"Keep at most" behavior

smgord · 10-05-2007, 11:49 PM

I have an S2 Tivo (have had it for several years) and a new S3 Tivo. As I was laboriously entering my season passes, I paid more attention to the "keep at most" option than usual, and looked it up. I found many online warnings that, regardless of disk space, Tivo will overwrite existing programs in order to stay within the "keep at most" limit. That has not been my experience in practice with the S2 -- for instance, I recorded 8 episodes of a show during a marathon of that show, and all of those recordings were kept, despite a "keep at most" of five. I think that makes sense -- if I'm out of space, go ahead and delete extra episodes. If not, just keep them.

Is there a difference between the S2 and S3 on this point? Should I expect this to behave differently on the S3 and revise my season passes accordingly?

pdhenry · 10-06-2007, 03:47 AM

I'm stumped. Were the 8 episodes all recorded via a Season Pass?

smgord · 10-06-2007, 11:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pdhenry

I'm stumped. Were the 8 episodes all recorded via a Season Pass?

yes.

mick66 · 10-06-2007, 12:41 PM

did you change the keep until date on any of the recordings?

smgord · 10-06-2007, 04:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mick66

did you change the keep until date on any of the recordings?

No. It was a marathon, and they all recorded at my usual settings.

EVizzle · 10-06-2007, 04:53 PM

my experience on both my S2 and S3 is that episodes are deleted if you set "keep at most" to anything but "all recordings". I ran into that issue on my S2 recently, and as a result lost an episode, but now I have adjusted all of my SP to keep all recordings.

jrm01 · 10-06-2007, 06:14 PM

I have a S2, S3 and THD. Keep at Most has always put a cap on the folder size. It never exceeds the KAM limit. I have always had a Seinfield folder on my S2 with KAM of 5. It must be on the air at least 5 times a day, but I never have more than 5 in the folder.

smgord · 10-07-2007, 01:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jrm01

I have a S2, S3 and THD. Keep at Most has always put a cap on the folder size. It never exceeds the KAM limit. I have always had a Seinfield folder on my S2 with KAM of 5. It must be on the air at least 5 times a day, but I never have more than 5 in the folder.

This is exceedingly weird. In many of the cases where Tivo has kept more than five, there has been a reason that is consistent with your experience -- I often have 10 or 15 Daily Shows, but those record as 4 separate manual repeating recordings, so I likely never have more than 5 from the same repeating recording. However, with Top Chef, I definitely had 8 shows at once, there was only one season pass, and the KAM was set to 5. I'm testing this now on the S3, so I guess I'll see what happens ...

Jonathan_S · 10-08-2007, 09:52 AM

Odd, in my experience KAM=5 meant that it only kept 5 shows. Even if the disk was almost empty.

(Of course, if you mess with any of the recording options, manually record at a different time, or adjust the keep until date on a given recording the TiVo stops counting it towards the 5)

mick66 · 10-08-2007, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jonathan_S

Odd, in my experience KAM=5 meant that it only kept 5 shows. Even if the disk was almost empty.

(Of course, if you mess with any of the recording options, manually record at a different time, or adjust the keep until date on a given recording the TiVo stops counting it towards the 5)

and if you already have 3 recordings set at KAM 10 episodes and then you change it to KAM 5 episodes, you'll get 8 episodes until you manually delete the first 3.

smgord · 10-10-2007, 03:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mick66

and if you already have 3 recordings set at KAM 10 episodes and then you change it to KAM 5 episodes, you'll get 8 episodes until you manually delete the first 3.

Well, on my S3 at least, my experience now matches all of yours. Tivo deleted everything over five. Still can't figure out why it didn't work like this on the S2.

Ruth · 10-10-2007, 07:04 PM

I have a vague recollection that there is an unsupported/undocumented feature where if you have extra room it may decide to keep some episodes above the KAM limit. I know I've seen this a couple times on my S2 (and/or S2DT, don't really remember, sorry).

ATLMike · 11-07-2008, 12:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ruth

I have a vague recollection that there is an unsupported/undocumented feature where if you have extra room it may decide to keep some episodes above the KAM limit. I know I've seen this a couple times on my S2 (and/or S2DT, don't really remember, sorry).

