# Tivo ... do Wishlists right!



## Furmaniac (Apr 3, 2018)

Tivo ... do Wishlists right!

1) TITLE FIELD should be for show titles or movie titles only, not episode titles. If you have a one word item like "Wrecked" or "Crush" it's too common, and shows with that in their episode title will be included. Episode titles are already placed in the KEYWORD Field, so you don't need the Episode title in the Title field.
You also could have a symbol put after the title phrase to mean nothing comes after it in the way the * means something comes after it. So WRECKED- would mean that a show called "Wrecked by my brother" would not record. (Another option is to have an 'exact title' field.)


2) Navigating on the Search screen doesn't seem professional to me. I was a systems designer in IT. I noticed that the skip ahead key brings you directly to the right menu item and pressing it again brings you down to the most recent item. Thatcher should be documented on the screen.
3) All screens in which you say "Done with these selections" should be consistent with those few that say "Press A to accept these selections".
4) Add the Channel option to the Wishlist Edit screen: ALL or a Specific channel.
5) After entering the first actor, usually the second actor entered does not appear on your list of actors, while he would appear as the first actor. This is apparently a bug.
6) The menu item "Rename Wishlist Folder" should give a list of all the user-generated folder names and allowed to create a new one. 
The onepass selections would have the same choice, so that onepasses and/or wishlists could be kept in user-generated folders on the My Shows screen (or by making columns for those folder names and treating them like TV shows, kids, sports and news.
7) Game shows and many other types of shows ignore the "Cast" people who are displayed on the my shows screen. One cannot differentiate which version of a show he wants to record based on its host. At the very least if you don't correct that, always put the proper host name in the description.
8) In the absence of having user-generated folders, which would be great to have, there should be an option on the My Shows screen to either keep all wishlists together at the top or the bottom of the list, &/or have a scrolling column called Wishlists.
.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

I used to be a very heavy Wishlist user, had well over 65 of them. Customized names, tricky Boolean recording logic, etc. And no matter how many options they offered us, there were always more to wish for. #4 Channel was a big one, lots of demand.

This is opinion only, nothing to back it up, but based on the total lack of new features in WL, I'm guessing they have stopped developing them. We'll probably keep what we have, but the odds of seeing new features... less than zero. Not only does the current feature set cover most needs, but a lot of new users probably have no idea what it is or how to use it.


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## Furmaniac (Apr 3, 2018)

Interesting. The whole reason I wanted TiVo was for its Wishlists. Dish Network used to have wishlists that they called "Dish pass", but they removed it on the Hopper DVR because TiVo sued them years ago and they were paying a licensing fee for it.
Dish continues to offer user-generated folders and TiVo offers that only for Wishlists. I use Wishlists for almost everything, because I love user-generated folders such as "game shows", "favorite actors", "documentaries", "wife's programs", etc.
I rename each Wishlist with a name like that and start with a one and a space for example:
'1 Documentaries'
In that way all of my Wishlists appear together at the top of the My Shows screen.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

For a long time, I would use WL with titles like "Movies" or "Music Docs" or whatever. And create specific Boolean WL just to get what I wanted, in those folders. Over time, it became too much trouble, and there are easier ways to watch what I want.

I think some things that were really slick TiVo features were because of the era. Early in the 00s, not much (any?) streaming, much slimmer selection of channels, few alternate ways to get recordings. It's a different world now.


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## bobfrank (Mar 17, 2005)

My wish for Wishlists would be to eliminate auto record being the default.


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## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

While i don’t agree with every point in the OP, I agree that wishlists need work. Especially in logic and things like channel selections and/or ranges.


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## pfiagra (Oct 13, 2014)

bobfrank said:


> My wish for Wishlists would be to eliminate auto record being the default.


Tip: Always create your wishlist to include a nonsense word. Then turn off auto-record, and edit the wishlist to delete the nonsense word. This prevents your To Do List from being populated before you can turn off auto-record.


