[Doh]

As an old programmer these default settings seem outlandish to me.

The default should be don't erase anything I've specifically told it to record, obviously, and no limits on anything. Then anyone can reset these if they want their shows to be mindlessly erased or they think they want the recording limits.

No other recording device I know of has ever been configured this way. It's inconvenient and it's dangerous for your data.

One button to make TIVO behave like a normal DVR would nicely overwrite their wrong-headed policy. Uniqueness is good only if it improves data reliability and/or ease of use.

It might not be your preference, but it's hardly outlandish. I certainly don't want to miss a premiere of some new show because I have 15 daily shows I never got around to watching.

Back to the "cluster" idea. It seems to me (as a nonprogrammer) that it would be fairly easy at least to add an option where you could send a message to tivo central online asking for the program to be recorded on the other tivo, provided the other tivo is available. Obviously it would be better if there was a master schedule and you could ask for a recording on either tivo and see what both tivos are scheduled to do, but I think it would still be fairly useful to be able to route requests to TCO from a tivo.

 

[Doh]

Just to be courteous and answer you, neither do I want to miss a new show because I have no time to watch my already saved shows, but you already know that TIVO doesn't allow hands-off sequential off-dubbing, and so overnight 6 or 8 show offloads, for example, are not an option. I'm stuck with saving each old show individually, when I get the time... I might as well be watching them, it's not convenient.

I'm not sure I understand entirely. I remember when a lot of people wanted to be able to batch save to VCR, but isn't that problem essentially eliminated with tivo desktop? I can offload 6-8 shows to my PC overnight, and either leave them there (to later return to the tivo), or decide to put them on DVD for later. What am I missing?