping out, she might be much nicer person to live with and there might be some additional rewards for you.

Just a female perspective.

[timckelley]

Originally posted by BadTVAddict
Not more Tivo time, but more time to watch it!

Reading the comments, it's so obvious how male dominated this forum is. Why is your wife so far behind? And why are you so caught up? Perhaps if you could take care of some of the kid duties, or even maybe clean up a bit and give her say an hour or two a day to catch up on her Tivo, then this issue would magically evaporate.


That's not the case here. Just about all the time I spend at home during the day (when I'm not at work) is either playing with my son or doing housework. (Since he's only 4 and autistic, it's best that we not let him play by himself for too long.) The only time I get to watch TV is late at night after everybody's asleep. Sometimes I even wake up at 3:00 am, watch TiVo for an hour or two, then go back to sleep. My wife doesn't have a job, and the main times she gets to watch TiVo are while my son is in school, or for the couple of hours or so in the evening starting with my son's bath time (I give him his bath, and continue to play with him until bedtime).

Now admittedly, while my son is in school, my wife is mostly cleaning the house - that's part of the problem of her lack of time. Howver, a *big* problem is that her list of SPs is way, way bigger than mine.

[timckelley]

Originally posted by JYoung
You're still dealing with this???? :eek:

It's been six months!!!!



Here's why it's drug on for so long. My wife finally get aggressive and over time I saw Now Playing shrinking and shrinking. At one point, it actually became empty. For quite awhile, our available unused space was quite large. So it appeared everything was under control. We also had been buying and/or wanting to buy several other items, so an upgrade was never high on the priority list for the last 6 months. It's just in the last couple of weeks our space has gotten dangerously low, and for the last few days, we've actually hit the end: i.e., all space is used up.

Now, I feel kind of sorry for her because she's being impacted by this more than I, because after our talk a half a year ago, she seems to realize the importance of not making everything KUID. We still have a lot of KUID, but there's also a certain amount of KU <date> and KUSN. She's living right on the edge right now, because for the last couple of days, she's been deleting/watching at exactly the same pace as the To Do List has been been recording new stuff. She's in imminent danger of having her shows deleted. I'm staying on top of my stuff, and there is absolutely none of my shows sitting there because I try to watch them very quickly after they record. The good news is that TiVO will delete the oldest stuff first, so as long as I watch my stuff within a couple of days after recording, I'm fine - I won't lose anything. But my wife has a lot of old stuff on Now Playing... so this means that she is the one at risk of losing shows. This is why I feel sorry for her. We're starting to talk about upgrading again, but she wants to make it past Xmas season first because of all our Xmas expenses we're incurring at the moment.

Last night I just watched a one hour show of mine and deleted, and as an extra help, I deleted one episode of SouthPark from the To Do list, because it's an episode I've already seen.

[Marco]

Originally posted by BadTVAddict
Why is your wife so far behind? And why are you so caught up? Perhaps if you could take care of some of the kid duties, or even maybe clean up a bit and give her say an hour or two a day to catch up on her Tivo, then this issue would magically evaporate.

And you might even discover that since she's less stressed AND you're helping out, she might be much nicer person to live with and there might be some additional rewards for you.

Wow. Just like the 'what the neighbor said to my wife' thread in Happy Hour. It is amazing what people will presume to know about a stranger, and the advice they will proffer, completely unasked.

Like I said in that thread, I suspect the speaker is projecting her own issues.

[JYoung]

I'm sorry, Tim.
I didn't realize that your son is autistic so that does put a slightly different spin on your wife's behavior. I see more as to why she is saving shows for your son.
So strike option 3 for now. Number 4 was only made in jest anyways......

[timckelley]

Originally posted by JYoung
I'm sorry, Tim.
I didn't realize that your son is autistic so that does put a slightly different spin on your wife's behavior. I see more as to why she is saving shows for your son.


Well, actually I really never saw the need for her saving shows for him - certainly not in the quantity she's done. Because by the time he's old enough to appreciate them, I'm sure there'll be other shows on he can watch. Anyway, currently the shows she's TiVoing aren't for him, they're for herself. This collecting of shows seems to be a compulsive hobby of hers, and she's already come right out and proclaimed that she's addicted to TiVo. Oh well, there are lots of more expensive hobbies than collecting shows. :)

[TivoFan]

Originally posted by dgh
Have you tried running the math by her? ie time to catch up = hours recorded / (average hours available to watch TV each night - average hours of "important" stuff TiVo records each night). Is the denominator even positive? :D
Originally posted by stevel
I take it you're not married, if you are offering such a suggestion seriously. :D That's the best laugh I've had all day.
Originally posted by steuert
If you must humor her I'm guessing you're not married.

Taking the above into account, I'm going to make some stupid suggestions.

You're wife is a packrat. The fact is that there is more tv out there than she can ever watch. She's got to face up to that. Once you do though, you'll find that instead of 1000 hours of good tv, you can narrow it down to 20 hours of excellent tv.

Seriously, if you have all those tapes of old movies, I suspect that she is not watching them. They replay those old movies all the time. Why not suggest that she wait to record any more of them until she runs low on some of the ones that she has taped? She can always record them next month or the month after. If she is serious about watching them, then this will work. If, as I suspect, she isn't then she'll end up not watching the tapes and you won't have to worry about her recording any more of em. And it would force her to a core realization.... there's no point recording a show you never get around to watching. (P.S. is she planning a month long sabbatical in the near future when she will have a lot more time to watch tv than she does now? If she can't watch everything she has now, it's doubtful she'll ever have more time in the future.)

The other option is to get her to agree to some form of a budget. Figure out how many hours you guys have available on your Tivo and divide it between the two of you. If she goes over that number of hours, then she needs to delete some shows. If she can't agree to this, then she's got to admit that she's not being fair to you.

[Dadorama]

Listen, after reading through this WHOLE thread, I feel like we need to see a picture of you folks, or have your address to send you a Christmas Card or SOMETHING.

I feel like myself, and everyone around me has been cleansed through a form of group therapy.

I feel strangely like going out and buying another Tivo....

Merry Christmas everyone. And lets none of us take ourselves or our lives too awful serious! When problems like this are our most pressing, we are indeed truly blessed.

Agreed?

Dadorama:D

[JustAllie]

After reading the whole thread, I'm thinking your wife should buy you a new TiVo.

Of course that's not going to happen, so save up and buy one for yourself. Put a big sign on it saying "Tim's TiVo - do not touch!" Make sure you don't record anything on her TiVo -- that would only give her ammunition to claim space on your TiVo.

If you record anything on your TiVo that you both like to watch, fine -- but if you've watched it and she hasn't, you have every right to delete it with no notice. After all, it's on YOUR TiVo.

I used to be a VHS packrat like your wife, but there's little harm in letting her horde VHS tapes. Unless of course they pile up too much and become a health hazard. ;)

After I owned a TiVo (actually two TiVos) for a while, I realized that my VHS collection was taking up a lot of space and wasn't getting watched anymore, so I gave the tapes away. I feel so free now. :D

[timckelley]

Originally posted by JustAllie
I used to be a VHS packrat like your wife, but there's little harm in letting her horde VHS tapes. Unless of course they pile up too much and become a health hazard. ;)

After I owned a TiVo (actually two TiVos) for a while, I realized that my VHS collection was taking up a lot of space and wasn't getting watched anymore, so I gave the tapes away. I feel so free now. :D


The funny thing is, that not only does she periodically buy new blank tapes, but once in awhile, I come home to find she's bought a new bookshelf for me to put together. After all, something has to hold these tapes. :)

[JustAllie]

Originally posted by timckelley
The funny thing is, that not only does she periodically buy new blank tapes, but once in awhile, I come home to find she's bought a new bookshelf for me to put together. After all, something has to hold these tapes. :)

I used to have two bookcases totally devoted to videotapes, plus about 8 boxes stacked up in a corner (photocopy paper boxes, to give you an idea of size). To be honest, I still have one bookcase with the videotapes I couldn't quite part with. The boxes, however, are gone -- given away, sold, donated to charity auctions, and a few were even destroyed by water in a hurricane.