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## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

pfiagra said:


> Tip: Always create your wishlist to include a nonsense word. Then turn off auto-record, and edit the wishlist to delete the nonsense word. This prevents your To Do List from being populated before you can turn off auto-record.


I usually just put an extra letter in a keyword to make it nonsense then edit the keyword.

I wouldn't mind the added recordings if the conflicts cleared when you turn off auto record like the recordings do. Just makes it harder to find out what conflicts are real.


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## Furmaniac (Apr 3, 2018)

pfiagra said:


> Tip: Always create your wishlist to include a nonsense word. Then turn off auto-record, and edit the wishlist to delete the nonsense word. This prevents your To Do List from being populated before you can turn off auto-record.


Your idea will also prevent My Shows from displaying the original Wishlist name instead of the Renamed wishlist name. I am going to use your suggestion for that reason.


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## tomhorsley (Jul 22, 2010)

I use nothing but wish lists because for a brief period of time, only wish lists had the "record everything" option, it disappeared in season passes. I've always used record everything because it seems like the more I want to watch a show, the higher the odds are of weather alerts coming on in the middle of it, or a bad signal losing the sound for 5 minutes or something. When record everything stopped working in season passes, I switched everything to wish lists and have just stuck with that (they did fix season passes in the next update). I do get the occasional Dr. Oz show recorded with a title that starts "The Doctor Who yadda yadda" in my Doctor Who wish list, but I can delete them easy enough.


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## bobfrank (Mar 17, 2005)

pfiagra said:


> Tip: Always create your wishlist to include a nonsense word. Then turn off auto-record, and edit the wishlist to delete the nonsense word. This prevents your To Do List from being populated before you can turn off auto-record.


I've finally gotten pretty good at remembering to turn off auto-record at the end of setting up the wishlist, but I do occasionally have to go back and make the correction. I'll try your, and TonyD79's idea, if I can remember consistently. Thanks.


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## Furmaniac (Apr 3, 2018)

tomhorsley said:


> I use nothing but wish lists because for a brief period of time, only wish lists had the "record everything" option, it disappeared in season passes. I've always used record everything because it seems like the more I want to watch a show, the higher the odds are of weather alerts coming on in the middle of it, or a bad signal losing the sound for 5 minutes or something. When record everything stopped working in season passes, I switched everything to wish lists and have just stuck with that (they did fix season passes in the next update). I do get the occasional Dr. Oz show recorded with a title that starts "The Doctor Who yadda yadda" in my Doctor Who wish list, but I can delete them easy enough.


If they would treat the title field as a title field only and not include episode names, you wouldn't get those added programs


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

I have a bunch of wishlists that are built around having show title and episode title as the title keywords - when I want to grab a specific episide of a show (network preempted the recording, lost power, or just want to see an old favorite again). And in many cases relegating episode titles to the general keywords sections would cause lots of false positives for those. 

But if TiVo would add a separate field for episode title then we could both be happy. I could fill out both fields, only a tiny bit of extra effort, and still avoid getting false positive matches from the general descriptions; but you could fill out just the main title field and avoid false positives from episode titles.


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## Furmaniac (Apr 3, 2018)

bobfrank said:


> I've finally gotten pretty good at remembering to turn off auto-record at the end of setting up the wishlist, but I do occasionally have to go back and make the correction. I'll try your, and TonyD79's idea, if I can remember consistently. Thanks.


 Can you tell me the advantage of turning off auto recording? When auto recording is on, all the upcoming shows are shown on the wishlist screen and you can review them there and delete the ones you don't want recorded.
With auto recording off, you review the shows and choose the ones you want to record. Is there any advantage to turning it off for that reason?


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## Furmaniac (Apr 3, 2018)

Jonathan_S said:


> I have a bunch of wishlists that are built around having show title and episode title as the title keywords - when I want to grab a specific episide of a show (network preempted the recording, lost power, or just want to see an old favorite again). And in many cases relegating episode titles to the general keywords sections would cause lots of false positives for those.
> 
> But if TiVo would add a separate field for episode title then we could both be happy. I could fill out both fields, only a tiny bit of extra effort, and still avoid getting false positive matches from the general descriptions; but you could fill out just the main title field and avoid false positives from episode titles.


