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Suggestions are Useless

3K views 23 replies 19 participants last post by  philhu 
#1 ·
I was just wandering through my suggestions and it got me thinking about the loss of the thumbs up/thumbs down . Without being able to tune my likes/dislikes (you'd think TiVo'd have a good grasp of these after 20 years) the suggestions are useless. Lots of Paw Patrol and other toddler shows when the youngest person in our house is 29 doesn't make sense. We've never recorded toddler shows so why start now?

It seems like TiVo should be able to use our recording history as a good way to program what suggestions we see.

While I'm throwing this out there... the What to Watch "Just for Me" section of the TiVo app is just as worthless. Looking at it currently shows NOTHING I would actually want to watch, nor does it show things based on the type of shows this TiVo regularly records.

Why have these things if they're not going to be useful.

Just some early morning ruminations by a long time TiVo user.
 
#4 ·
I wandered through the suggestions recently after installing a new TV in another room with a Mini attached, just to play something. Wow, what a load of useless crap completely unrelated to anything I watch or record, and repetitive; it was like episodes of the same 5 shows continuously, through 600+ recorded suggestions. Pretty sure I can just turn it off now; worthless. And that maybe notches me one step closer to being able to replace my TiVo setup as my source of recorded OTA/cable programming with streaming services. There's just little to no benefit anymore in the ecosystem. I think I'm now mostly only a customer because it's a habit being a TiVo customer. *sigh*
 
#23 ·
Suggestions was always the first time you turned off on Tivo going back to Series 2. I've done it on every Tivo i've ever owned.
We've always left Suggestions enabled going back to Series 1 (2000 for our first) and at least up through TE3 on our Roamio Pro, it continues to do a pretty good job of finding movies and shows that we would watch although as others have mentioned, there is so much content these days that we don't use them as much as we used to.

We have also always left sound effects enabled too. ;)

Scott
 
#24 ·
In the thumbs days, when you did a recording, it added a thumb up.

So your recording history did affect the suggestions.

I am on te3, just for the thumbs up and down. And Pytivo use.
 
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#2 ·
They seem to have been rendered useless around the time Rovi metadata replaced the old version. I used to get lots of old movies recorded, then I stopped getting any suggestions at all (or maybe 1 every 3 or 4 months). A few weeks ago, I noticed it seemed to record every single fishing show for utterly unknown reasons (lots of them on South Florida stations). I cleaned those out, and once again no new suggestions have been recorded for several weeks. I certainly cannot deduce any kind of pattern. I did get one show I have a one pass for also showing up in suggestions, which really makes no sense.
 
#11 ·
I did get one show I have a one pass for also showing up in suggestions, which really makes no sense.
I don't use suggestions much (most of my boxes are on TE3 by the way) but I have found sometimes it records/suggests shows based on an actor or even a channel number. So even though you have a one pass for something that showed up in suggestions the "suggestion" might have recorded because of an actor in the episode or something in the episode description?
 
#5 ·
Suggestions used to be one of the biggest selling points of TiVo. It's such a shame. I think the TV app from Apple will start to fill that void as more and more apps integrate. Until then I'll just keep doing a mass delete on my suggestions, hoping against hope they might one day again be filled with items that I didn't know I wanted to watch but TiVo knew.
 
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#6 ·
Suggestions used to be one of the biggest selling points of TiVo. It's such a shame. I think the TV app from Apple will start to fill that void as more and more apps integrate. Until then I'll just keep doing a mass delete on my suggestions, hoping against hope they might one day again be filled with items that I didn't know I wanted to watch but TiVo knew.
It still is--under TE3.
 
#19 ·
You mean the first THING you turned off? I presume that's what you mean.

No, the stupid remote control sounds were the first thing you turn off.... the second thing done was the keycode to enable 30 second skip.. The THIRD thing you did was turn off suggestions...

(...until I realized that they were useful as a free space indicator... EVEN after they put a real percentage meter in there.. Because I can still be at "100%" and have suggestions. It's off ENOUGH that leaving them on is useful. I've probably WATCHED a suggestion WAAAAAY fewer than 10 times ever. I have probably used a suggestion to set a FUTURE recording of the same show (e.g. to add padding) maybe 2-3 times.. I think I did it for some PBS show that recorded as a suggestion recently, though that was to record in HD I think not add padding.)
 
#20 ·
I did kind of use suggestions but not to record them (I hate my machine is recording when I don’t expect it to) but the LIST they used to give you. But they took that away a long time ago. TiVo search is not great and suggestions were neutered a long time ago. The only reason I use TiVo is that I haven’t seen a cable box that I like (though directv had a good stretch for a while which I understand ended since I left directv).
 
#16 ·
Suggestions has always been a long term game, I can't imagine it even remotely learning in the week you gave it, I've always considered it taking a month+ when suggestions were more reliable, but in TE3 I have units that clearly understand what I look for since the suggestions are in the right ball park, but these units have years of recording and thumbs history in them.
 
#15 ·
I am so dialed in to what's what on tv, I don't need Tivo's help. I keep an eye out for anything sci fi related and everything else I am interested in. One issue us I don't see commercials any more!! There are enough shows such as sporting events that have no skip so I still get info on new shows and movies.
 
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