Moving three times in two years cured me of the desire to haul around so many videotapes. That and the joy of TiVo -- especially after I upgraded both of my TiVos to ~130 hours each.

You should move to a new home every six months. This will eventually break your wife of her packrat habits. ;)

[timckelley]

Well, despite what I've said earlier in the thread, for the last few months (during which my wife had her Now Playing under control), I've been considering saving money by upgrading instead of getting a second TiVo. But things have changed since then.

1. Last week, I went to look at my weekly episode of Good Morning Miami. It wasn't there! :( I checked recording history, and it was 'deleted: not recorded due a SP conflict. A higher priority show recorded instead'. So I checked - how could this be? Good Morning Miami has a rather high priority. It turns out that Scooby Doo Christmas special recorded in it's place. My wife must have scheduled it, and when it asked 'Okay to *not* record Good Morning Miami?', she said yes, knowing full well it was one of our important SPs. So I confronted her, and she admitted doing the deed and knowing what she was doing when she did it. She had decided that she wanted that Xmas special :( :(

Upgrading the TiVo won't fix this problem. Buying a second TiVo will.

2. Sometimes I have trouble scheduling a recording, because her To Do List is so prodigious, and takes up a lot of the 24-clock (sometimes). One time I wanted to record a movie, and luckily there were 6 scheduled showings coming up. 1-5 all had conflicts with her To Do List! Luckily, the 6th showing was free, so I snagged it. But there are other times when a movie doesn't repeat so often, which puts me SOL.

Again, upgrading the TiVo won't fix this problem. Buying a second TiVo will.

3. As a fringe benefit of two TiVos, we can each customize our thumbs ratings to reflect ourselves. Having my own TiVo will give me better suggestions.

Conclusion: we need a second TiVo. Have any of you made this wise recommendation to me as a way to solve my problems? :) I just need to wait until Xmas expenses die down before buying one. I'm considering buying a series one, and starting out with no service, just to get started, and I can at least move some of my SPs to it as manual recordings. Then hopefully, I'll eventually add service to it.

[Mekong]

This is a very long post, so maybe I missed it, but it seems no one is addressing home media option. I don't have a series 2, but can't he dump some of that stuff to his computer with home media option??

[JYoung]

Better get it before January 14, otherwise your wife may delete Enterprise from the To Do list....

(On the other hand, she may be doing you a favor...... ;) )

[timckelley]

Originally posted by Mekong
This is a very long post, so maybe I missed it, but it seems no one is addressing home media option. I don't have a series 2, but can't he dump some of that stuff to his computer with home media option??

No, I don't think home media option has been addressed in this post. Are you saying with home media option, I could do some sort of mass/batch archive of my Now Playing to a computer hard disk? But then how could I later get it from hard drive to VCR?

[DevdogAZ]

No, you can't move shows to a PC hard drive with HMO. However, if you did get a second TiVo Series 2 and had HMO, you could move shows between the two units for viewing in another room, etc. From reading this thread, I think timckelley would benefit greatly from a DVD recorder. Your wife could start archiving some of those shows to a format that takes up less storage space and will presumably last longer. However, unless is it a TiVo with built-in DVD-R, it won't solve your scheduling conflicts. For the time being, you can get a relatively inexpensive used Series 1 and use it unsubbed like you mentioned. That's probably the cheapest solution for now.

[timckelley]

Yes, several times I've talked to my wife about switching to DVD instead of VHS. She doesn't seem to think it's that important because she's happy with VHS. (I say, the quality of the picture is pretty subpar on those tapes.) But she really likes the batch-save-to-DVD feature of the Pioneer. But on the other hand, it seems like I read about some sort of editing disadvantages of Pioneer vs standalone burner. Plus, there's the price tag. Isn't it cheaper to buy an old series one and a standalone burner than to buy the combined deal with Pioneer? Also, by buying a la carta, if one component breaks, I just need to fix/replace that component. If Pioneer breaks, I'm in big trouble.

[DevdogAZ]

You just have to decide what is important to you regarding recording and editing on DVD. There are pros and cons to both the PioneerTiVoBurner and a standalone DVD/R.

Pioneer Pros:
Batch save
Record faster than real time and still use TiVo
Direct digital transfer of data off hard drive
DVD menus are just like a TiVo menu

Pioneer Cons:
Cost
Disc must be finalized every time it is recorded to
No editing capabilities

Standalone Pros:
Less expensive than Pioneer
Limited editing capabilites
Ability to buy burner that works with +/- media
Burn to RW media in multiple sessions

Standalone Cons:
Extra digital to analog conversion
Shows record in real time and tie up TiVo
Menus on DVD vary by burner manufacturer

[cptodd]

Originally posted by devdogaz
Standalone Cons:
Extra digital to analog conversion
Shows record in real time and tie up TiVo
Menus on DVD vary by burner manufacturer

That real time thing was what tipped it for me! The Pioneer is SOOOOOO much more convenient for this reason.

[timckelley]

Originally posted by timckelley
...she seems to realize the importance of not making everything KUID. We still have a lot of KUID, but there's also a certain amount of KU <date> and KUSN.


RETRACTION!!! I just checked our TiVo this morning, and except for 1 hour and 30 minutes of suggestions, every bit of it is filled up with her KUID stuff. Fortunately the To Do list contains very little of my stuff, as things are mostly in reruns this week. Today's To Do list contains 1 hour of her stuff, but tommorrow's has 6 more hours of her stuff, so I can see she's still living on the edge. She continues to offload stuff daily, but is barely keeping ahead of the wavefront, like a surfer just in front of the breaking wave.

There's actually a 3 hour movie on there that I recorded, but she changed that to KUID. I don't know if she did that to protect my movie or because she also wants to watch it. (She told me she intends to either watch the movie or offload to tape.)

[timckelley]

Originally posted by devdogaz
Pioneer Pros:
Standalone Pros:
Less expensive than Pioneer
Limited editing capabilites
Ability to buy burner that works with +/- media
Burn to RW media in multiple sessions


Can you explain to me the difference between +/- media and other media?

[DevdogAZ]

The Pioneer TiVo only works with - media, meaning DVD-R and DVD-RW. There are other DVD burners that only uses + media and there are still others that will burn to both types. There is a debate as to which is better and I don't have an opinion on that. I was simply stating that if you want a choice, you have to go with a standalone because the Pioneer will only do -.

Back to your wife: If she is offloading stuff every day to try and keep ahead of the wave, you really need a new solution. There is no way she's ever going to have time to watch all this stuff and your house is going to be overrun by VHS tapes. The Pioneer burner will save her a ton of time in archiving because she can simply line up a number of shows to go to a DVD and hit record. A little while later it will be done. A standalone DVD recorder will not save any time over the VHS, the only difference is picture quality and storage space. But it sounds to me like you really need to do something soon, or she needs to shake her compulsive habits. I used to be the same way when Seinfeld was still on the air. I made it a goal to get every episode of Seinfeld on tape and I prettymuch did. But those tapes have been in a box in the garage for a few years now and I realistically can't see a time when I will ever pull them out and watch them. My guess is this will be the same iwth most of the stuff your wife has on tape. She'll be comforted to know she has it on tape, but to actually go dig it out when she wants to watch it will be a whole different story. My guess is that 90+% of the stuff she records will never be watched and someday you'll be throwing away a whole boatload of VHS tapes.

