Automatic Overtime Adjustment

[Catboy17]

Sorry if this has already been said (I haven't found it), but since a lot of TiVos are on broadband now, it doesn't seem like it would be too difficult for the TiVo to know when it's taping a live event and check in with TiVo every 5 minutes or so near the end of the show and have somebody at TiVo (or even a wiki-style user-submitted database) report on when the shows are going long so it can keep recording, provided it doesn't need to tape something else (obviously it would go by priority and make it an option to cancel other stuff if it needs to go longer). You can set it yourself to pad the show, but this would be much more precise and a much easier, tivo-like experience to have updates on the major events like award shows and sports games that are prone to go long. This would probably only work for broadband-connected TiVos.

[PeternJim]

Does anyone know how the imbedded show information works? When I burn a show from either TiVo or even an older videotape, the DVD burner picks up the show title and some other information, which must obviously be built into the signal somehow. Is there any way for the TiVo to check this info and (as a user option) keep recording as long as that metadata stays the same?

[megazone]

The metadata is encoded into the VBI. But it is VERY unreliable and is not meant to be used for anything other than display purposes, if it is present at all. It is not always present, and when present, it is not always accurate.

As for some kind of network based system - who is going to pay for people to monitor every live event, etc, and update the DB? A wiki style system would never fly because you'd immediately have people playing with it and sticking in bad data just for the hell of it. No company like TiVo is going to offer a service that relies on data just anyone can control.

[Davis Freeberg]

I'd just like to have a way to only record the fourth quaters and extra for overtime and not have to record the whole game. I can do this manually, but it would be a nice wishlist feature to tell TiVo to always start something late just because you want to see the end of the show.

I would do this with band wishlists too where they usually play in the second half of a late night talk show. I could add twice as many wishlists if I didn't have to store a full hour when I only need 30 minutes of the footage.

As far as an auto overtime pad, I think that TiVo should turn this over to the community if the data costs them too much. Sports is one of the events that people do watch live and if people knew that by hitting a button it could automark a program for the rest of the TiVo crowd, I think people would do it. You may have some level of abuse, but it would be easy to put a minimum number of game ended signals to be received before reacting. TiVo could do statistical analysis to recognize people who cut it off too far from the mean and then not recognize those accounts. Since your data could be link to your membership, it wouldn't be as easy as just making up a new ID.