If you put the title of a show under title (if that's all that field did), and you put the episode under keyword, wouldn't it only record an episode from the show under title? It wouldn't record that episode for another show, would it?


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

Furmaniac said:


> If you put the title of a show under title (if that's all that field did), and you put the episode under keyword, wouldn't it only record an episode from the show under title? It wouldn't record that episode for another show, would it?


It would only record episodes of that show, but if the episode title has to be in the general keywords then it will record any episode that has that keyword anywhere in its description.

Here's a couple quick examples that work fine now with both titles searched under the title keyword that would be problematic if the episode title was part of the same search as the episode descriptions.
In season one of the CW show Supernatural the following single word episode titles were used:
S1E1 - Pilot
S1E2 - Wendigo
S1E6 - Skin
S1E8 - Bugs
S1E9 - Home
S1E10 - Asylum
S1E11 - Scarecrow
S1E12 - Faith
S1E14 - Nightmare
S1E16 - Shadow
S1E21 - Salvation

Some of those words would appear in a fair number of descriptions throughout that show's 13 seasons; so if for some reason I wanted to catch 'Home' the next time it aired I suspect I'd get a lot of incorrect matches. But they're far less likely to appear as part of another episode's title; so keeping them separate from the general description keywords helps cut down on that issue. And this is just the first show that came to mind to look for issues. But the problem could occur on any show that frequently used either short episode titles or went with common phrases or sayings that could easily appear in other episode's descriptions.

Still it's not the end of the world if they moved episode titles into that general pool; I'd just prefer that if they do change this they clutter up the interface and split them into their own category, separate from both show title and from show description.

That said, this issue would be entirely mitigated if they let to set wishlists for season(s) and episode(s) number. (And why you can't search on original air date but can on movie release year is beyond me. Well I know they're different fields in the guide data, I just don't understand why they made one is part of the keyword search and not also the other)


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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

Furmaniac said:


> Can you tell me the advantage of turning off auto recording? When auto recording is on, all the upcoming shows are shown on the wishlist screen and you can review them there and delete the ones you don't want recorded.
> With auto recording off, you review the shows and choose the ones you want to record. Is there any advantage to turning it off for that reason?


With auto-recording on, as soon as you finish defining your wishlist, it can flood your todo list, start 6 tuners recording, and generally make a bit of a mess of things before you get to the next step. And when that wishlist matches 1000+ items, it's not so easy to manually delete the ones you don't want recorded.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

Furmaniac said:


> Can you tell me the advantage of turning off auto recording? When auto recording is on, all the upcoming shows are shown on the wishlist screen and you can review them there and delete the ones you don't want recorded.
> With auto recording off, you review the shows and choose the ones you want to record. Is there any advantage to turning it off for that reason?


The first decision point is how common are my search terms, and how many recordings is it going to grab. Just a very few, I'll leave it ARWL. But if it's going to be dozens+, I'll make it manual. And if I don't know in advance, make it manual, and see how many are in upcoming matches. Example: "Pilot" Wishlist. If I left it ARWL, it would record a dozen or more shows every day. So I leave it manual, and skim it once a week or so.

Second decision point is how many matching recordings are new vs old. I use this for keywords I'm interested in, but not a lot of new shows airing. Example: "Deaf" Wishlist. I'm interested in all things related to deafness, but the vast majority of matches are older shows I've seen before. Again, a weekly scan can easily show me anything new.

Where do I use ARWL? "Equestrian" Wishlist. Most of the matches are new sporting events. Every once in a while, a repeat. But 75%+ new. And there aren't many. Maybe 2-3 a month. So I let it ARWL.


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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

I would kill for a way to exclude specific channels from wishlists. (I'm looking at you Lifetime and Lifetime Movies! And Hallmark Movies channel, you're next!)


