New Season of Merlin on Syfy

I set a season pass for First Run and nothing came up so I just set episode 301 to record. I don't know why it is not working either.

 

The original air date on the episode is from September 2010. It's possible the season already aired in Canada which would cause it to be seen as a rerun by Tivo.

 

Crud, that means the season pass doesn't work for the more convenient First Run. I guess I will reset it for First Run and Repeats and just weed as I go.

 

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Epguides shows that the entire season completed on BBC1 on December 10th 2010. The dates match what Tivo has for The Tears of Uther etc.

 

Yeah, Tribune often uses the real Original Air Date, and not the Original American Air Date. Which makes sense if you don't have a TiVo, which of course most people don't...

 

If only there were something similar to a computer involved that already had the info on where the viewer lived and which channels they receive so it could figure out which episodes were new from the viewer's point of view.

 

You're being sarcastic, but does the guide data even HAVE country of origin info?

(Again, this would be a nice idea, but there are SO MANY things at least _I_ think would be better.. A simple one would be a per-SP choice of 'new/old' for how to treat guide-data-less episodes. i.e. that would likely fix the Daily Show problem.)

Plus, you already have a workaround -- record new & old episodes.

 

If only that thing that's kind of like a computer and has the viewer's location info could connect on a regular basis to another computery thing that could have a database of which episodes of which shows have been aired in which locations on which channels.

 

LOL!!!!! I am always weeding SPs like Daily Show etc. At least once I weeded the old Merlin episodes, the new to the US ones only have one recording at a time so it is acting like a first run SP. Later, I will weed repeats that show up that are older than 28 days.
I shouldn't have to though.

 

Crap. Of course, they have to run a Merlin marathon on the 7th so I can't switch my SP to first run and repeats until after the first episode - if I remember.

 

You DIDN'T ANSWER THE QUESTION. DOES THE GUIDE DATA THAT TIVO USES EVEN HAVE COUNTRY INFO IN IT?

If it doesn't, there's no way, without completely changing how Tivos work, to make what you suggest happen.

(BTW, S2 is on netflix on 1/18/2011)

 

Don't ask me, ask Tribune Media Services.

However, if TiVo sends my machines the info that episode "x" of television show "y" aired on cable channel "z" that I receive where I live, then if they kept that info in a databse, the next time that episode was scheduled to be aired by any of the channels that TiVo sends me guide data on, they could and would know that, from the point of view of me and my season passes, it's a re-run.

 

According to zap2it next weeks second half is new but my tivo doesn't have it scheduled to record. It's probably because I scheduled the first half manually and tivo has both halfs with the same title.

 

That is why I ended up doing repeats and first run and just weeded anything I had already viewed. Since they don't seem to be showing last season episodes past the week of the pilot this ought to not be a hassel.

 

Thanks for the heads up. Tribune has really been screwing up SyFy guide data recently... first Caprica, and now Merlin.

 

Although technically they're not screwing up...they're getting it right in a way that's not useful (we don't actually WANT the OAD; we want the OAAD).

Hopefully, as more shows go international and as more people depend on DVRs to get their programming, Tribune will realize that they need to get it wrong in useful ways.

 

If I have a season pass set to record a first-run show only, and this is the first time the show has ever aired in this country, and my Tivo doesn't record it, then in my eyes as a consumer of this product it's a screw-up. If a show aired earlier in other countries, that should not affect a "first-run only" season pass; the original air date needs to be based on the country where it's airing. So either Tivo needs to fix this bug or Tribune needs to fix their guide data to be accurate for each country. I filed a lineup issue with Tribune on this but I doubt they'll do anything about it... Tivo and Tribune will probably be playing the finger-pointing game that it's the other company's problem and this issue won't get fixed, which is bad for us. Hopefully they prove me wrong.

If it makes anyone feel any better, I checked with family who have the Time Warner DVR and it has the same problem as Tivo: Merlin was not set to record even with a first-run series recording.

 

My Doc Martin on KCET and Tutors on BBCA had to be set as First Run and Repeats in order to work. Tutors was on a pay cable channel so I expected it to act like a first run on a basic cable channel and same with Doc Martin.

 

I believe this airs after wrestling tonight so padding should be added.