Overlap Protection Priority Issues

[pepcid]

Overlap protection uses your Season Pass Manager to determine priority of which show gets clipped. The problem I have is that if I'm recording something that's Season Passed and I want to record another show that's a one time thing, when I schedule that recording, it gives it priority over my season pass recording (even if it's my #1).

I just found on the tivo.com why this is happening. Apparently, one time recordings get priority over Season Passes. Has anyone figured out a way around this, without adding this new program as a Season Pass?

If anyone from Tivo is reading, how about the option to pick which one you want clipped when the conflict occurs? Depending on the situation, you may want the Season Pass clipped one week and the new program another week.

[rainwater]

Single recordings always have priority over season passes. There's no way around that.

[pdhenry]

You should at least be told that there's a conflict at the time you set up the requested recording, shouldn't you? You can then elect to set a manual recording that doesn't conflict with the SP (there's still no way to start a requested show late or end it early other than a manual recording).

Not ideal but it will work.

[Jonathan_S]

Couldn't you convert the one episode of the season pass into a manual recording (and thus elevate its priority). Go into the recording options for that episode, change something (maybe set the keep until a day later) and hit record with these options.

That will convert it from a SP recording to a manual one.

[Although for some reason I want to say that the manual recording that was set first (the older one) has priority; so you may need to change the SP episode to a manual before you schedule the actual manual recording to get the overlap protection to work the way you want]

[MultimediaJones]

Jonathan's idea is correct. When TiVo warns you the one-time recording will cause the SP recording to be clipped, you confirm that. Then from the to-do list or SP list view of upcoming recordings you can modify the recording options of that particular episode of the SP show to change the clipping. It doesn't matter which one-time recording is set first.

In fact when clipping is going to occur, changing the recording options of the clipped entry will display a start or stop recording status of "will be clipped". You can change this back to "On-time", which will then warn you that the adjacent recording will now be clipped.

I've done this a number of times, works like a charm. It isn't as perfect as if the TiVo could read your mind to decide what to do, but is quicker and less error prone than messing with a manual time recording.

[porieux]

What I don't understand is when I have a (season pass) recording padded, and another season pass, TiVo will let a show be clipped, rather than record a different showing of the same episode later that night, which has no conflict. This makes no sense at all to me. I have to manually go in and cancel the recording and select the 'safe' one myself? :confused:

[Jonathan_S]

What I don't understand is when I have a (season pass) recording padded, and another season pass, TiVo will let a show be clipped, rather than record a different showing of the same episode later that night, which has no conflict. This makes no sense at all to me. I have to manually go in and cancel the recording and select the 'safe' one myself? :confused:
TiVo always tries for the earliest timeslot the current recording rules allow. So if you have a season pass that is padded by less than the clipping limit (and you have clipping turned on) TiVo will grab the partial episode in the next timeslot rather than grabbing a repeat.

You can more permanently override this behavior by increasing the padding on the first season pass to more than the number of minutes the TiVo will clip by. That will force it to schedule the repeat of the following episode. (Unfortunately, that does mean that if one night there isn't a repeat of the following episode that the TiVo won't be able to grab the partial episode instead)

[porieux]

Thanks for the advice Jonathan!

I still think this is something that should be easy for TiVo to fix in the software.
Should be really easy for it to check to see if there are other upcoming showings.

Same deal when you set up a one time recording and there is a conflict---
the TiVo makes no effort to reschedule the recordings if there are multiple showings.

I kinda feel like I'm doing the TiVo's job here....

[rainwater]

I'm still waiting for the feature in overlap protection that lets set an option that says record episodes at a later date instead of clipping (if possible).

[porieux]

Yeah that's exactly what I am saying.

It should have been TRIVIAL for them to implement that...did they just not think of it? :scratchinghead:

[mattack]

I still think this is something that should be easy for TiVo to fix in the software.
Should be really easy for it to check to see if there are other upcoming showings.

Are you a programmer? It is really not that easy to fix (I won't go quite so far to say that it's the travelling salesman problem, but it's complex).

You have already told the Tivo to record show A instead of show B, because A is higher than B in the SP manager.

If the Tivo "knows" that it can record B at 8pm and A at 11pm, what about program C that was originally going to be recorded at 11pm?

Plus, it has inherently violated your SP rating by essentially giving B a higher priority by recording it first.

