Annoying Side-Effect of Clipping

[aindik]

I am glad TiVo implemented the clipping feature to trip the beginning or end of shows that conflict with higher-priority recording by five minutes or less, instead of cancelling the recording entirely. But one side-effect of this is getting the clipped episode when I would rather have the entire episode recorded during a later rerun that doesn't conflict with anything. Every night, I get 25 minute episodes of the Colbert Report, because it conflicts with my SP for the local news that ends at 11:35. I would much rather it record the rerun at 1:30 a.m., which conflicts with nothing.

This is annoying enough, but sometimes I try to combat this by deleting the 11:30 airings from the To Do list, expecting the TiVo to record the 1:30 airings, but it doesn't record them, for no reason I can tell.

I wish there was a "do not clip" option at the SP Recording Options level, that I could set for shows that are rerun often. Or, at the very least, I wish it would record the reruns when I delete the clipped version from the To Do list.

[john123]

I wondering if this is the problem I'm seeing - suddenly, it seems like the bulk of our recordings on both TiVo's are getting truncated by odd ammounts of minutes, and the recordings are showing up as 'partial'.

Some example from this week are Smallville, Gilmore Girls, Survivor, Supernatural.

Some details - Supernatural was recorded on tuesday, started at 09:00pm, and lasted 56 minutes - seems a weird ammount to truncate it by though.

Smallville was truncated by about 12 mins, Gilmore girls by about the same I think.

Very annoying. I was about to try a reboot when my wife mentioned it was happening on the other tivo too :(

[john123]

Ahh, I should have checked the Help forum first it seems : http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=287579

Looks like my problem is not related to yours - appologies for the sidetrack.

[segaily]

Never mind looks like John found the thread I was pointing him to while I was typing my message.

[segaily]

Back on topic I agree with you. I wish it would not clip if it had it in the guide as able to record later without a conflict.

Maybe you could change your Colbert Report season pass to all with duplicates then you would get the clipped one and the compete one.

[megazone]

This is annoying enough, but sometimes I try to combat this by deleting the 11:30 airings from the To Do list, expecting the TiVo to record the 1:30 airings, but it doesn't record them, for no reason I can tell.

I wish there was a "do not clip" option at the SP Recording Options level, that I could set for shows that are rerun often. Or, at the very least, I wish it would record the reruns when I delete the clipped version from the To Do list.1. Manually cancelling a recording tells the TiVo "I do not want this recording, period" so it will not reschedule the episode again for 28 days.

The better way to do this is to go to the 1:30 recording and tell it to record that one. Then the unit itself will cancell the 11:30 episode because your manual request takes precedence, and the 28-day rule kills any recordings of the same episode.

2. If you go to the episode that is being clipped and fiddle with the recording options it goes from an SP recording (2 checks) to a manual recording (1 check) and it will override the rules as it becomes higher priority than any SP/ARWL recording.

[aindik]

1. Manually cancelling a recording tells the TiVo "I do not want this recording, period" so it will not reschedule the episode again for 28 days.

The better way to do this is to go to the 1:30 recording and tell it to record that one. Then the unit itself will cancell the 11:30 episode because your manual request takes precedence, and the 28-day rule kills any recordings of the same episode.

2. If you go to the episode that is being clipped and fiddle with the recording options it goes from an SP recording (2 checks) to a manual recording (1 check) and it will override the rules as it becomes higher priority than any SP/ARWL recording.

That works for the show that's on exactly twice, when I KNOW when the next recording is. But for stuff that reruns multiple times on multiple channels in a given week (i.e. anything on HBO), I want the TiVo to find me the one that won't be clipped. I don't want to have to do it myself.

[megazone]

Season Passes are tied to *one* channel, so it will never find it on another channel. You'd need an ARWL which isn't tied to a channel.

It sounds like clipping may not be for you for the behavior you want, I'd turn it off. Skipping a recording in the hopes of catching a later show has been covered in past discussions of clipping - it is too much of a risk and TiVo will not do it. If they skip the recording because they think they can record a later showing, then a new conflict comes up it may never be recorded. TiVo can't risk that as it'd anger users. TiVo doesn't want to gamble that it will be able to grab the future recording - if the user has clipping on it is, in effect, telling the unit they prefer to have a fragment recorded than taking that gamble. If you turn off clipping then it will go back to the old behavior and record the later showing if it can and skip the overlapped one.