[timckelley]

Yes, I told my wife about the batch save feature of Pioneer. To my surprise, she told me it's not a high priority for her because once Xmas is over, she intends to cut way back on her TiVoing of shows. (I'll be interested to see if that actually happens.)

She was also concerned about how much stuff can you put on one disk. Isn't it true that you can put more stuff on one VHS tape than you can put on one DVD disk?

Of course, Pioneer also has the TiVO basic option, which might be an advantage (i.e. money saver) for us, if we can live with having full service on just one TiVo. I suppose I could put wishlists on the one that has full service, in order to prompt me to add recordings to the Pioneer. But somehow I suspect that one day, I'll want to add full service to the Pioneer, if that's what we get.

[DevdogAZ]

Depending on the recording quality you choose, the Pioneer can put up to 6? hours on a DVD, roughly the same as on a VHS tape. If you are happy with the PQ of a VHS tape at 6 hours, you'd probably be fine with the Pioneer at 6 hours too, but some have said that the higher resolution causes more artifacting to appear so that may be an issue.

If you're going to end up with two TiVos and maybe only subscribe one of them, I would think you would for sure want the Pioneer to be subscribed since it will be the one you can archive from and therefore should be the one doing the lion's share of her recordings. Of course that would mean that your other unit would have to be a pre-1.3 Series 1.

[timckelley]

Originally posted by devdogaz
If you're going to end up with two TiVos and maybe only subscribe one of them, I would think you would for sure want the Pioneer to be subscribed since it will be the one you can archive from and therefore should be the one doing the lion's share of her recordings. Of course that would mean that your other unit would have to be a pre-1.3 Series 1.

Good point. Darn. I've already got a lifetime sub on my current series 2 TiVo.

[tmsmalley]

Tell her "My Mom would never hog the TiVo with too many KUIDs." (The Mom + hog reference always works!) Then, when she leaves you, make sure she doesn't pack the TiVo! :D

[geoman47]

Wow! Just read this whole thread. Makes me appreciate my wife even more because she sticks to our KUID rules, which I took for granted!

We’ve had our 60 hour TiVo for a little longer than a year, and we discussed getting a 2nd TiVo, but with no discount on a 2nd lifetime sub, its not going to happen. We also talked about upgrading the Hard Drive, which we may do, but really that would just help to watch more movies and archive stuff.

Really what we have done is picked about 2-3 of our favorite shows each. These are the ONLY shows that are allowed to be set to KUID. 2-3 episodes of each favorite show. And we HAVE to respect the limit. Exceptions aren’t allowed, they can seem like short term good ideas, but always hurt more than they help in the long term.

At basic quality which we can live with, that gives us like around 20 hours MAX of KUID stuff, the rest is fair game. I never thought of it like this until this thread, but we also treat it like Rolnikov’s river analogy. That is, if you have time to watch a show fine, if not, it will or something else will flow by.

[timckelley]

Well, this morning she asked me if I was going to watch a SouthPark ep that recorded. I said yes, and so she changed it to KUID. I guess she does this to everything now. She records everything as KUSN, and changes it to KUID once it's in Now Playing. When Enterprise resumes in a couple of weeks, the TiVo *better not* be full! Gosh, I wonder if I'll need a backup plan, like (gasp!) programming our old 20th century VCR to record Star Trek. (covering ears from all the sounds of shocked horror)

I know I know, I'm going to buy a second TiVo. But I borrowed against our retirement (don't worry it was post-tax funds, so no penalty) to pay our property tax, and once I've repaid our retirement funds (which should be soon), I intend to buy a second TiVo.

[Philosofy]

This makes me forgive my wife's little habit. She is a neat freak, and our cordless phone keeps track of who called. She is always clearing that out, making it just a little more difficult to return calls (now I have to look up the number, etc.) What, you say? Program the numbers into the phone? I did that. She erased them. :rolleyes:

She used to clear out the suggestions on our TiVo, too, until I explained they really aren't taking up the space of stuff in the Now Playing or To Do lists.

[timckelley]

I'm now shopping for my second TiVo and am also in the middle of negotiations with my wife on how to manage our two TiVos. She really doesn't like the idea of putting shows we both watch onto both TiVos, and having each of us delete our half when we watch it.

But she did sign on to the idea that I'm allowed to make any of my shows on my TiVo KUID, and if she puts any of her shows on my TiVo, it must be KUSN. Also, if it's a show we both watch, and it's on my TiVo, once I watch it, if she hasn't watched it yet, I have the right to convert it to KUSN.

I can't argue with those terms, because it totally protects my shows to the same degree as if she totally stays off my TiVo.

But she's already telling me that she wants to put some of her stuff on my TiVo. And it'll be interesting to see if she actually lives up to these terms. I hope that down the road I don't hear her saying "I know I have shows A,B,C..., G on your TiVo, but show E is really important. Can you make that KUID?" Or worse, she walks over and makes it KUID on her own without telling me.

[Philosofy]

Have you thought about upgrading her TiVo? Drop another 120 gig in there, and if she fills it up, tell her tought luck.

[timckelley]

Yes, actually, if either TiVo is to be upgraded, it will be hers. My first priority is to get a second TiVo, though, and eventually we'll probably upgrade hers, probably thru weakknees. I'm thinking of installing the HD myself, but letting them configure it. Who knows? It's possible that the priority of her upgrade could increase if she starts violating the 2-TiVo groundrules.

[Mike20878]

Originally posted by Philosofy
This makes me forgive my wife's little habit. She is a neat freak, and our cordless phone keeps track of who called. She is always clearing that out, making it just a little more difficult to return calls (now I have to look up the number, etc.) What, you say? Program the numbers into the phone? I did that. She erased them. :rolleyes:

She used to clear out the suggestions on our TiVo, too, until I explained they really aren't taking up the space of stuff in the Now Playing or To Do lists.

Hopefully she doesn't try to alphabetize the season passes...:)

[mitchb2]

Originally posted by timckelley

(Actually, it's projecting that by the time the show airs, it'll be out of memory because of the "To Do" list,

That's an incredibly annoying feature (bug).
It's happened to me before....pretty silly to assume that nothing between now and then will be watched and deleted.

[timckelley]

Originally posted by mitchb2
That's an incredibly annoying feature (bug).
It's happened to me before....pretty silly to assume that nothing between now and then will be watched and deleted.

Yes, I know they want to protect themselves and us by not promising to record something that won't record, but they could at least flash a message: "You show has been added to the To Do List, but it will not be recorded due to lack of space, unless you delete other shows before the show airs on xx/xx".

[JYoung]

Originally posted by timckelley


But she's already telling me that she wants to put some of her stuff on my TiVo. And it'll be interesting to see if she actually lives up to these terms. I hope that down the road I don't hear her saying "I know I have shows A,B,C..., G on your TiVo, but show E is really important. Can you make that KUID?" Or worse, she walks over and makes it KUID on her own without telling me.

You're really going to stand firm here. Based on past history, once she starts putting her shows on your TiVo, you're done for.
Soon you'll be in the same position as you were before except her shows will be filling two TiVos and you'll have none.
And getting a third TiVo will be your only option...... ;)

[timckelley]

So I wonder if that's why some of the posters here admit to having in excess of 6 TiVos. :)

[killzone]

You will probably need 3 or 4 tivos. I bought a 2nd Tivo for my wife but she still records all sorts of stuff on my Tivo.