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## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

I use wishlists as saved searches. I have used them occasionally to replace a standard one pass when one pass doesn’t work right but largely I just want to see the matches. I typically have wishlists for types of programs like movies made in recent years. I don’t want to record them all nor do I want to cancel up to 100 potential recordings. Nor do I want my todo list cluttered with conflicts I don’t care about. I use the list when I am looking for something I may want to watch. 

Same reason I used to like the old way suggestions worked. If you didn’t have them record, they were suggestions in a list you could look over. A suggestion is not a suggestion if it records.


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## dfreybur (Jan 27, 2006)

I notice that deleting a currently recording episode now offers to replace it with a bookmark.

I would love to be able to do that by surfing to a show, checking the episode list and marking a specific episode as a bookmark. Then mark it to automatically record any bookmark it encounters. This would replace a fair amount of wish list activity for me.

In fact there's at least one show we're watching that we mix streaming and recording based on availability. We did "Psych" that way for a while.

To me this is "This is in the catalog. I want it."

It would not replace all wish list activity for me. I'm a fan of obscure SF movies. I once searched for "Mission Stardust" but it was not in the Tivo database. So I entered a wish list entry for it. More than 3 years later it noticed some channel doing movies all night included "Mission Stardust" and I got to watch it. Not a top quality movie in any sense but it's SF and obscure so I watched it and then deleted the wish list for it. To me this is "This is not in the catalog. I want it anyways."


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## Furmaniac (Apr 3, 2018)

Thank you all for your responses. Glad to see you all use wishlists.
I have learned from all of you that.ARWL is best when you expect just a few matches, but non-ARWL is best when there are many matches.
It's good to know, as it was suggested earlier, that hen you create the wishlist, it's smart to first create it with just a 'qq' in the title, then go back, remove the QQ and put in whatever you want ... changed from ARWL or rename the wishlist ... and everything will be fine.
I'm also perplexed to learn that if I put in a keyword and I put in a title using the two different fields, it uses OR logic rather than AND logic. I hope it doesn't do that also for the title and actor field. That's crazy!
You all made good suggestions and I thank you.


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## Furmaniac (Apr 3, 2018)

dfreybur said:


> I notice that deleting a currently recording episode now offers to replace it with a bookmark.
> 
> I would love to be able to do that by surfing to a show, checking the episode list and marking a specific episode as a bookmark. Then mark it to automatically record any bookmark it encounters. This would replace a fair amount of wish list activity for me.
> 
> ...


About the movie not being in the TiVo database: I discovered that use of the Vox microphone expands the TiVo database as opposed to typing in movie names. I looked for two obscure movies: Love and Kisses with Ricky Nelson and Johnny Rocco, a gangster movie from 1958.
Typing them in gave me nothing. Saying them into the Vox mic they came up and I was able to make bookmarks for them and they are shown on the My show screen under "Currently not available".


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## bobfrank (Mar 17, 2005)

Jonathan_S said:


> I have a bunch of wishlists that are built around having show title and episode title as the title keywords - when I want to grab a specific episide of a show (network preempted the recording, lost power, or just want to see an old favorite again). And in many cases relegating episode titles to the general keywords sections would cause lots of false positives for those.
> 
> But if TiVo would add a separate field for episode title then we could both be happy. I could fill out both fields, only a tiny bit of extra effort, and still avoid getting false positive matches from the general descriptions; but you could fill out just the main title field and avoid false positives from episode titles.


As others have said, you can get flooded with unwanted recordings. For example, if you put Doctor Who as a title wish list you'll get shows with the phrase "the woman searched for the doctor who saved her life." Or a title search for Masterpiece while bring up an episode of Monk where the description says something like "Monk paints a masterpiece."

Deleting the wish list doesn't get rid of all the unwanted scheduled recordings.