Basically you're a corner case and not the target TiVo is going for. When I tell the TiVo not to record something, I don't want it going off and recording a later episode - I said no and I meant no. That's how most users look at it. If you see something is being clipped you can 'View Upcoming Episodes' and pick one of those instead. I've done that. It doesn't matter how many additional airings there are or where they are, that way.

[TK421]

Not ideal, but you could add a 5 min pad to the news SP. I'm pretty sure then the TiVo will not ckip or even record the earlier show but pick up the later Colbert Report.

[megazone]

True, if the total overlap is more than 5 minutes, it won't clip.

[segaily]

Skipping a recording in the hopes of catching a later show has been covered in past discussions of clipping - it is too much of a risk and TiVo will not do it. If they skip the recording because they think they can record a later showing, then a new conflict comes up it may never be recorded. TiVo can't risk that as it'd anger users. TiVo doesn't want to gamble that it will be able to grab the future recording - if the user has clipping on it is, in effect, telling the unit they prefer to have a fragment recorded than taking that gamble..

I agree that is why TiVo will not do it that way, but I think they should offer it as a second mode of clipping. After all that is the real corner case TiVo sees a future copy of a show in its guide that it thinks it can record but when it arrives has a conflict.

I think the current clipping model is better then no clipping but just barely better. The clipping model now allows me to record shows I could not have recorded before, but it requires that I check the to do list to make sure everything will work correctly.

What I want is a mode that says clip if you think you have no other choice. Sure I may very rarely miss a show I could have had clipped, but it will work better then having clipping off and should never work worse then having clipping off.

Maybe the best option would be to add two new options to the season pass manager. Record all with duplicacates of clipped shows and First runs only with duplicates of clipped shows.

[ZeoTiVo]

What I want is a mode that says clip if you think you have no other choice. Sure I may very rarely miss a show I could have had clipped, but it will work better then having clipping off and should never work worse then having clipping off.

Maybe the best option would be to add two new options to the season pass manager. Record all with duplicacates of clipped shows and First runs only with duplicates of clipped shows.

these are all good things to want but I think they add a lot of extra branches of work for the scheduler to check and it would be hard functionality to explain to many customers. In short it just does not fit the design patterns TiVo inc. is using

When first reading this thread it struck me as well the simple solution woul be to pad the show you know is clipping the other one that has a later repeat. If you add the time on to make the clipping greater than 5 minutes than the later show will always be picked for recording unless some other show higher up the season pass list does conflict for some reason

[Crrink]

What about the ability to specify an individual Season Pass to disallow clipping? I got bit by this same problem on my recording of The Shield. Missed the first few minutes which stunk because the episode replayed several times over the next few days.
95% of what I record is on regular network TV, which is where the clipping feature is great to have. I'd love to be able to set the 3 or 4 shows I record from cable channels to ignore clipping since replays are frequent and reliable.

[ZeoTiVo]

I would have prefferred clipping be set per season pass as well and that would be a simple menu option

but it still hyas the problem of a CSR (or us in the forum) trying to figure out if a reported problem had clipping set on some season passes or not and I would assume that it meant a whole nother layer of code to maintain and a lot more work to process as the scheduler went through the process.

whoever is the Scheduler SME (Subject Matter Expert) at TiVo must have vetoed the season pass level :(

[segaily]

Ok simpler solution. 2 clipping modes.
1 Clipping on
2 Clipping with duplicates.

If you have clipping with duplicates set a show will not be added to the 28 day rule list if it only recorded part of the show.

They already have a season pass option of all with duplicates if people are smart enough to understand that they should be able to understand clipping with duplicates.

[aindik]

Season Passes are tied to *one* channel, so it will never find it on another channel. You'd need an ARWL which isn't tied to a channel.

For the stuff on HBO? I don't have SPs for anything on HBO. Everything is by AWRL.

Another reason I don't want to go in and manually pick recurdings is that I want it to start deleting them after the KAM limit, and it won't do that if I pick them manually.

Padding the news by a minute might work, actually. That would conflict with the Colbert Report by 6 minutes, and wouldn't clip.

[majorclanger]

FWIW, I have the same issues with clipping. I agree that the software could be a little more clever and choose to re-record a show it if had been clipped. Sigh - TiVo is now quite perfect!