# To Do List Improvements



## keltraine (Oct 9, 2008)

This is one that has been bugging me for a while now...

Problem #1:
Right now, you have to go to the View Recording History and look through it to see if something isn't being recorded due to a conflict (among other reasons; but this is usually the most pressing one)--so there's no way to know OFF-HAND in the To Do List that your show isn't being recorded w/o skimming through that! Or maybe there's a special airing on another night that conflicts with something else and you're missing the first show b/c of that (I'm pretty anal about checking my recordings and even I don't verify them in Recording History that often...)

Problem #2:
Currently, there's no quick way in View Recording History to see why something won't record or was deleted; the system makes you go into the detail for each item to get the reason instead of offering a letter code that would let you see that quickly/at a glance.


Ideal Solution to both:
It'd be awesome if there was a way to display within the To Do List itself the items not being recorded, along with a granular way to control which ones get displayed AND offering a quick view for that reason w/o having to go into the item (see problem #2)

So just like how in the Now Playing List I can hit "Enter" to pull up options on how to sort that list, how about we do that for my suggestion and let you select what types of things to add into your To Do List display that aren't being recorded, and thus change your default display options (it can be a grid where you can check what you want to make it easy). And we could assign a number to each of these, so that hitting the number turns the display of that item ON/OFF from the To Do List itself, so you don't have to hit Enter every time once you know the shortcut (and for all of the letters we can have a circle around it with a line through it as the symbol):

1 would only show those things that are not being recorded due to conflicts (C for conflict)
2 would show anything not being recorded due to a "Keep at Most" limit (K for keep)
3 would be things removed from the To Do List manually (M for manual)
4 would be modified Season Pass, WishList or AutoRecord (A for altered as C and D were already taken)
5 would be no longer in the program guide (X for X'ed out/deleted since D was taken)
6 would be REPEATS (R for repeat)
7 (last but not least) would be same episode within 28 days, or DUPLICATES (D for duplicate)

For example, I wouldn't care much about seeing the D or R above (hence me adding them last) nor even X or even A. But having C, K and and M would be useful. But someone else might really want to know about X or R and not care about K b/c they have too many of those or something. So the ability to set your default is nice, so you don't have to change it every time, but the ability to toggle is nice too.

Oh, and 0 could be the option that adds EVERYTHING that's not recording in one easy swoop, and hitting it again, could remove all non-recording stuff, restoring you to the traditional To Do List!

Now we could apply this to solve problem #2 by adding these symbols to the Recording History (no reason to get rid of it, right?) so we can tell quickly there why stuff won't record w/o having to go into each item!

What do you guys think?!


Alternative Solution:
If having so many symbols is too much/too hard, or it's too many levels to program, then do this:
1) Let people have at least two levels, conflicts and conflicts+everything else and select b/w those by hitting just the number 1 button; first time shows just conflicts, second time shows everything from the recording history and third time removes it all.
2) Either use the C symbol and X for everything else not recording, or just use X (or even an empty circle with a line through it) for *everything* not being recorded, and make people go into the item to find out why (which doesn't solve problem #2, but hey, I guess you can't get everything).

My previous solution could be considered a "stretch" goal (those who work in product development know what I mean), and this would be at least great first implementation!

Thoughts on this vs the other, more ideal solution and which would be more likely to be implemented? ;P


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

I've seen suggestions similar to this, or at least seeking to address the basic issue, before. Adding some sort of additional structure or filters to the "won't record" list would definitely be handy. At the very least, allowing the user to hide all the "already in the NPL" conflicts would remove the bulk of the entries about which the user probably cares very little.


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## keltraine (Oct 9, 2008)

Thanks for the reply Irhorer; guess it's as I first surmised: it's not a new request and they've probably seen it before and it's just not that a high-priority for them. Oh well, what can you do but make the suggestion?! ;P


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## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Some similar suggestions have been made in the "Alert user of recording conflicts with message to self " thread. The "Won't Record" label in Recording History needs to be expanded into multiple labels like "Recorded Recently", "Will Record Later" and "Recording Conflict".


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## keltraine (Oct 9, 2008)

Ahh, right; thanks for the note about the other thread mikeyts; as I mentioned there, I had to change my default forum display options to show threads older than 10 days (why is 10 days the default btw; I was wondering why there weren't that many posts in Suggestions! ).

Anyway, it seems that we can use more info about stuff that won't record, however they do it--oh I get what you're saying; have macro categories that can have more detail under them so that people can generally sift through what they want...

Yeah, but that still requires you to GO into that section and check manually, which is why I like the idea of automatically allowing adding those items to the ToDo List itself! What do you think?


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## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

keltraine said:


> Yeah, but that still requires you to GO into that section and check manually, which is why I like the idea of automatically allowing adding those items to the ToDo List itself! What do you think?


My suggestion in the top of that other thread is that TiVo send itself a message (which'd show up in Message & Settings->Messages with a notification on the TiVo Central dialog) whenever it detects a recording conflict that cannot be resolved by recording another airing of the lowest priority recording within the next week. It'd wait until it could see the next six or seven days before sending the alert, giving the user five or six days to deal with the problem. It could silently put a "Will Not Record" (preferably "Recording Conflict") entry in Recording History, to be automatically changed to "Will Record Later" if new guide data gets loaded revealing another airing of the same episode which it can record.

I don't want to have to scan the future "Recording History" every day for up coming problems--too much like work .


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## keltraine (Oct 9, 2008)

Gotcha; I see what you mean; the message would be proactive rather than making you go do the work of looking...

I guess I'm used to scanning the ToDo List pretty regularly myself; I check it pretty often to make sure that my programs that I expect are recording and to see what the episode is about; I have a pretty good idea of what airs each day and if I don't see NCIS on a Tues, I have to go looking for why (usually by seeing upcoming episodes on that season pass and seeing if all new eps are recording). When I didn't do this, I used to miss stuff, so I got into doing that. But going into the Recording History to try and figure it out is a lot harder now b/c of all the items in there (like every repeat of the Simpsons, etc) and this would make things easier.

So my suggestion was just to make that easier by allowing you to see in the ToDo List itself when these recordings weren't being recorded. Yours is an enhancement on that by providing a new message, which handles the issue for people that don't scan the ToDo List regularly. Either way, I think we've hit on a great enhancement for the Tivo folks...*hint, hint*

Thanks for the info and replies mikeyts!


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

keltraine said:


> Thanks for the reply Irhorer; guess it's as I first surmised: it's not a new request and they've probably seen it before and it's just not that a high-priority for them. Oh well, what can you do but make the suggestion?! ;P


Please, that's Lrhorer, not Irhorer, but you are perfectly correct. What's more, you've come up with some pretty creative and more detailed suggestions, which can't hurt.


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