[timckelley]

Well as long as she sticks to her KUSN rule, I won't be impacted by her shows on my TiVo, but of course if she sticks enough of her KUSN stuff on it, she'll start losing shows and then will come the moment of truth. Will she attempt to take action to preserve her shows from deletion, like changing our ground rules (2 TiVo rules), or will she abide by the rules and let her shows die? Well, I wear the pants, and my TiVo is my TiVo! ;)

[timckelley]

Well, things are moving along nicely. With two TiVos we'll need to reorganize our equipment, plus I want to modulate our original TiVo, integrating it with our house's On Q system so that it will be viewable from the entire house, so I'll need a modulator.

I also need more shelves in my entertainment center, and so I bought some wood today from Lowe's and some stain to stain it the same color as my entertainment center. I bought a second VA500 UPS for $20 (normally $60) using discounts I got off of slickdeals.com. I'm about to order my modulator for $55 from worthington.com after I verify I've got a blank channel at home to modulate it onto. I'm currently tracking ebay auctions for a TiVo, or I might buy it from servicedvr.com. I need to go to Radioshack to buy remote extenders, and a couple of A/B switches.

Hopefully before too much longer, I'll be finished and will have joined all you multiple TiVo owners. Just in time too, because some of my SPs are starting to come off from their dormant rerun status.

[Dr. Thodt]

Originally posted by timckelley
after our talk a half a year ago, she seems to realize the importance of not making everything KUID.

I pray for the day my g/f finally learns this lesson.

[lajohn27]

Somewhere way back in this thread.. I read about SEVEN TiVOs in one house.. and the very first thought in my head wasn't 'why so many' or whatever..

But instead.. how would I remember what TiVO had what Season Pass and forget about watching the Suggestions..

:)

[JustAllie]

Originally posted by timckelley
Or worse, she walks over and makes it KUID on her own without telling me.

If she does this, it's pretty clear that she's saying she doesn't respect you or your things. :mad:

If she tries that, change the groundrules to "My TiVo is My TiVo, Don't Touch!", and delete anything of hers that appears on there. Lock up that TiVo's remote when you're not using it. ;)

[timckelley]

Originally posted by Dr. Thodt
I pray for the day my g/f finally learns this lesson (not making everything KUID).

Later in this thread, I retracted my statement. My wife is using KUID with gusto. But her SPs and To Dos are all KUSN. Once they they show up in Now Playing, she manually converts all to KUID :( I've talked to her about this, but haven't been able to persuade her to change. Well, since I'm about to get my own TiVo, who cares? :) :p :cool:

[martinp13]

I've really enjoyed reading your thread, Tim, and I hope 2 TiVos helps. You are going to have to stand firm when she comes to you to use some of your space. If you allow her to use any of it (and I personally would say no), her stuff on there MUST be Space Available... no ifs ands or buts! You each set the rules on your own TiVo, and stick by them. Otherwise getting the second TiVo won't solve the problem.

[timckelley]

<dancing>Well, it's been done. The day before yesterday, I just won an ebay auction for my second TiVo! </dancing>

Originally I was just going to get a 60 hour HDRx12 (I forget if x=3 or x=6), but I saw a deal for an HDR212 that has already been upgraded to 194 hours. It had no bids on it, but the starting bid was $200.

I wound up being the only bidder, and so won it at the low price of $200! I figure if I'd of bought an HDR212 from http://www.servicedvr.com/ , I'd have spent $125, and then if I'd have upgraded it to 194 using weakknees, I'd have spent another $199, for a total if $324.

Shipping was $11.90, so I've spent a total of $211.90 as opposed to $324 elsewhere, so I figure I got a good deal. Plus, having all this space is really nice because I can record a bunch of stuff in 'Best Quality' if I like.

I've already talked to my wife, and she's keeping the 80 hour series 2, and I'm getting the 194 series 1, becauase she likes the folders feature of series 2, and more importantly, the series 2 is subbed, and, at least initially, the series 1 won't be subbed.

I figure I can schedule wish lists (but not ARWL) on the series 2, and then use that to find out when stuff is showing, and then manually schedule it on my series one. And I can do this all from one chair because this weekend I also bought a modulator off of ebay which I will use to distribute the series 2 TiVo to the whole house. I got a sweet deal on the modulator too, because I've seen mono modulaters go for anywhere from $80 to $150, and stereo modulators go for $200 to $300. I got a stereo modulator for a little over $33 from ebay.

[timckelley]

Btw, I know my wife needs space more than I, but since I'll be moving my SPs off of her machine, she will see some immediate benefit, spacewise, as well. Still, if she continues to have space problems, I'm still considering upgrading her TiVo, but for now, she feels satisfied with the arrangement. We'll see as time goes how that works out for her.

By the way, she's already started negotiating with me on the space. I've already mentioned earlier that she agrees to make any show of hers that are on my TiVo: KUSN. And SPs that we both watch, I have the right to convert to KUSN after I'm done watching them. But there are two SPs in particular that we both watch, that are more important to her than the others, and she proposes that they go on my TiVo as KUID until she's done watching them. Her argument is that with only 2 SPs being treated this way, I shouldn't be in danger of running out of space on my TiVo.

Is this a good idea? I guess I do feel kind of guilty having more space than her, but like I said before, I'm not opposed to the idea of eventually upgrading her TiVo.

[martinp13]

With 80 hours, I don't see the need to put anything on yours. She's just being a piggy. : oink : For now, I'd say no. If you don't push the baby bird out of the nest, it never learns how to fly. ;)

You can always change your mind later, if you need to. But I would remind her that this is why you got two TiVos... so she has her space that she can do with as she likes. If she can't manage that, then she needs to learn how to do it.

BTW, I couldn't manage my TiVo, so I got a second one. ;) Now I do much better scheduling on the two and sending stuff back and forth with HMO. I can record big throwaway shows like wrestling and NASCAR on the bedroom TiVo, freeing up the living room TiVo to record series. If I don't get around to watching the bedroom TiVo stuff, that's cool, and it eventually gets deleted. If I do watch it, I copy it to the living room TiVo and watch it there.

[RARamaker]

Originally posted by timckelley
By the way, she's already started negotiating with me on the space.

Sounds like you might need a lawyer.:)

Russ

[Glen Graham]

Originally posted by martinp13
With 80 hours, I don't see the need to put anything on yours

"80 hours" is not necessarily real-world usable space.

Personally, anything below "high" quality to me is not worth watching - and my favorite shows are all at "best" quality.

So, her 80 hours may be only between about 25 (best) and 50 (medium).

timckelley -- for the amount of work you will do to track suggestions (A/B'ing two TiVos) and then micromanging your TiVo, you will probably spend many many hours per month. All to save $13?

Add to that the fact that broadcast times and lengths are more fluid, and eventually you'll get frustrated because you missed that a show was scheduled 15 minutes later (due to a debate, for example)...

I'd suggest you bite the bullet and subscribe your unit...

[timckelley]

Originally posted by Glen Graham
[Btimckelley -- for the amount of work you will do to track suggestions (A/B'ing two TiVos) and then micromanging your TiVo, you will probably spend many many hours per month. All to save $13?

I'd suggest you bite the bullet and subscribe your unit... [/B]

Maybe you're right... I was intending on once per week reviewing my pseudo-SPs (actually, nonARWLs) on the subbed TiVo, reviewing the showtimes, and then compare to a list I'll probably have written down on paper to confirm no schedule changes. Of course that means that if a debate is not on the guide until a couple of days before the show, I'll miss the schedule change. Is that normal? Do schedule changes sometimes come with short notice like that?

Of course, if a marathon comes up, then I might want to manually schedule that, too.

