# Law and Order Criminal Intent



## 11274 (Dec 1, 2001)

The listings for Law and Order Criminal Intent on USA are a mess.

The new episodes are 10PM Thursdays with a second showing at 1AM Friday. They also play a bunch of old season episodes and marathons on USA.

Many of the showings new and old have generic listings. My Season Pass which is set for only new episodes is a real nightmare. It ends up recording a lot of old episodes with generic descriptions, and misses some new ones. They do tend to have a correct listing for the 10PM new showing, but its a conflict for me. The 1 AM second showing has a generic listing.

USA has accurate listings on its web site, but I guess they just don't get them to Tribune.

I could do a manual repeated recording for 1 AM Fridays, but I'm not so confident that there schedule is invariant, and I would still not be able to distinguish the episodes because of the generic description.

As I said a mess!


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## TivoZorro (Jul 16, 2000)

It's not just Criminal Intent. I go through the same thing all the time with

1. Monk
2. Psych
3. Dead Zone

Was hoping that Criminal Intent would be different but alas no. But now that Mad Men has finished with it's season I can get CI at 10 PM on Thursdays.


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## xdreamwalker (Jul 13, 2005)

I was doing my weekly ToDo list review and noticed this. It took a few minutes to go through and cancel all of the repeats.


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## klia (Apr 13, 2005)

It's kind of a relief to know this is happening to someone else. 

I find it really odd that the "generic" eps are clearly labeled as reruns, and yet my CI SP can no longer differentiate between "reruns and first run" and "first run only." And this just started happening after the 9.1 update, so I don't see any other explanation than it's another in a long list of 9.1 bugs, which was why I posted about it over on that thread.


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## Carol in GA (Oct 18, 2005)

klia said:


> just started happening after the 9.1 update


I just realized that it had just started doing that after the update, BUT it's true that it was doing the same thing with other shows on USA (Dead Zone, The 4400) back in the summer, but everything was behaving well when the season of CI started.

Maybe TPTB at Tivo will clue us in on if it's a bug or if it's USA messing us up.


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## MikeekiM (Jun 25, 2002)

Crap... I recorded a bunch of CI repeats without even realizing it...

No big deal...but I guess I better go and do some pruning...


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## Dayton-Dave (Jan 11, 2002)

klia said:


> It's kind of a relief to know this is happening to someone else.
> 
> I find it really odd that the "generic" eps are clearly labeled as reruns, and yet my CI SP can no longer differentiate between "reruns and first run" and "first run only." And this just started happening after the 9.1 update, so I don't see any other explanation than it's another in a long list of 9.1 bugs, which was why I posted about it over on that thread.


This problem has nothing to do with your 9.1 update. I have a DirecTivo R-10 and the same thing happened with my Season Pass for Law & Order Criminal Intent. It has to do with the way Tribune lists programs on channels like USA, that tend to have mini marathons of older episodes of the same show. I have ended up making it a manual season pass for JUST the 10 PM Thursday showing. Problem solved. I have had to do this in years past when setting up Season Passes for shows on non Major Network Channels. USA, BBC AMERICA, SPIKE TV, are some of the worst channels for this problem.


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## MikeekiM (Jun 25, 2002)

Both my HR20 (non TiVo DirecTV DVR) and my TiVo had this problem... It's gotta be the guide data...


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

USA has always been like this. Sometimes they get better for a while, but they always revert to form.


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## MikeekiM (Jun 25, 2002)

Yea... I may just "punt" and set up a manual recording for Thursdays at 10pm Pacific 

I was really hoping that I could count on the guide data...but I am tired of pruning...


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## tivoman (Feb 23, 2002)

km said:


> The listings for Law and Order Criminal Intent on USA are a mess.
> The new episodes are 10PM Thursdays.


Wait a minute, L&O CI is not on at 10pm, it's on at 7pm. Oops I forgot my channel is three hours ahead.


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## ldudek (Sep 2, 2007)

tivoman said:


> Wait a minute, L&O CI is not on at 10pm, it's on at 7pm. Oops I forgot my channel is three hours ahead.


They repeat it 3 hours later for west coast people so it's still on at 10:00 pm.


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## MikeekiM (Jun 25, 2002)

ldudek said:


> They repeat it 3 hours later for west coast people so it's still on at 10:00 pm.


Actually, I forgot about the 7pm broadcast...

I already have a number of 10pm shows, and not many 7pm shows... I may move my SP down to 7pm just to avoid some conflicts...


