# Delay start and stop recording times because "the game went long"



## bob cowen (Jul 31, 2017)

The game went long.... it would be great to enable all scheduled recordings on a specific channel to delay the start and end recording times by "xx" minutes. Yes, it would require manual input once the "game" has concluded but would make it much easier to watch the programs and ensure that you recorded each program completely.

Example: CBS Sunday evening; 60 Minutes, NCIS, Madam Secretary all were delayed by 37 minutes. The proposed solution will make life a lot easier because (today) you can't delay the start of a recording and you can only extend the "stop" time (beyond 15 minutes) to 30, 60 or 120 minutes. It should be in one-minute increments for a specific program as well as for all scheduled to record programs on that station for the following "x" hours.


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## krkaufman (Nov 25, 2003)

FYI/FWIW...

The One Life-Changing Feature that European DVRs Have and American DVRs Don't


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## bob cowen (Jul 31, 2017)

Thank you for the link; a very interesting and educational article. I think that Tivo should implement a solution to the symptoms because the article was written in June 2013 and what has been done to address the root cause since then????

"What's holding everyone back, Denney adds, is the lack of demand from customers. "We don't have a whole lot of people saying, _My God, I wish we could do this_."

I don't think that's evidence American TV viewers don't want accurate recording. Rather, it reveals that they don't know it exists. Well, America, it does exist, and it sounds amazing. Email your cable company. Call every TV station. Tweet at your congressman. Leave a copy of this article under your neighbor's door. Say it loud, everyone: We want accurate recording, and we want it now."


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## warrenn (Jun 24, 2004)

I've wondered in the networks have a nefarious reason for not addressing this. If your recording gets cut off, they're hoping you go to their streaming site to catch what was chopped off. That gives them the opportunity to show you unskippable commercials. And in the case of CBS shows, it gives them the opportunity to upsell a subscription to their own streaming service.


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## bob cowen (Jul 31, 2017)

Warrenn: I think you're giving them too much credit. I may be that they have other "fish to fry" and no one's screaming for it because of the very wide diversity of their customers that are funneled to them via various cable providers, who offer their own DVR's. If that's the case (no action following the above article from 2013), the best hope is to plead with Tivo to implement a solution as proposed. It's not perfect but would help Tivo stand-out even more clearly from their competition. From my IT background, I can't see where it would be difficult, time-consuming or expensive. Does Tivo monitor this board????


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## powrcow (Sep 27, 2010)

If this were a feature TiVo, cable companies, DirecTV, or Dish would deem valuable (attract more customers), they would have implemented it already.

I don't think TiVo has a timely mechanism for pushing out scheduling changes - the TiVos have to call in. For a "sports update" to work, all TiVos recording sports or programming after sports would need to call in frequently after the actual game end to get the updated guide. This would increase the load on TiVo's severs, probably beyond their current capacity. Even so, there's a chance the actual end is missed and the feature doesn't work.

The true solution is the one in the above link. Live sports recordings receive a signal when the programming is complete, followed by a schedule update for the remainder of the day. This would cause a rewrite to how the guide is updated, requiring a lot of testing. I don't think TiVo wants to do this, otherwise they would have already. I say this because TiVo has gone through the trouble of creating the infrastructure and con-op to allow people to tag the start/stop of commercials for programming on most major channels for the skip feature, and not the sports end update feature.

I'm with warrenn. The simple answer is "people watch live sports live, so let's use that as a lead in to increase ratings on other programming." And that includes forcing users to go to On Demand or streaming sources to get their views and commercial eyeballs. It's sneaky and underhanded but the networks are in the business of selling commercials, not programming.


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## bob cowen (Jul 31, 2017)

I agree. The true solution is to implement as described in the very comprehensive article. However, it's been 4+ years since it was written. Has anyone seen evidence of movement in that direction? If not, while far from perfect, Tivo could implement an acceptable "band-aid" workaround. It's simple and would not be dependant upon the networks doing anything. Yes, the user would need to initiate the "delayed start/stop" but that would be better than the current software. Does Tivo monitor this message board? I've made this suggestion directly to Tivo. If you agree, please feel free to do so as well.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

Tivo does not have enough leverage to get the networks to provide this. Skip mode gets updated quickly after a show ends. It's the trigger that is the problem. I can't see it being cost effective for tivo to invest even more folks in tracking sports events to have a "keep recording" function.


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## bob cowen (Jul 31, 2017)

I've not done an adequate job of describing how it would function. Tivo would only provide the tools to allow ME to delay the start/stop times by "nn" minutes. Example: The Masters Golf championship is tomorrow on CBS. It's followed by 60 Minutes, NCIS, and Madame Secretary. Noone knows when the Masters will finish but at 7:00 PM or anytime for that matter, I want the ability to set a delay of "nn" minutes to the start/stop of all programs scheduled to record on CBS over the next "nn" hours. This is a fairly simple programming task for both the on-screen functions and on the app. It is a band-aid and not the real solution but probably the best workaround in light of the fact that years have passed and nothing has been done by the broadcasters to facilitate it. As stated before, this would be a competitive differentiator for Tivo.


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## krkaufman (Nov 25, 2003)

bob cowen said:


> As stated before, this would be a competitive differentiator for Tivo.


And likely as popular or more than SkipMode.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

bob cowen said:


> I've not done an adequate job of describing how it would function.


I think you did. I asked that the start time of a program work both ways long ago. While you would like more work to be done due to sports, I would just like the ability to start any program late as part of the 1P. While asking for it, I would throw in stopping early too.


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## bob cowen (Jul 31, 2017)

Joe: As you can tell, I'm new to this and completely ignorant about whether Tivo would implement suggestions posted here by users. Have you seen Tivo pick-up-the-ball from suggestions? Perhaps I'm getting my hopes up too high but from my background, things like this should not be difficult or expensive to implement and give them a "leg up" on the other guys. TIA. Bob


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

bob cowen said:


> Joe: As you can tell, I'm new to this and completely ignorant about whether Tivo would implement suggestions posted here by users. Have you seen Tivo pick-up-the-ball from suggestions? Perhaps I'm getting my hopes up too high but from my background, things like this should not be difficult or expensive to implement and give them a "leg up" on the other guys. TIA. Bob


Probably never. I have also used their on-line suggestion form -> http://advisors.tivo.com/wix/5/p2272893819.aspx

I can't point to a feature that was changed or added due to a suggestion posted here. But that doesn't mean it hasn't happened. One item I can say was fixed due to some very colorful and frequent complaints: the dead time when entering and exiting TiVo Central used to be twice as long as it is now. The side effect was to greatly reduce the number of odd audio dropouts. For me, they are virtually gone.


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## bob cowen (Jul 31, 2017)

Joe & others: Thank you for the link to their suggestion form. I've submitted it. If I may, I'd like to suggest that others who would like this ability also submit it to their suggestion form as well.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

Many of us have just coped with adding much longer recording times for anything on Sunday nights. A little annoying, but something that is easy and does not rely on a future upgrade.


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## bob cowen (Jul 31, 2017)

Since Tivo has implemented auto-skip, it's now even more important to have the recording end as close to the actual time that a program is over because Tivo apparently can't perform the commercial skip function while a program is still being recorded. Tivo currently allows only very "rough" extension times beyond 15 minutes (30 minutes, 1 hour, 1 1/2 hours and 3 hours). Permitting the user to delay start/time by any number of minutes would make life a lot less annoying. It's not a difficult programming task for them; just a matter of priorities. Every IT department has a large white-board of things to implement, this should be high on their list. I appreciate everyone's help by using the earlier link to add more voices to their suggestion box.


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