And for one time recordings, I'll search for something on the subbed TiVo, and instead of clicking 'select' to schedule it, I'll click on 'View upcoming showings', pick one, A/B over to my TiVo, and do a manual recording. It doesn't sound like it should take that much time/work to do this, but I'll see. If it winds up being a major drag like you say, I'll certainly consider subbing the second TiVo. You very well may be right, because it's nice to have ARWLs automatically enter into your To Do List without any intervention on my part.

On the other hand, with all these 'TiVo is dead or dying' threads, it makes me afraid to do another lifetime sub. Or is lifetime a bad idea for used series one's?

[JYoung]

Originally posted by timckelley


On the other hand, with all these 'TiVo is dead or dying' threads, it makes me afraid to do another lifetime sub. Or is lifetime a bad idea for used series one's?

There's always been "TiVo is dying" threads. Just FUD at this point.

The real question is will the used Series 1 last more than 2 years?
That's the break even point for a lifetime subscription.

[timckelley]

Originally posted by JYoung
There's always been "TiVo is dying" threads. Just FUD at this point.

The real question is will the used Series 1 last more than 2 years?
That's the break even point for a lifetime subscription.

Good question. If the HD breaks, I could always replace it using weakknees. To replace it with 194 hours would cost slightly more than what I'm paying for this TiVo, so if I had monthly, it would save me a small (pretty small) amount of $ to buy another TiVo off of ebay. Of course, if the HDs last more than 23 months, I'm making a profit (by going lifetime instead of monthly). So it would seem to be a good gamble to get lifetime if HDs are all I'm worrying about, assuming that TiVo corp doesn't die.

But I suppose there are other things that can go wrong (power supply, fan, motherboard, modem). How easily are those things repaired, and how costly are they, and how likely are they to eventually breakdown (within 2 years)? If there's a fair chance of them breaking down within 2 years, would it be cheaper to repair, or buy another TiVo? This factors into the lifetime sub equation.

On the subject of TiVo corp dying, I was just thinking about this, and maybe I shouldn't worry too much about that. Often when a company goes bankrupt, they simply get bought out. If that were to happen, hopefully the buying company would continue to broadcast our guide data.

[JYoung]

The usual things that go bad on a Series 1 TiVo are the hard drive and the modem.
The hard drives are easily replaceable by anyone who's comfortable with working with pc hardware. The modem's tougher but there are ways to get around that. It does pay to make sure your TiVo unit is surge protected.

If TiVo goes out of business, Tivolutionary had hinted in the past that the units would be unlocked to a certain extent but that was a while ago.....

[timckelley]

Originally posted by JYoung
The modem's tougher but there are ways to get around that. It does pay to make sure your TiVo unit is surge protected.

Mine will have a UPS on it. Hopefully my modem holds up. It seems I remember reading that a bad modem can be bypassed by hooking it to a home network. While I don't have a home network, I do have a hub in my On Q panel, and cat 5 (I think) lines connecting many rooms together, so I could easily set up a home network. But I have dialup, not broadband, so I'm not sure this set up could work. Oh well, hopefully the modem lasts a long time.

[timckelley]

I have the UPS tracking on my new TiVo and it's scheduled to arrive on Friday! And the seller even tells me she won't withdraw my funds from her paypal account until I test it and tell her that all is well with the new TiVo.

That's good customer service. She even gave me the tracking info without me asking her for it.

[Glen Graham]

For what it is worth, a dead TiVo modem can be gotten around.

1) Install a TurboNet network card and use broadband

2) Have your TiVo use an external hardware modem, like a US Robotics, etc.

My parents' S1 modem died, and they've been using an external USR modem for almost a year now.

Lastly, I would suggest, if you have any computer abilities (hardware), that you merely make a backup of your TiVo operating system yourself. Using the new MFS Tools, this will result in a file that is like 500MB max -- in other words, you can burn it to CD.

Then, if your drive ever died, you merely buy a new drive & "restore" the TiVo operating system onto it, plug it into your box, and away it goes.

Similarly, you can buy a 120 GB drive (or bigger), and transfer your TiVo operating system AND programs from your old drive to a new one -- as long as the new one is bigger than the old (must be bigger by at least one little byte).

Originally, I had added an 80 GB drive to my TiVo's 30. Then, the 30 started dying (tivo lockups, etc). I bought a 120 GB, and "merged" the 30 & 80 onto the 120. Ran it a few days, all was fine. Then I re-added the 80 back and now have 200 GB.

[purple6816]

I jsut bought her a DTivo of her own. She puts Opra and DrPhil and trading spaces on her own box. It is in her sewing room but, connects to the main tv also. I just point the remote into the other room and we can watch her Tivo.

It is the only way to go. When she fills it she fills it.

[timckelley]

My second TiVo has arrived! The seller just emailed me saying that UPS has notified her that it arrived at my house, so I just called home, and indeed: my wife has found it on our front porch. (UPS never rings the doorbell :( ) So this evening I'll hook it up :)

Do I need to notify TiVo Corporation or anybody that ownership has transferred to me? I'm initially not going to sub it, but I wonder if TiVo will still think it's subbed to the original owner. Well, I suppose after 30 days of nonpayment service will lapse.

[timckelley]

When I called home to ask my wife to check the front porch, I told her to carry the package gingerly to the room where it's going, and to lay it softly down, because I don't want to jar the hard drive too much. At that point, she started jokingly making fun of me by saying "My Precious! My Precious!" (implying that I was as attached to my TiVo as Smiegel was to the Ring.)

[timckelley]

Well, the second TiVo is installed and works perfectly. I can't tell you how much a sense of liberty and freedom I feel from having separate TiVos. You all must try it.

Over the weekend, I finished watching all my stuff off the Now Playing menu on my wife's TiVo, and transfered over my SPs, so the series 2 is all hers now.

[Marco]

Originally posted by timckelley
Well, the second TiVo is installed and works perfectly. I can't tell you how much a sense of liberty and freedom I feel from having separate TiVos. You all must try it.

Over the weekend, I finished watching all my stuff off the Now Playing menu on my wife's TiVo, and transfered over my SPs, so the series 2 is all hers now.

Time to update your username subtitle text!

[JYoung]

(patiently waiting for the Mrs. to start taking over the second TiVo)


(I'd guess mid February or so)

[TivoGeezer]

Originally posted by timckelley
(implying that I was as attached to my TiVo as Smiegel was to the Ring.)

More so, I would guess. At least the tivo will not purposely betray you. :p

[timckelley]

Originally posted by Marco
Time to update your username subtitle text!

Oops! Somebody mentioned this to me earlier, but I thought he was talking about my sig. Thanks.... I've now updated the username subtitle.

[Mike20878]

Originally posted by timckelley
Oops! Somebody mentioned this to me earlier, but I thought he was talking about my sig. Thanks.... I've now updated the username subtitle.

What was the old one? I don't think I noticed it...

[Capn Jack]

Originally posted by foo monkey
Start deleting her programs, one at a time, but don't tell her. If she finds out, which she probably won't, apologize. She's not going to divorce you over television.

or tell her its a bug you read about on TiVo Community.
:)

[Marco]

Originally posted by Mike20878
What was the old one? I don't think I noticed it...

"Have Only One TiVo"

[allan]

Originally posted by Marco
"Have Only One TiVo"

Well, he still just has one Tivo. His wife has the other one. ;)

[timckelley]

But I feel very liberated

[drtivoevil]

divorce!

[timckelley]

Divorce need not be necessary. The key to saving a marriage is to own two TiVos. :D

[timckelley]

Well, she did the forbidden thing. There was a movie on My Tivo set as KUSN. I'd already watched it, but she told me not to delete it because she wanted to watch it.