I'm seeing this now on my TiVo HD. I have a couple of SPs with KAM set to 2 and they both have 3 episodes in their folders now. This has been driving me crazy trying to figure out what's going on. I never saw this with my series 1 nor my DirecTiVo. I guess it's not a big deal since I have plenty of disk space but I hope it doesn't do this when the disk is near full.

jrm01 · 11-07-2008, 12:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ATLMike

I'm seeing this now on my TiVo HD. I have a couple of SPs with KAM set to 2 and they both have 3 episodes in their folders now. This has been driving me crazy trying to figure out what's going on. I never saw this with my series 1 nor my DirecTiVo. I guess it's not a big deal since I have plenty of disk space but I hope it doesn't do this when the disk is near full.

Do all three episodes show up in NPL with the double-checkmark (indicating SP)? Is the KAM still set to 2? I saw another post where the poster swears that TiVo changed his SP from KAM=2 to KAM=3 without his knowledge.

ATLMike · 11-07-2008, 01:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jrm01

Do all three episodes show up in NPL with the double-checkmark (indicating SP)? Is the KAM still set to 2? I saw another post where the poster swears that TiVo changed his SP from KAM=2 to KAM=3 without his knowledge.

Both shows have future episodes listed in the To Do list which are all marked with the double checkmarks. In the MPL list the recorded eps are listed with either the yellow dot with an asterisk or no dot.

Yep, KAM is still set to 2. I've had this TiVo for about a month and I first noticed this last week. At that time I thought that something I had done, like possibly modifying the SPs, caused TiVo to keep some extra eps. So I made a point to start paying attention to these two folders and haven't made any changes to those SPs.

jrm01 · 11-07-2008, 02:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ATLMike

Both shows have future episodes listed in the To Do list which are all marked with the double checkmarks. In the MPL list the recorded eps are listed with either the yellow dot with an asterisk or no dot.

astesrisk or exclamation point?

ATLMike · 11-07-2008, 04:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jrm01

astesrisk or exclamation point?

my bad... exclamation points

ScottUrman · 11-07-2008, 04:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smgord

This is exceedingly weird. In many of the cases where Tivo has kept more than five, there has been a reason that is consistent with your experience -- I often have 10 or 15 Daily Shows, but those record as 4 separate manual repeating recordings, so I likely never have more than 5 from the same repeating recording. However, with Top Chef, I definitely had 8 shows at once, there was only one season pass, and the KAM was set to 5. I'm testing this now on the S3, so I guess I'll see what happens ...

Could the other 3 have been suggestions or recorded through a different season pass or wish list? They would all be in the same folder even though they came from different sources.

ATLMike · 11-07-2008, 08:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ScottUrman

Could the other 3 have been suggestions or recorded through a different season pass or wish list? They would all be in the same folder even though they came from different sources.

ARWLs or different season passes was first thought but that's not the case. They're definitely from my unique season passes and not suggestions.

ATLMike · 11-11-2008, 10:08 AM

There's definitely something screwy going on. Over the weekend I thought I figured out the problem. I thought that I might have done some manual recording b/c I had shifted things around in order to manage some conflicts. I wasn't sure if I had done that so I decided to just set up a new SP and see what happened with it.

So I set up a new SP for 'The Cosby Show'. I chose that since it was airing a billion times on TV Land. I set 'Keep at Most' to 1. All weekend long and yesterday it was working as one would expect -- there was only one episode in the now playing list. I looked at the NP list this morning and now there are 2 Cosby show episodes in the NP list. Those eps were recorded at 12:30 and 1 AM today.

Perhaps the idea about it keeping more eps based on free disk space is true -- yesterday I deleted about 20 suggestions that I knew I wasn't gonna watch. My drive was pretty full over the weekend with all those suggestions and a couple of college football games recorded. The theory about free disk space would explain what I'm seeing with this Cosby Show SP.

So far one of the other "problem" SPs, "Sunrise Earth" is working as I'd expect. I deleted the oldest ep of that show over the weekend which brought its episode count down to 2. It recorded another ep this morning and the episode count is still 2.

I may clear some more disk space today and see what happens with "Sunrise Earth" tomorrow.