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

Also, while we're on wishlists I wish TiVo would restore some functionality that they removed several years ago (IIRC at the same time they made wishlists default to autorecord).
It used to be that when you looked for upcoming matches that the TiVo would consolidate duplicate entries. So if you had, for example, a wishlist for Title: Avengers you'd get one entry for 'The Avengers' and one for 'Avengers: Age of Ultron'. Now if HBO or Starz is showing them you get an entry for every separate airing; so dozens of entries.

Before you could select the movie or show you wanted and then look at upcoming airings, without getting bogged down in all the airings of the movies or show you weren't interested in.

This isn't a big deal when you've got a tight example like this, but way back in the day I had a wishlist for Movies: <year>, so I could see all the movies from this year or last year that were coming to the premium channels. Having only one entry per movie was the only thing that made that list practical. Once they switched I had to abandon that style of list because due to those channels airing the movies many times you'd get hundreds of entries that were 90% the same 8 movies; making it impractical to look to see what else was coming out.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

bobfrank said:


> Deleting the wish list doesn't get rid of all the unwanted scheduled recordings.


I think when you delete the WL, the To-Do List will eventually clear out all the recordings. However, History shows them all.



Jonathan_S said:


> Also, while we're on wishlists I wish TiVo would restore some functionality that they removed several years ago (IIRC at the same time they made wishlists default to autorecord).
> It used to be that when you looked for upcoming matches that the TiVo would consolidate duplicate entries. So if you had, for example, a wishlist for Title: Avengers you'd get one entry for 'The Avengers' and one for 'Avengers: Age of Ultron'. Now if HBO or Starz is showing them you get an entry for every separate airing; so dozens of entries.
> 
> Before you could select the movie or show you wanted and then look at upcoming airings, without getting bogged down in all the airings of the movies or show you weren't interested in.
> ...


This is part of the reason I don't use them like I used to. Exactly what you describe... what should be 5-10 entries on some of my WL have turned into dozens & dozens of listings, all the same item. Honestly, it's such a PITA I just quit using many of them.


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## Furmaniac (Apr 3, 2018)

bobfrank said:


> As others have said, you can get flooded with unwanted recordings. For example, if you put Doctor Who as a title wish list you'll get shows with the phrase "the woman searched for the doctor who saved her life." Or a title search for Masterpiece while bring up an episode of Monk where the description says something like "Monk paints a masterpiece."
> 
> Deleting the wish list doesn't get rid of all the unwanted scheduled recordings.


So I noticed.
I asked TiVo to give us an indicator that we're putting in an exact match. That would help a lot.
Another thing to prevent the same recording from matching the wishlist in the future for masterpiece or Dr. Who is to put in the show's title with a minus sign in the wishlist so in the future it won't match.


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## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

astrohip said:


> I think when you delete the WL, the To-Do List will eventually clear out all the recordings. However, History shows them all.


The recordings disappear immediately. What doesn't disappear are any conflicts generated. So, if you have a big list, you wind up with a lot of false conflicts.


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## Steve (Apr 24, 2003)

TonyD79 said:


> The recordings disappear immediately. What doesn't disappear are any conflicts generated. So, if you have a big list, you wind up with a lot of false conflicts.


Can you work around by moving a one pass up or down in the manager? Will that force the box to re-evaluate conflicts?


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## Furmaniac (Apr 3, 2018)

TonyD79 said:


> The recordings disappear immediately. What doesn't disappear are any conflicts generated. So, if you have a big list, you wind up with a lot of false conflicts.


Do the conflicts that were not deleted Wishlists record?


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## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

Steve said:


> Can you work around by moving a one pass up or down in the manager? Will that force the box to re-evaluate conflicts?


I think I tried that but I don't recall if I did.

I just tried it on a lesser used box. No, they do not clear.


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## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

Furmaniac said:


> Do the conflicts that were not deleted Wishlists record?


I don't understand the question.


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## Furmaniac (Apr 3, 2018)

TonyD79 said:


> I don't understand the question.


I have a wishlist that used to have the optional keyword (Foot*). I have deleted that keyword, however TiVo is still wanting to record a show with the word "Foothold" as its episode title. There are no other title keyword or actor matches, but the show displays as ready to record. Has anyone seen a similar issue?