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## tivogurl (Dec 16, 2004)

klia said:


> I find it really odd that the "generic" eps are clearly labeled as reruns, and yet my CI SP can no longer differentiate between "reruns and first run" and "first run only." And this just started happening after the 9.1 update, so I don't see any other explanation than it's another in a long list of 9.1 bugs, which was why I posted about it over on that thread.


I don't think it's a 9.1 bug. I've seen it before.

In fact, I think the bug is this: if the episode doesn't have a title, TiVo isn't checking the Original Air Date against the "OAD+28 days" rule (as it should). That's how these generic episodes pass the First Run filter. I believe if you check all your bogus reruns in TDL you will see all of them are missing episode titles. TiVo does the right thing with episodes that have titles. If you checked OAD first, then title (for duplicates) you'd fix this problem.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

It's not a bug, it's a feature. It's not a question of whether it has an episode title, it's a question of whether it has a generic entry (with either no OAD or the series premiere date). The rerun tag is not used to determine whether it's first-run (otherwise, second showings on the same night would nto get picked up by FRO SPs, since they're labeled as reruns). If there's nothing in the data to tell whether it's a new episode, TiVo errs on the side of caution. That's generally a good thing, since I think we'd all rather get reruns we don't want than not get first-runs we do want. Unfortunately, a few channels are not good about providing Guide Data info for their shows, and USA is probably the worst offender.


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## tivogurl (Dec 16, 2004)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> It's not a bug, it's a feature. It's not a question of whether it has an episode title, it's a question of whether it has a generic entry (with either no OAD or the series premiere date). The rerun tag is not used to determine whether it's first-run (otherwise, second showings on the same night would nto get picked up by FRO SPs, since they're labeled as reruns). If there's nothing in the data to tell whether it's a new episode, TiVo errs on the side of caution. That's generally a good thing, since I think we'd all rather get reruns we don't want than not get first-runs we do want. Unfortunately, a few channels are not good about providing Guide Data info for their shows, and USA is probably the worst offender.


The problem is that the L&O:CI episodes in question _have_ an OAD. From several years ago. Do a "Get Info" and see for yourself. They clearly aren't new episodes when measured by "OAD+28". Even if you ignore the rerun tag they should fail the OAD test and not be recorded. What makes me suspicious is that L&O:CI reruns that have titles don't get picked up by FRO SPs, but the untitled ones do. The fact that they are being recorded suggests that TiVo isn't checking OAD, which I think _is_ a bug. You should always check OAD; titles should only be used to disambiguate duplicates. USA guide data is atrocious, but it's sufficient for the purpose of deciding FRO or not.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

tivogurl said:


> The problem is that the L&O:CI episodes in question _have_ an OAD. From several years ago.


Uh, that's what I said--they use a generic OAD, that is, the date the series premiered. That's part of the generic L&O:CI entry, and says nothing about whether it's a new episode or rerun. When/if real Guide Data shows up, then the OAD changes to that episode's actual OAD, and then TiVo can decide whether it counts as a new episode (or falls under the 28-day rule). But until then, it can't know, and errs on the side of caution.


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## tivogurl (Dec 16, 2004)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Uh, that's what I said--they use a generic OAD, that is, the date the series premiered. That's part of the generic L&O:CI entry, and says nothing about whether it's a new episode or rerun. When/if real Guide Data shows up, then the OAD changes to that episode's actual OAD, and then TiVo can decide whether it counts as a new episode (or falls under the 28-day rule). But until then, it can't know, and errs on the side of caution.


Oh, OK. Why not make it configurable? I'd be happy treating "don't know" as "rerun" instead of "first run". Per-SP is probably best, but I could live with a global preference.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

tivogurl said:


> Oh, OK. Why not make it configurable? I'd be happy treating "don't know" as "rerun" instead of "first run". Per-SP is probably best, but I could live with a global preference.


Would you still feel the same way the first time you lost an episode of a show because somebody didn't provide Guide Data?

It's rare, but it happens.

Perhaps we should rather launch a write-in campaign to USA asking them to supply Guide Data for the shows they broadcast...there might even be enough people here at TCF to make an impact.


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## jrm01 (Oct 17, 2003)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Perhaps we should rather launch a write-in campaign to USA asking them to supply Guide Data for the shows they broadcast...there might even be enough people here at TCF to make an impact.


I already suggested contacting USA in another thread. The link is here:

http://www.usanetwork.com/feedback/


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