Time Warner convert from Scientific Atlanta 8300 with scheduling questions

[thing-fish]

I'm a Time Warner Albany customer and have gone through a couple of generations of Scientific Atlanta boxes, most recently the 8300HD, which I'm retiring in favor of my brand new Tivo HD.

I've quickly gotten acclimated to the Tivo interface, it's everything I'd always heard, but there is one thing I could do on the SciAtlanta with Time Warner that I can't figure out how to do here. I have two big questions I hope someone can help with:

1) Scheduling the same show discretely on multiple channels
2) Automatically purging old episodes but always keeping the newest one

So, details for you kind and helpful folks!

1) Scheduling recordings on the SciAtlanta box was channel and (with one exception) timeslot specific. When you picked a show it would ask if you wanted to do a one-time recording or multiple, and if it was multiple you could pick that day/that timeslot, any day/that timeslot, or any day/any timeslot. Notice that it doesn't ask for channel, it is only talking about the one channel, and of course it wasn't smart like Tivo so it doesn't know about repeats vs. first run. It also asked how many episodes you wanted to keep, and I'll get to that in a minute.

Many channels are repeated in the Time Warner lineup. For instance, The Food Network is on 42 and 325 in SD and (finally!) 1842 in HD. So I figured out the main timeslot for Good Eats and had it record that weekly on channel 1842, saving 1 episode. That way I'd have one space-hogging HD episode on the box, and new episodes would get recorded when they aired. Like many basic cable channels Food Network shows repeats of Good Eats every day, so I had a daily recording on channel 325 and had it record 4 episodes. So all the time I'd have 4 SD episodes and 1 HD episode of Good Eats on my DVR.
So the question is, how do I do that on the Tivo? The same question for one of my Wife's shows. She watches the Vegas CSI and wants to have first-run episodes taped weekly from the main network station, but wants to grab reruns from TBS or wherever that run every day. How do we do that? And closely related, is there a way to tell it to make sure it records First Run (i.e. set the priority to cancel other programs if necessary) but have a lower priority for reruns?

And question 2) is involved here: as the Scientific Atlanta recorded new episodes, it would delete the old ones for me. Am I right that the Tivo will not do that? That I have to delete them manually and if I don't it actually won't record new episodes for me!? What's the relationship between "Keep Until" and "Keep At Most"?

Definitely appreciate any help you can provide!

[lrhorer]

Originally Posted by thing-fish

So the question is, how do I do that on the Tivo? The same question for one of my Wife's shows. She watches the Vegas CSI and wants to have first-run episodes taped weekly from the main network station, but wants to grab reruns from TBS or wherever that run every day.

There are often multiple ways to skin the TiVo cat. If you set up a Season Pass, it will be specific to a particular channel. A Wishlist is not. To set up a season pass, you will need to actually find the show you want in the schedule (or have one already recorded) on the channel you want, and select it for the season pass. As you have already noted, you may select First Run only, First Run and Reruns, or All including duplicates. The latter can be handy to help automatically resolve schedule conflicts.

Originally Posted by thing-fish

How do we do that? And closely related, is there a way to tell it to make sure it records First Run (i.e. set the priority to cancel other programs if necessary) but have a lower priority for reruns?

To do that you will probably need to set up 2 season passes for the same show, one at a low priority for Reruns and the other at a high priority for First Run only.

Originally Posted by thing-fish

And question 2) is involved here: as the Scientific Atlanta recorded new episodes, it would delete the old ones for me. Am I right that the Tivo will not do that?

No, it handles it just fine.

Originally Posted by thing-fish

That I have to delete them manually and if I don't it actually won't record new episodes for me!? What's the relationship between "Keep Until" and "Keep At Most"?

If you select "Keep Until I delete", then it won't automatically delete the program no matter what. If you completely fill up the TiVo with "Keep Until I Delete" programs, then it will stop recording new material until you make some room. If you select "Keep Until mm/dd/yy", then it will not delete the program until at least the specified date. If there is plenty of space available, it still won't delete the program. If you select "Until Space Needed", then it will delete the program whenever it needs to.

"Keep at Most" means just that. the TiVo will keep at most N episodes of the program in question. If you set N to be five, then when it records the 6th episode, it will erase the first, unless you set the episodes to "Keep Until I Delete", in whihc case it won't record any new episodes until you delete at lease one old one.

Note the Tivo will never overwrite a shceduled recording with a Suggestion.

[thing-fish]

Originally Posted by lrhorer

There are often multiple ways to skin the TiVo cat. If you set up a Season Pass, it will be specific to a particular channel.

Wow, I hadn't realized that. So it sounds like it'll do exactly what I want: use one set of parameters on the HD channel (i.e. first run only, save all episodes until I delete, cancel other programs) and a different set of parameters (i.e. repeats and first run save 4 episodes until space needed) on the SD channel...for the same program name. That RULES. How does it distinguish between them in the season pass manager? I guess I will find out tonight, because I'm going to schedule this online right this second!

Originally Posted by lrhorer

"Keep at Most" means just that. the TiVo will keep at most N episodes of the program in question. If you set N to be five, then when it records the 6th episode, it will erase the first, unless you set the episodes to "Keep Until I Delete", in whihc case it won't record any new episodes until you delete at lease one old one.

That's where I was confused; I knew there was a case that specifying a certain number of episodes and then not deleting them caused it to not record anymore. But while at first glance (and coming from the SciAtlanta) it sounded like that was wrong, it's actually doing exactly what you tell it to: record a maximum number of episodes and keep them until I delete them. If it's recorded your max and you haven't deleted any, you have really told it not to record anymore!

This rules. Only big thing I am missing right now is a Linux version of the Tivo Desktop and (and this should be easy) an online interface to basically anything that requires typing. Entering a new podcast URL with the remote is the pits! I want to be able to do that on tivo.com and have it sync with my player just like the scheduled recordings. Or at least let me go to http://mytivoIP/podcastsetup or something like that. Or at least let me plug in a USB keyboard, lol.