Without my permission, she changed it to KUID <sounds of shocked horror>.

She wanted to save it because she wants to tape it. Well, I informed her that she has violated one of the Sacred Holy Commandments, and that I reserve the right, if I get low on space, to arbitrarily change whatever I want to KUSN.

She agrees that this is my right, and in fact, within 24 hours, she taped the movie off to tape, so no harm done. To tell the truth, I still have lots and lots of unused space on my 194 hour TiVo, so I'm not worried about space anytime soon. If and when I get low on space, then I'll be looking at the KUID stuff on there and changing some of it to KUSN.

I don't use KUID for any of my own stuff, but if space gets low it's possible I might (in order to protect my shows from her stuff) start using KUID. At that time I might have to remind her not to change anything without my permission to KUID. Of course, if gets to this point, I probably should upgrade her TiVo. But it's not to that point yet, because I have lots of unused space on my TiVo right now.

You might wonder: why if I have so much space did she bother changing it to KUID? Answer: it had a yellow exclamation mark next to it, and she was worried about imminent deletion. I've explained to her before that that's not what the explanation mark means, but she's been having trouble accepting my explanation of the exclamation mark.

[JYoung]

shoot, I figured it would be at least another two weeks before she did something.

Stand firm. Otherwise she gets a crack here, a little more the next time, and soon she'll have taken over both TiVos.

[Joey303]

You might wonder: why if I have so much space did she bother changing it to KUID? Answer: it had a yellow exclamation mark next to it, and she was worried about imminent deletion. I've explained to her before that that's not what the explanation mark means, but she's been having trouble accepting my explanation of the exclamation mark.

This is not your wife's fault. Her logic is the typical logic that human being would use when seeing the exclamation point.

This is TiVo's fault and has been mentioned
HERE. (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?threadid=97163&perpage=20&highlight=ball&pagenumber=1)

[timckelley]

Originally posted by Joey303
This is not your wife's fault. Her logic is the typical logic that human being would use when seeing the exclamation point.

This is TiVo's fault and has been mentioned
HERE. (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?threadid=97163&perpage=20&highlight=ball&pagenumber=1)


Thanks for showing me that thread. I agree with you.

[robertj49]

upgrade to a higher size disk--I think you can get up to 200 ish hours now, and then all can be happy. Record at the lowest quality you can stand to maximize space (If she won't watch 'em , give her the lowest quality!!)

[timckelley]

Originally posted by robertj49
upgrade to a higher size disk--I think you can get up to 200 ish hours now, and then all can be happy. Record at the lowest quality you can stand to maximize space (If she won't watch 'em , give her the lowest quality!!)

To be truthful, with all my newfound space (194 hours), I've been recording everything (no exceptions) at Best Quality. I was tired of the graininess on the old TiVo. Best Quality looks really nice.


Update: she's probably got about 2 or 3 hours of stuff on my TiVo with KUID! I told her that if/when my space gets low, I reserve the right to convert her stuff to KUSN, and my stuff to KUID.

[JYoung]

I'm sorry, you are allowing her to keep her stuff on your TiVo, why?
:confused:

[timckelley]

Originally posted by JYoung
I'm sorry, you are allowing her to keep her stuff on your TiVo, why?
:confused:


There are shows we both watch. So I record these on my TiVo, and leave them there until she watches it. All her shows that are only for her are on her TiVo.

Well here's a new, slightly shocking update:
Right now, I've got 3 or 4 hours (probably closer to 3) of stuff I've already seen and am waiting for her to see so we can delete it. It's set to KUID (can you believe it?). I've always told her that if/when my TiVo gets low, I'll arbitrarily change what I want to KUSN, and maybe change some or all of my own stuff to KUID.

Well, this morning she told me "No you won't.... you'll tell me your TiVo is getting low, and then we'll set aside some time for you to watch our son while I watch the backlog and delete it."

So then I said to her: "So, are you telling me you're changing the holy ground rule that says I get the right to set the space settings on my own TiVo as I see fit?"

She replied to me: "Yes. Considering all the things I do for you in the marriage, yes, I'm revoking that ground rule."

I said back to her: "This could make good conversation material for the TCF."

She said "Fine."


So here I've posted it and await your advice.

[TivoGeezer]

What's that they say? "You can't win!" So watch the boy for a couple hours so she can catch up on Tivo. It will make peace.

[timckelley]

Originally posted by TivoGeezer
What's that they say? "You can't win!" So watch the boy for a couple hours so she can catch up on Tivo. It will make peace.

If my TiVo ever gets short on space because of her shows, it will take a whole lot more than a couple of of hours to free it up. We currently already take turns watching him to get our other house work done, but yes, I will agree to watch him for more hours if that's what it will take, unless more important work goes undone. (Like, say, getting our taxes done by April 15th.)

[DevdogAZ]

Sounds to me like the TiVo has been more of a problem for your marriage than a help. In my house, it has been nothing but a help, allowing us to spend time with our kids when they are awake, and watch our shows after they are asleep, for example.

But you will never win this type of an argument with your wife. I say you don't let the TiVo get full before you make her watch her shows. If you do that, she could potentially have 30 or more hours of shows to watch and that is kind of insurmountable. I'd suggest making an hour or two a week where you tell her you will watch the kid while she can watch shows. That way you are always chipping away at the problem and it never gets too big.

The other option is to simply let some things get deleted. She will be pissed at first but eventually she will realize it's not a big deal that she missed a show, and once she realizes that, it will be very liberating for her. If she can come to an understanding that TV is there for her entertainment and TiVo helps to make that entertainment fit in with her schedule she will be very happy. If she continues to treat TiVo like a taskmaster that records far more shows that she will ever have the time to watch, she will never catch up, she will continue to be unhappy about it and the continued stress between you over this trivial issue could cause bigger problems in your marriage.

[timckelley]

Originally posted by devdogaz
Sounds to me like the TiVo has been more of a problem for your marriage than a help. In my house, it has been nothing but a help, allowing us to spend time with our kids when they are awake, and watch our shows after they are asleep, for example.

That's exactly how I use my TiVo. (when he's asleep.) I do find it very liberating to be able to do stuff with him and not worry about missing my shows.

[Marco]

Does she ALWAYS take a mile when you offer an inch? ... in non-TiVo matters, I mean.

[Polcamilla]

So.....many.....problems. Seriously----you *can* see that she's emotionally blackmailing you over TELEVISION, right?

Just delete the stupid shows and get it over with. Honestly, what's the worst she's going to do to you? Leave you? Deliberately break your TiVo?

I'll note (as a stay-at-home-wife and mother) that the things she does for "your" marriage are really the things she does for HER marriage and for HER family. If she's genuinely THAT unhappy with what she does that she feels she needs you to compensate her for her work by giving her an additional 8-10 responsibility-free hours so she can indulge in her compulsive habit, then she really needs to look at her life, figure out why it's making her unhappy, and make some serious changes so that her daily life can be a delight, not a drudgery.

You could fill your house with TiVos and still have problems. Television is not the issue here. And until you and she confront the REAL issue, your best bet is to find some place to lock away your TiVo where she can't access it. And feel no guilt about doing so, because she's showing that she can't share and can't play nice and, as a grownup yourself, there's no reason you should continue to give in to her childish demands.

Good luck!

[JYoung]

Originally posted by timckelley
There are shows we both watch. So I record these on my TiVo, and leave them there until she watches it. All her shows that are only for her are on her TiVo.

