TiVo mishandling Season Pass Priorities?

[jeffw_00]

Hi - I am having a problem with Season Passes (SP) on my TiVoHD, and perhaps the experts here can enlighten me.

I have a SP for Boston Legal (BL) on an HD channel. I also have a season pass for Law and Order Criminal Intent (CI) on a different HD Channel. The BL SP is 2 steps higher-priority than the CI SP. However, the TiVo is NOT recording some BL episodes because it says a "high priority" recording is occurring instead (the CI HD SP). I've seen it actually record the wrong show.

So, Why would Tivo mis-prioritize CI ABOVE BL, when my CI season pass is LOWER priority than BL?

Actually, what I should ask is - How do I go about debugging/fixing this? Any tips?

Thanks
/j

(PS - if you have comments about my program choices please put them in a different thread 8-})

[jbernardis]

Are the two programs on at the same time or do they just overlap? If it's already recording the lower priority program, it will continue to do so, even skipping the higher priority program if necessary. It's not going to stop an active recording to record something else even if that something else is a higher priority. The priority only comes into play for two (or more) programs that start at the same time.

I've owned 6 different Tivos over the past 9+ years, and I've never had it screw up with priorities.

[bkdtv]

The priority only comes into play for two (or more) programs that start at the same timeThis is not the case.

TiVo doesn't determine priorities based on start times. If a lower priority recording is scheduled for 7:00-9:00 and a higher priority recording is scheduled for 8:45-10:00, the TiVo will always skip the lower-priority 7:00-9:00 program and record the 8:45-10:00 program instead.

Are the two programs on at the same time or do they just overlap? If it's already recording the lower priority program, it will continue to do so, even skipping the higher priority program if necessary. It's not going to stop an active recording to record something else even if that something else is a higher priority..TiVo would not record the lower priority program in the first place, unless the higher priority program was originally canceled as necessary to record an even higher priority recording.

What often happens is that a high priority recording overlaps with an even higher priority recording. When that happens, the TiVo records the lower-priority program that did not overlap.

For example:

Priority(1): 7:00-10:00 <--- Will record.
Priority(2): 8:00-9:00 <--- Will record.
Priority(5): 7:30-8:07 <--- Won't record due to conflict, and history may say that priority(20) was recorded instead.
Priority(20): 7:00-8:00 <--- Will record.

Note many syndicated programs do not start and end on the hour.

I have a SP for Boston Legal (BL) on an HD channel. I also have a season pass for Law and Order Criminal Intent (CI) on a different HD Channel. The BL SP is 2 steps higher-priority than the CI SP. However, the TiVo is NOT recording some BL episodes because it says a "high priority" recording is occurring instead (the CI HD SP). I've seen it actually record the wrong show. I suspect the program was either recorded previously (syndicated programs may be shown more than once a day) or the episode of Boston Legal overlapped with a higher-priority recording, while the episode of Criminal Intent did not. Refer to the above example.

[CrispyCritter]

However, the TiVo is NOT recording some BL episodes because it says a "high priority" recording is occurring instead (the CI HD SP). I've seen it actually record the wrong show. In the millions of recordings that people here have seen, I don't think anybody has ever proven that TiVo recorded the wrong show (modulo correct guide data) because of priorities. It always turns out to be something like bkdtv's examples, or a KUID SP that already has the maximum number of shows recorded for it, or some other rare case like that. It is the case that the explanation that the TiVo gives in Recording History is quite often wrong, or incomplete, but the actual choice of not to record has always been correct.

[jeffw_00]

Thanks Crispy - that's good feedback - I haven't analyzed the situation for reasons other than the one given by the machine. But I will today 8-}
/j

[jbernardis]

Sorry for the misinformation. The few times I have had an issue with priority, I've always explained it away as I stated above, but actually bkdtv's explanation makes more sense.

[jeffw_00]

Ok - I can't prove this, but I now have a theory. The channel that the SP for BL was a different channel than the shows were showing up on. When I tried to create an SP for the other channel, it gave me the option to "modify", which seemed odd because TiVO SPs are channel-specific. I think maybe there was a lower-down SP for the other channel that I somehow missed. I deleted ALL my BL SPs and recreated just the one I wanted in the right priority - i'll let iit churn for a bit and see if it does the right thing. If it does. then cockpit error, never mind....