[TiVoEvan74]

In our area, Stargate Atlantis and SG1 are now on back to back.

Often a sporting event, college football or NASCAR, runs over and delays the start of SA by 30, 35, 39 minutes (some random amount). That then pushes back SG1, too.

I've now set this up with an SP for SA for its scheduled hour and then set up another SP for SG1 with an hour over-run. It means having to switch viewing from SA to SG1 to watch the full SA. It also means alloting 2 hours for 1 hour SG1.

Is this the best way to do this? Or is there another simpler method of handling it?

Any advice appreciated!

 

[mr.unnatural]

Set up a season pass on the Sc-Fi channel for these shows. They rerun the living daylights out of them so you should be able to see any episodes you might have missed within a short period of time. Check their website for the schedule. They usually have a 2-month block displayed for all programming. If you're not sure of which episodes you haven't seen then check out the listings at epguides.com. They have listings for just about any TV show that ever aired.

 

[TiVoEvan74]

Thanks for the reply! Alas, we're on "lifeline" cable... where you get the 5 local channels via cable (spares us from having to fiddle with the antenna). So, we don't have the sci-fi channel. If we did have it and regular cable, we'd never get anything done and would have a family room stacked high and filled with burned DVDs!!

So, given that... any better way of using TiVo to capture them? I just don't want to be missing something obvious, some trick that would do this more efficiently.

Maybe one day there'll be instant updates or a coded signal sent before each show.

 

[mr.unnatural]

Aside from padding the recordings to make sure you pick up the show there's not much else you can do.

 

[gastrof]

Set up a season pass on the Sc-Fi channel for these shows. They rerun the living daylights out of them so you should be able to see any episodes you might have missed within a short period of time. Check their website for the schedule. They usually have a 2-month block displayed for all programming. If you're not sure of which episodes you haven't seen then check out the listings at epguides.com. They have listings for just about any TV show that ever aired.

SciFiChannel is the first-run home for ATLANTIS, and SG-1 wrapped up last season and isn't in first run ANYWHERE.

Local TV stations run the two shows a year after they air on SciFi, and those episodes don't find their way back to SciFi for "eternal reruns" for yet another year.

Your solution doesn't help someone trying to catch episodes running on local channels.

 

[gastrof]

Thanks for the reply! Alas, we're on "lifeline" cable... where you get the 5 local channels via cable (spares us from having to fiddle with the antenna). So, we don't have the sci-fi channel. If we did have it and regular cable, we'd never get anything done and would have a family room stacked high and filled with burned DVDs!!

So, given that... any better way of using TiVo to capture them? I just don't want to be missing something obvious, some trick that would do this more efficiently.

Maybe one day there'll be instant updates or a coded signal sent before each show.

Some stations that run SG-1 and SGA also do a repeat showing within the next seven days or so.

That was my best chance at catching them, since they ran overnight and thosse timeslots were usually stable. (No getting pushed back by something that ran long.)

Just this month my local station ended the latenight showings on both shows, and now I HAVE to get them on the first showing.

If you can't get the overnight runs (maybe they don't do that in your area?) the only thing you can do is keep checking the listings for your local channel every week and be aware if they'll be following something that might run late...and then you have to pad accordingly, as suggested.

My feeling is that with SG-1 being cancelled last season by SciFi and so this being the last year for it on local channels, both shows are now being viewed as "filler" material, and aren't getting much respect.

On ATLANTIS, with what happened to Dr. Weir and all that resulted (no...I won't tell you the details ), some of us are afraid that show will be wrapping up soon too.

*sigh*

 

[JYoung]

In LA, if the sporting event runs late, they join Atlantis already in progress.
(SG-1 seems to get run before the sporting event)

My solution was to buy the DVDs but you could look into renting them as well.

 

[TiVoEvan74]

Thanks for the input. Sounds as if I am using the best solution... record SA for 1 hour, then pad SG1 for an additional hour.

It's a little tricky when we come to watch 'em, though. I'm the SA viewer in the household; we watch SG1 together. I'm more likely to watch SA before we both view SG1... so that means now 2 hours of recording space being taken up for a 1 hour show.

I could pad SA, I suppose, but then it might not record SG1 at all... and we'd still have the problem in that I could finish SA, but that padded recording would have the start of SG1 on and so still couldn't be deleted... at least this way, I can delete the 1st hour of SA (well that's 1/2 hour of football and 1st hour of SA).

Fortunately, the TiVo came with a big drive and there's a fair amount of free space (well there is until the new season shows start filling up the drive!)

 

[mr.unnatural]

One option would be to set up manual recordings in 30 or 60-minute increments. I know it's a PITA but you could quickly determine if there's any overlap and delete the extraneous recordings. If drive space isn't an issue then just padding the recordings would be the easiest solution.

I all but stopped recording any shows on both CBS and Fox on Sunday nights because they always overran the football games. I believe Fox wised up and now has a 30-minute postgame show they air as a buffer to keep the regular programming on schedule. CBS has yet to figure this out, which is why I haven't watched 60 Minutes in years I also gave up on Cold Case partway into the first season because I got tired of missing the end of every episode.

 

[slashalot]

just in case you all missed it, last friday on 1 of the stargate they advertised the full 10 season DVD box set of SG1 for sale.

 

[restart88]

I've been running into this time problem recently myself on 1st run OTA shows because I have them on season pass and didn't really know a sporting event of any kind was on first.

As was mentioned season pass helps a lot if you have re-airings available (can just look for upcoming airings of the episode from the menu) but as a last resort there's always unBox at $1.99 a pop.

 

[TiVoEvan74]

The "funny" thing was that 2 weeks in a row, evven after a first adjustment, we ran out of the SG1 recording with about 1 minute left! We decided it wasn't worth $2 for 1 minute, so logged on and found transcripts of the shows which I acted out!

At this point, we have SG1 with an hour padding... so our SA and SG1 take up 3 hours and they stick around even once I've watched SA as it typically finishes up on the SG1 recording... oh, well... at least we have plenty of room and aren't missing the last half hour or last minute any more!

 

[PeteEMT]

Funny, from the other side; I have to pad NASCAR pretty much for the same reasons.