Well here's a new, slightly shocking update:
Right now, I've got 3 or 4 hours (probably closer to 3) of stuff I've already seen and am waiting for her to see so we can delete it. It's set to KUID (can you believe it?). I've always told her that if/when my TiVo gets low, I'll arbitrarily change what I want to KUSN, and maybe change some or all of my own stuff to KUID.

Well, this morning she told me "No you won't.... you'll tell me your TiVo is getting low, and then we'll set aside some time for you to watch our son while I watch the backlog and delete it."

So then I said to her: "So, are you telling me you're changing the holy ground rule that says I get the right to set the space settings on my own TiVo as I fit?"

She replied to me: "Yes. Considering all the things I do for you in the marriage, yes, I'm revoking that ground rule."

I said back to her: "This could make good conversation material for the TCF."

She said "Fine."


So here I've posted it and await your advice.

Say what? Considering all the things she does?
Correct me if I'm wrong, (and I apologize in advance if I am) but she's a stay at home mom. Which means you are the breadwinner in the family. The one who goes out and works 8-10 hours a day to earn the money that allows her to indulge in her obsession.
It's not like you bring nothing to this marriage and for her to say that is unfair to you.
You could say to her, "Considering all the things I do for you in the marriage, I'm revoking the rule for my fidelity" and see what her reaction is.

Personally, I wouldn't let her get away with it. Once she starts doing this, it won't be long until she entirely takes over "your" TiVo (and starts canceling your Enterprise recordings). Then where will you be? You'll be backt o square one with the same problem, that's where.

(Oh, and PolCamilla makes a lot of sense too)

[ZeoTiVo]

anyone else here realize that this fued is all about television shows ?

I mean if you can not watch a television show within a week of it being on then is it really all that important to keep around. How many hours of shows are on VCR tape that will never get played ?

I tend to agrre with Polcamilla that this is about more than a TV show, at least I hope so becuase it sure would be very unreal to get this worked up simply about keeping a bucnh of TV shows around becuase you don't have time to watch them.

[TiVoChick]

Do you use HMO? Perhaps she can transfer some shows from your TiVo to hers when space gets low. That not only gives her more time, but it forces her to manage her shows within the space budget on her unit, not yours and hers.

[JYoung]

Unfortunately, wife has a Series 2 TiVo and Tim has a Series 1 (unsubbed, I believe)

[timckelley]

Yes, mine's unsubbed, and I don't have HMO. Plus, I should mention that I have 194 hours, but she only has 80. She really ought to have the one with more space, but she needs the guide data more than I do. (I also really like having 194 hours, because it means I can TiVo everything at Best Quality.) I've told her that if need be, I can upgrade her TiVo to have more space. But we're holding off on that for now, because even though she's occupying space on my TiVo, I still have 6+ screens worth of suggestions on it, so space is not a problem yet. (Suggestions came in during the first month I had it when it was subbed by the original owner, who finally got smart and cancelled her sub - I got several weeks of free guide data, hehehe!)

My latest thinking though, is that if space gets to be a problem, I might consider offloading her stuff to a tape and handing her the tape. She's already told me she wouldn't object to that. (She's also made it clear that she has no idea when she'll ever get to watch her stuff that's on my TiVo, but I am *not* to delete it - unless it's been offloaded to tape, that is.) The only bad thing is the menial work of offloading, but I suppose if I kicked off one show per night as I go to bed, I could make serious progress towards getting her stuff off my TiVo.

[David Platt]

Originally posted by timckelley
Well, I wear the pants, and my TiVo is my TiVo!

Are you re-thinking this statement yet, Tim? :D :D

[timckelley]

Originally posted by timckelley
Well, I wear the pants, and my TiVo is my TiVo!


Originally posted by David Platt
Are you re-thinking this statement yet, Tim? :D :D


I don't recall ever making the statement you quoted me as making. Where did you extract that quote from?

[MediaLivingRoom]

Maybe we should be able to add an external DVD-RW drive.

[JoeltheTiVoFan]

I suggest you think hard before adding capacity to her TiVo hard drive. The trouble is - she can't keep up with her recorded shows. When someone can't keep up with the load, and create a backlog, you don't solve anything by giving them the ability to create more backlog for themselves. Instead, you should try to create a situation where they have LESS ability to do so.

My wife insists on reading every line of a newspaper (not literally true, but she does like to scan every article). So, a typical five-section daily would take her all afternoon, and take most other people 30 minutes. We would pile up days, weeks of papers. It was a mess. We reached a deal: Every recycling day, we throw out all newspapers over 7 days old.

My wife hasn't changed her newspaper habit. It's the same with magazines, etc. Every page, every article, etc... But she HAS accepted that it is silly to keep old papers around and read them, so she has SELF-LIMITED her back-log.

Now, admittingly, she does have the trouble with TiVo as well... she will want to watch every episode of any show we tape - even if we've put it in the category of "taped just because we may watch it if bored."

My solution (that she accepted): Set every show to keep at most 2 episodes. That way, they delete themselves... same idea as the papers.

By the way, if you think this sounds controlling - it's not... she's the one who asked me with ways to keep her backlog to a small number, and this is what I've come up with.

-Joel

[David Platt]

Originally posted by timckelley
I don't recall ever making the statement you quoted me as making. Where did you extract that quote from?

Right here. (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?postid=1630914#post1630914)

[timckelley]

Oops... I guess I did make that statement in jest. What man truly wears the pants in any family? Women hold the trump card. If they don't get their way, they can get emotional about it (yell, cry, etc.)

[Glen Graham]

Tim...

As I posted back on 6-24-03 (post #92 (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?postid=1220263#post1220263)) -- note, in particular, the red and blue passages. The red predicted this, but...

The blue is the real key. From the last conversation you posted, it strongly seems as though your wife has some consuming (unspoken) issue -- either against you, or is simply directing her anger at you.

It could be resentment about your child's disabilities, her feeling she is "wasting" her life (a career she wanted but is not pursuing), or something you did. However, I want to venture to say that there is no solution to your TiVo issues...

The TiVo and the televisions are not her real problem. I urge you to think about that. She is merely using the TiVo as an outlet for built-up anger... and that is what you really need to get to the root of.

Originally posted by Glen Graham
So, in a nutshell, your wife needs help. You're right - increasing capacity will not help, she'll hoard more and become more obsessive.

If/when you get your own TiVo, she will fill hers up, and see space on yours -- and then either set some stuff to record on yours, or complain to you that YOU are being mean and unfair to HER (because you have extra space and are not sharing).

Lastly, her setting everything to KUID and hoarding to tape... is very very indicative of problems that undoubtedly go beyond the scope of this forum. Either she has some unspoken grudge against you (thus she refuses to share), or she has an obsessive-compulsive disorder (making her feel the urge to hoard) that she cannot keep in check and should honestly consult professional help for.

[timckelley]

Well, she is now only has about 2 hours on my TiVo, because I've been offloading her stuff to tapes. I'm using EP quality, so I think all her stuff will ultimately take up 3 tapes. Lately there's not too much of her stuff going on my TiVo, because there are lots of reruns going on now.

To tell the truth, there are only 3 SPs on my TiVO that she wants as KUID, which I'm taping off the VHS instead. And 2 of those 3 are in their last season and soon to be cancelled, so maybe there's some light in the future.

I talked to her again yesterday about her vast horde of tapes, and she tells me frankly, that the reason she's storing so much stuff that she has no time any day soon to watch, is that she has no faith in the future quality of our television shows. Much as a squirrel hoards nuts for the winter, she is hoarding hundreds and hundreds of hours of TV on tapes so that in her old age she'll have stuff to watch.

