Method to stop TIVO Central from timing out and diplaying live TV?

In short, no and no.

 

Unfortunately, about the only thing you can do is hit pause every time you pull up the guide. This won't prevent the window from appearing, but it will at least shield you from potential spoilers.

 

You apparently didn't search hard enough because I've bitched about this topic a lot! Or maybe I haven't bitched enough.

It's very annoying and I really don't understand at all what Tivo is thinking.

 

They're thinking they want to prevent screen burn on plasma TVs. Live TV usually has enough image variety so that the plasma screen pixels wear evenly.

 

You could throw money at the problem and buy a mini. The mini does not show a Live TV sub-window while in Tivo Central, nor does it timeout of Tivo Central and go to live tv.

 

http://advisors.tivo.com/wix/5/p2272893819.aspx

 

Except that in the channel guide it's only a small portion of the top right screen.

I think Tivo just wants to annoy their customers.

 

Not miffed. Just having fun with the way you worded your first post.

 

At least that Tivo survey has an "other" where you can write in the Bolt. That wasn't true on a survey I started a month ago.

 

Assuming you have things set up so that you turn the TV power on and off with your TiVo remote, always hit the "TiVo" button on the TiVo remote before hitting the TV power button on the TiVo remote.

It doesn't matter what screen the TiVo is sending out before you turn on the TV, so just change that first, then turn the TV on.

Or have the butler do it for you.

Short of spending 'leventy zillion $$$$ paying someone to reverse engineer the TiVo software (a Terms and Conditions violation, no doubt) and to rewrite the part that does the screensaver thing, that's the best solution you're going to find, I suspect.

 

To have the TV power on with nothing to see or hear, just select an invalid channel manually before turning the TV off. No display, no noise, very dark and quiet.

 

You can turn off the video window in the corner under settings > user preferences.

 

Not on the guide, however. That is because they built the guide based upon the prior version, which was an overlay onto the program, instead of making it a user selection.

Also, much easier to get rid of the window using slow. I toggle it on/off all the time with this.

 

That doesn't stop it from appearing in the guide.

Also, sometimes my Bolt loses the setting, and it will be present even with the setting to off. I have to toggle the setting to get it to go away.

To continue my bitching on this topic, I really have a hard time understanding what Tivo is thinking, bombarding its customers with live TV. I don't watch live TV because I own a Tivo. Why would I want to have any live TV show up without my asking for it? As I said before, Tivo programmers are like GPS programmers--neither have apparently used their respective products.

 

The mentality hasn't changed for years. Screen savers are so 10 years ago. Going to live tv is a method of screen saving.

 

standby mode?

 

Unless it's on a channel with a logo "bug" onscreen much of the time.

I used to spin karaoke in a place many years ago and they left a big screen on CNN overnights to provide some light for the cops to see in by and to make would-be burglars think the owner and his bullet hurling device were sitting there watching the news.

In the bottom right hand corner the CNN logo was visible no matter what channel (or karaoke DVD player output) was on the screen.