There is a whole cascading effect.

[porieux]

Yes I am a programmer actually, and I think it's extremely straightforward.

You are assuming a program C when usually there would not be one.
And if there was, it would still follow the priority rules. It just has to
search for available open slots when the show is playing. If there are none,
then go back to the original plan, which is to clip. But at least make it the last resort.

There is no violation of the SP rating IMO, because a clipped recording is not desirable,
ever if it can be avoided. But, if a user disagrees I think it's reasonable to have a
preference setting to turn this behavior off.

[Jonathan_S]

Yes I am a programmer actually, and I think it's extremely straightforward.

You are assuming a program C when usually there would not be one.
And if there was, it would still follow the priority rules. It just has to
search for available open slots when the show is playing. If there are none,
then go back to the original plan, which is to clip. But at least make it the last resort.

There is no violation of the SP rating IMO, because a clipped recording is not desirable,
ever if it can be avoided. But, if a user disagrees I think it's reasonable to have a
preference setting to turn this behavior off.
But one of the reasons that TiVo tries for earlier slots (rather than bumping higher priority show back to second airing whenever possible) is that second airings are often much less reliable that the original timeslot.

SciFi's twice a night airings on SciFi Friday are pretty reliable; I don't think I've ever heard of the later showing getting bumped.

But a (extreme) counter example is how the local UPN station used to handle Start Trek: Enterprise. The second airing was Saturday afternoon, after baseball. Which meant is never started on time; and about 30% of the time was totally preempted.

Eureka on SciFi is another example. It aired at 9 and repeated at 11. But between the airing was wresting (don't ask me why wresting is on SciFi), and wresting consistently ran around 5 minutes over, so if Eureka has to be recorded from the later slot you need different padding options.

(And this leaves out schedule changes that remove the later airing after the original episode has aired)


So while it would be fairly simple to implement a "try later, if not possible clip" algorithm, the results would probably be more annoying to many people.

[rainwater]

But a (extreme) counter example is how the local UPN station used to handle Start Trek: Enterprise. The second airing was Saturday afternoon, after baseball. Which meant is never started on time; and about 30% of the time was totally preempted.


The same can be said for the first airing. It could be after a sports game as well. So I don't see how this would be any less reliable.

I agree that it would be tricky to implement. However, if the option was set on each season pass, then there would be no problems. I certainly wouldn't want a global option for this. But shows that come on networks like USA have multiple repeats and to tell TiVo to record those shows at a later date instead of clipping would be a nice feature.

[porieux]

Yeah I don't really buy the unreliable argument sorry.

As I said I also don't buy that it would be tricky to implement.

[rainwater]

As I said I also don't buy that it would be tricky to implement.

It actually would be quite tricky because when the Tivo gets its daily guide data and it computes what to record, it doesn't know when the next airing would occur. Basically, you would only want it to record at a later date if the episode appears in the guide. But initially this information isn't known. So I would definately say its not easy to implement.

[Amnesia]

So I would definately say its not easy to implement.One thing that they could certainly do with the available information is give a visual indicator as to whether or not a particular showing will conflict with any existing recordings. That is, if I'm looking at all the showings of, say, of Sin City, it could visually distinguish between those that will cause conflicts and those that are safe to record.

[porieux]

It actually would be quite tricky because when the Tivo gets its daily guide data and it computes what to record, it doesn't know when the next airing would occur. Basically, you would only want it to record at a later date if the episode appears in the guide. But initially this information isn't known. So I would definately say its not easy to implement.


Oh come on. This is just getting silly.

[rainwater]

Oh come on. This is just getting silly.

Huh? Oh yeah, they should flip that magic button to turn on this feature. That shouldn't be hard to do.

[porieux]

Why would there be any magic involved? Read what I wrote again.

[mattack]

You are assuming a program C when usually there would not be one.
And if there was, it would still follow the priority rules. It just has to
search for available open slots when the show is playing. If there are none,
then go back to the original plan, which is to clip. But at least make it the last resort.

There is no violation of the SP rating IMO, because a clipped recording is not desirable,
ever if it can be avoided. But, if a user disagrees I think it's reasonable to have a
preference setting to turn this behavior off.

But it *is* violating the SP order, since by definition that says record the higher rated one first. If you could somehow give SPs exactly equal ranking, then this wouldn't violate the user's settings.