Season passes not working properly?

[ckaye]

I just swapped out my series 2 single tuner for a dual tuner, and re-input all of my season passes. For some reason, whether I set them for First Run Only or First Run & Repeats, the To Do List wants to record every episode. For example, Stargate Atlantis ran a marathon on Monday of all the previous episodes. The tivo wanted to record all of them. Now I know that it's not within 28 days of the original air date, so what gives here? Am I going to constantly have to check my To Do List and manually delete recordings that I know are old?

I tried searching for an answer to this, but found nothing. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[phox_mulder]

Your new TiVo has never seen those episodes, so it figures you haven't either.

Chances are your old TiVo wouldn't want to record them since it saw them once already.

Using Atlantis as an example, my SP is still there from last season, and it didn't want to record any of the repeat marathon, it is also set for First Run/Repeats.


phox

[ckaye]

I thought that for First Run recording, all that mattered was the original air date, not whether the Tivo had seen the show before?

[Jonathan_S]

I thought that for First Run recording, all that mattered was the original air date, not whether the Tivo had seen the show before?
That's correct.

A show is considered first run only if:
It is being aired no more than 28 days after the original air date listed in it guide data. AND it isn't a duplicate.
- or -
It is an episode without detailed guide data. (aka generic guide data). Where the TiVo (and you) can't tell what episode it is. The TiVo will record it because it might be a new episode. See commonly with syndication of The Simpsons, and Comedy Central's The Daily Show.

A show is a duplicate if:
It has been recorded in the last 28 days.
It was scheduled to be recorded in the last 28 days but you manually canceled that recording.
It is still in your Now Playing List, no matter how long ago it was recorded.

[lancets]

I have a similar situation that I'm trying to figure out how to address. I recently switched from Replay to Tivo for the HD capability, but am running into issues when setting up season passes. An recent example is where I've set up a season pass to keep the latest two episodes of Smallville, which runs Thursday nights at 8:00pm. So the show was recorded at that time. Then on Saturday, WB ran a couple reruns during the day, so by the time I sat down to watch the Thursday night show on Sunday, it was gone! The Tivo had overwritten the two most recent episodes with those old reruns which weren't on the regularly scheduled date and time. On the Replay, I would just create a show-based recording, which only recorded episodes on the days (and timeslots) that I specified. I know I can change the Tivo to record only new episodes, but I'd rather not since there are some episodes from this past season that I've missed (a couple due to this very issue), so I'd rather have it catch any episode that airs during the regularly scheduled weekly time slot. But I don't want it to record the old reruns that they randomly use to fill time slots on other days. Am I missing something, or is this just a shortcoming of the Tivo?

[JorSha00]

You can manually select a day and time for TiVo to record. Go to TiVo Central=>Pick Programs to Record=>Record by Time or Channel=>Manually Record Time/Channel.

For Smallville, you would then select Repeating, Every Thursday, WB (5 KTLA for me), start at 8pm, stop at 9pm.

Be careful of day/time changes because if The WB changes the day or time that Smallville airs (as The WB does frequently with their shows) or if it changes when they become the CW Network, TiVo will not know to switch to the new time slot.

Hope this helps. :)

[ckaye]

Jonathan_S, I understand both of your guidelines, but the example I used, Stargate Atlantis, is not in syndication, nor do I believe it's lacking the proper guide data. I never had this problem with my other Tivo. Am I just thick or something?