My reply to her is that I have more faith in the future of TV. I figure that when the time comes, there'll be worthwhile stuff to TiVo and watch. She disagrees with this assessment.

[Marco]

Originally posted by timckelley
I talked to her again yesterday about her vast horde of tapes, and she tells me frankly, that the reason she's storing so much stuff that she has no time any day soon to watch, is that she has no faith in the future quality of our television shows. Much as a squirrel hoards nuts for the winter, she is hoarding hundreds and hundreds of hours of TV on tapes so that in her old age she'll have stuff to watch.

The videotapes will go bad before the stuff on live TV does. :cool:

[allan]

Originally posted by Marco
The videotapes will go bad before the stuff on live TV does. :cool:

I dunno. TV is getting pretty bad already. If I had to rely on the PrimeTime lineup, I would have thrown my set out the window by now.

[ZeoTiVo]

TVLand in 20 years will have all this stuff anyway

they may even have channels by decades by then

[Glen Graham]

Hoarders always have "reasonable excuses" for hoarding...

The truth is, she has an obsession. That obsession is "not missing anything she might, maybe, one day, sort of want to watch".

Obsessions are, sometimes, caused by the mind focusing energy in one direction to make up for a desire that cannot be fulfilled.

Often, therepy can help people resolve their obsessions.

But, the person has to want to change.

[MediaLivingRoom]

Bump

[Susiemw]

I just spent goodness knows how much time reading this thread from beginning to end. Talk about "days of our lives"in the tivo community. :)

I was happy to read that you got the second tivo.

I was also supportive of your wife, who after all is an adult and allowed to make certain decisions in her/your life even if they aren't really realistic.. overdoing tivo is better than drugs , alcohol etc) right up to the point where she "changed the ground rules".

I hope you guys manage to work this out. I know if your wife were married to me her shows would have been instantly deleted from tivo when she pulled the "everything I do for this marriage" card. She does do a lot in your marriage. So do you. You're both in a tough situation with a child that needs extra care but playing fair between husband and wife has to be a ground rule that never changes.

No arbitrarily changing the rules, no suddenly making the democracy a dictatorship. Communication is everything and at this point perhaps she needs to get reasonable about how much she is taping. it sounds like an addiction. At this point she doesn't want to get control of this addiction but that doesn't mean it's not a problem that she hopefully will acknowledge and confront. Normally, i'd say let her keep this addiction if it's giving her comfort (and it must be on some level) but the latest stunt changed my mind.

Of course, my opinion is meaningless in this discussion but it's 3:40 am and I should have been watching tivo instead or reading this bloody long thread so I just had to comment! LOL

Good luck!

Susan

[timckelley]

Oh, I see somebody bumped this. Well for quite awhile now, we haven't had any conflicts between TiVos. There's only two SPs that we both watch which sit on my TiVo, and I simply archive them to VHS when I'm done watching them, so I have scads of room on my unsubbed series 1.

I've told my wife that if she is struggling too much with space we could consider upgrading her 80 hour TiVo, but I don't think she wants to, because she thinks that if her 80 hour TiVo is full, she's got too much in her Now Playing. Well, it is mostly full still, and she's still constantly archiving to make room for her To Do List.

The latest is that she consolidated her clothes which used to be in two dressers and one bureau, and was able to free up one entire dresser drawers, and she's using it to store tapes. (The bookcases are all filled up with tapes already.)

She's admitted to me that she's addicted and wishes that she wasn't, but doesn't know how to break the addiction.

[DevdogAZ]

Originally posted by timckelley
She's admitted to me that she's addicted and wishes that she wasn't, but doesn't know how to break the addiction.
I would say the first, and easiest thing to try, is to "accidentally" delete some shows from her TiVo before she gets a chance to watch or archive them. She'll be pissed initially, but then she'll realize that the show is gone, there's nothing she can do about it, and she may actually find it liberating to have one fewer show to worry about.

[timckelley]

Originally posted by devdogaz
I would say the first, and easiest thing to try, is to "accidentally" delete some shows from her TiVo before she gets a chance to watch or archive them. She'll be pissed initially, but then she'll realize that the show is gone, there's nothing she can do about it, and she may actually find it liberating to have one fewer show to worry about.

Hmmm.... do you think I should run this idea by her first, or just surprise her with a lost show? I wonder how safe this is. I fear it may not be safe.


Correction to my last post: it's not 2 SPs, but 3SPs that we jointly own, residing on my TiVo.

[Polcamilla]

Tim---

Have her take a look at www.flylady.net --- if she really wants to make a change, this is a GREAT site. Flylady has a fantastic way of making you see how harmful clutter is and hording is and gently reminds you that you need to really love yourself to be able to make the changes you need to in your life.

Good luck!

[JYoung]

Originally posted by timckelley


She's admitted to me that she's addicted and wishes that she wasn't, but doesn't know how to break the addiction.

Perhaps a counselor would help?
As Glen said, there's something else driving this.

[timckelley]

My wife is now complaining that the existence of her TiVo has a sort of beckening effect, sucking her into the room where she spends hours at a time attending to it, causing her to neglect her other duties. She has requested that I sell her TiVo to break her of the addiction.

I asked her what's to stop her from being drawn to my surviving TiVo. She said that that she'll know it's my TiVo and so will stay away from it. I thought that maybe she was making a rash decision after having a bad day, so I asked her the next day, and she's still standing by her desire to get rid of her TiVo.

I told her I'm having second thoughts about selling it, because having two standalone TiVos is handy for resolving conflicts. If she really wants to get rid of it, maybe I should take it for myself and become the owner of 2 TiVos while she owns zero. But she feels like she'd still get beckoned by it.

I suggested how about I remove the TV from the room that has her TiVo, and she admits that would accomplish the same thing, as she won't use her TiVo if there's no TV next to it. However, I could still use it because I have it hooked up to AVcast technology which makes it operable from a different room. (Of couse she could do this too, but doesn't know how.)

My question to you is: is it excessive for one person (me) to have a series 2 80 hour TiVo (subbed) and a series 1 194 hour TiVo (unsubbed)? It seems like a huge amount of space for me, and I'll never come close to using a large fraction of it, so it makes me think maybe I should sell one. Still, conflict resolution is nice, but on the other hand, I rarely have conflicts. But I won't say never, but there have been conflicts; it just doesn't happen often. Is that justification for hanging on to two TiVos?

(Note: last night I observed her in the act of being beckened to her TiVo, but it was after our son was asleep, so I don't see the big harm. But she told me that she also attended to it yesterday afternoon while my son was in school, and she had other housework that she really wanted to get done, but didn't.)

[David Platt]

Originally posted by timckelley
I asked her what's to stop her from being drawn to my surviving TiVo. She said that that she'll know it's my TiVo and so will stay away from it.

From the behavior that you've reported in this thread, I'm having a really hard time believing that she'll follow through on this.

[Marco]

Originally posted by timckelley
My wife is now complaining that the existence of her TiVo has a sort of beckening effect, sucking her into the room where she spends hours at a time attending to it, causing her to neglect her other duties. She has requested that I sell her TiVo to break her of the addiction.

See JYoung's post, above. Unfortunately, you might have to send TiVo away ... could be akin to not keeping any alcohol in a household that has an alcoholic living in it. Your wife seems to display some traits of OCD and/or and addictive personality. But I'm no professional, so what do I know.

[DevdogAZ]

I think maybe this summer would be a perfect time for both of your TiVos to disappear. Whether you sell them or just hide them is up to you. Let her go 3 months without the ability to record and maybe it will break her of the habit. Then you can decide whether it's safe to bring the TiVo out.

[TivoGeezer]

Sounds like time for "Tivos Anonymous".