Season pass not working for sports. Please help!

[jym]

I have been a Tivo user since they first came out. Recently we have added DirecTV Tivo. I am having all kinds of difficulty setting season passes with the DirecTivos.

I think I have figured out what the problem is. WIth the regular Tivos the listing for sports are much more generic. Monday night football is called Monday night football. With the DirecTivos they actually list the teams that are playing. This is causing the DirecTV not to find the event.

This has been even a bigger problem with baseball. On the regular Tivo I can just be watching a Cardinal baseball game on Fox Midwest and hit record and select season pass. It will now record every Cardinal game on Fox Midwest. With the DirecTivo I only get the games listed the same way. So if watching Cardinals @ Padres then I only get a season pass for games of Cardinals @ Padres but do not even get the Padres @ Cardinals.

The only good thing about all of this is I have learned how Wish list work. Previously we never used wish list. But I have done keyword wishlist with "Cardinals" and this mostly works. But it sucks

I want my season pass back like the original Tivo uses. Is there a setting somewhere. Or what is going on here?

[LostCluster]

It's the way that DirecTV has chosen to standardize all sporting events on all their units in guide data, modifications to the raw Tribune Data Services feed that TiVo uses, that you're seeing.

Basically, all guide data sources are no good at sporting events. Some change times rapidly in weather conditions, some run short or long frequently, some even get canceled based on the result of a game played less than 24 hours before the start time.

[jym]

But why is it fine on the regular Tivo but completely different on the DirecTivo?

[trainman]

Originally Posted by jym

But why is it fine on the regular Tivo but completely different on the DirecTivo?

LostCluster mentioned "...modifications to the raw Tribune Data Services feed that TiVo uses...", so I'll expand on that a little further...

With a DirecTiVo, the program listings you're getting are pretty much the same as you get on a regular TiVo, except that DirecTV does a little bit of "tweaking" of the data. To use your example of a Cardinals-at-Padres game...

* To a standalone TiVo, the game is part of a series called "MLB Baseball," and the episode title is "St. Louis Cardinals at San Diego Padres." Since a Season Pass will record all episodes of a series on a particular channel, it's therefore possible for you to set a Season Pass for "MLB Baseball" on Fox Midwest and get all the Cardinals games.

* A DirecTV TiVo, however, is getting DirecTV's modified data that shows the game as being part of a series called "Cardinals @ Padres." As best I can figure, they modify the data in this manner to make it easier to see which game is which, i.e., it's always in the big letters at the top of the display. (All DirecTV receivers get this data, not just DirecTiVos.)

I feel your pain, because back when I had cable and a standalone TiVo, I had a Season Pass for "Monday Night Football" -- that is, a Season Pass for the series "NFL Football" on ABC. That's not possible with a DirecTiVo, so instead I had to set a repeating manual recording for 6:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. Mondays on ABC (and then delete it after football season ended).

[jym]

Thanks for the info. I thought I was loosing my mind. I have done the exact same thing for Monday night football. I tried twice. When I came home from traveling on Tuesday and found the Chicago/Arizona game which I hear turned out to be great was not recorded I blew my top.

I have since set a manual recording. But geeze that is ridiculous. This particular Tivo is in my workout room and replaced a Tivo that only had basic service. But I am right back recording in the same manner.

BTW, one solution I have found is using wish list instead of season passes for a partial solution.

[FlWingNut]

If you're looking for games for one particular team, wishlists actually work better, because it will pick up games on all channels you receive, while SP's are just for one channel.

I set up a Red Wings wishlist and it catches the games on the Center Ice channels, on VS (the old OLN), and on NBC, when they pick up games after the 1st of the year.

I have a Detroit/sports wishlist too, to grab Tigers games on either ESPN or FOX, and just to see what else is on I might like concerning my teams.

The only downside is that the list will catch pre-and postgame stuff, too, but since I don't get Sports Pak that's not an issue for me.

Good luck.

[ad301]

Originally Posted by jym

I want my season pass back like the original Tivo uses. Is there a setting somewhere. Or what is going on here?

As others have mentioned, it's because D* alters the guide data to display the team names in the guide, rather than just "MLB Baseball", or "NFL Football". The funny thing is, last week's BB games showed that they CAN display the team names in the guide, and still maintain the ability to set SPs to catch all the games on a given channel. It has something to do with a series ID tag in the data, according to Earl. (We've been discussing this exact issue over at his place: http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=66531)

Earl has mentioned that perhaps someone at D* will look into this issue. My feeling is that there is a possibility that it COULD be fixed. However, I am doubtful that it WILL be fixed. I'd love to be proven wrong on that.

[mrmcmanus]

Actually, I LIKE knowing who the teams are in the guide. I don't want just to know it's Monday night football or NBA basketball. Frankly, if the guide just said that, it would make me start ranting like the rest of you. I do feel your pain about missing sporting events, because I love football and basketball, but realistically, we need to check Tivo's To Do list regularly. Otherwise it's recording something we didn't want it to like a marathon of House episodes which is upcoming soon and which I've seen all of. And when your hard drive has too much of that stuff it ends up removing some of the things you wanted. So keep checking it as often as you can; nothing is perfect, but Tivo is close.

Mary

[ad301]

Actually, I like having the team names displayed, as well. But as I mentioned in the post prior to yours, they demonstrated, during the BB league championship series, that they CAN configure the guide data to both display the team names AND maintain the proper series relationships so that season passes can be set. The unanswered question is why they don't.

[RossoNeri]

Hear, hear. I have Wishlists set-up for all my teams and I use the show type of "Live" to capture only the games. Occasionally I'll get the odd pre/post game show but it works well for the most part.

One notable exception: The NFLST games don't have the "LIVE" notation in the guide data and don't get picked up on a "LIVE" WL. I have to use a "Philadelphia Eagles"/Sports and view upcoming to manually set up recording. I suppose I could auto-record the WL but that pulls in a lot of crap that I don't want.