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## pfiagra (Oct 13, 2014)

Furmaniac said:


> I have a wishlist that used to have the optional keyword (Foot*). I have deleted that keyword, however TiVo is still wanting to record a show with the word "Foothold" as its episode title. There are no other title keyword or actor matches, but the show displays as ready to record. Has anyone seen a similar issue?


How long ago did you delete the Wishlist? Someone else can correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is that the To Do List is not re-assessed when a Wishlist is deleted. Therefore, it was probably added to your TDL when the WL was active. New items should not be added to the TDL since you deleted the WL. Since the guide populates out ~2 weeks, you may still see TiVo record something that matches the WL (or you can simply delete them from the TDL).


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## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

When I delete a wishlist or turn off auto record, the recordings disappear off the to do list immediately. It is only the conflicts that don’t disappear.


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## pfiagra (Oct 13, 2014)

TonyD79 said:


> When I delete a wishlist or turn off auto record, the recordings disappear off the to do list immediately. It is only the conflicts that don't disappear.


That has not been my experience, which is why I initially include a nonsense word in all wishlists until I turn off the auto-record.


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## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

pfiagra said:


> That has not been my experience, which is why I initially include a nonsense word in all wishlists until I turn off the auto-record.


The only ones that don't disappear are the ones that started recording already. I use nonsense words because I don't want the conflicts cluttering up things.


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## Furmaniac (Apr 3, 2018)

bobfrank said:


> As others have said, you can get flooded with unwanted recordings. For example, if you put Doctor Who as a title wish list you'll get shows with the phrase "the woman searched for the doctor who saved her life." Or a title search for Masterpiece while bring up an episode of Monk where the description says something like "Monk paints a masterpiece."
> 
> Deleting the wish list doesn't get rid of all the unwanted scheduled recordings.


When you put in something like "Doctor Who" and you want to avoid anything that says " ... the doctor who...", just put:
- the doctor who
in with a minus sign.


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## bobfrank (Mar 17, 2005)

Furmaniac said:


> When you put in something like "Doctor Who" and you want to avoid anything that says " ... the doctor who...", just put:
> - the doctor who
> in with a minus sign.


True, but then the I'd have to add "- a doctor who". That was only one description of where letting a wish list auto-record would produce unwanted shows. Title wish lists shouldn't pull from descriptions. There are many other defaults that can be set, but we can't set the auto-record default to "no."


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## Furmaniac (Apr 3, 2018)

bobfrank said:


> True, but then the I'd have to add "- a doctor who". That was only one description of where letting a wish list auto-record would produce unwanted shows. Title wish lists shouldn't pull from descriptions. There are many other defaults that can be set, but we can't set the auto-record default to "no."


I agree.
You know with all these suggestions that TiVo gets on their website one thing they don't do is compile them and do a survey of users as to which suggestions they would like added.


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## bobfrank (Mar 17, 2005)

Furmaniac said:


> I agree.
> You know with all these suggestions that TiVo gets on their website one thing they don't do is compile them and do a survey of users as to which suggestions they would like added.


Another thing they don't do is read the Tivo Community forums. Sometimes an employee will take an interest to read and post here, but I don't believe that's official policy from Tivo.


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## Furmaniac (Apr 3, 2018)

bobfrank said:


> Another thing they don't do is read the Tivo Community forums. Sometimes and employee will take an interest to read and post here, but I don't believe that's official policy from Tivo.


 They have their own forum and when I have something important to say, I post both here and there. Allegedly, they read their own forums but very infrequently. Doesn't TiVo Ted work for TiVo?


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## Lurker1 (Jun 4, 2004)

bobfrank said:


> There are many other defaults that can be set, but we can't set the auto-record default to "no."


Originally, the auto-record default WAS no. At some point they changed it. I liked Wishlists more before the change.


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## bobfrank (Mar 17, 2005)

Furmaniac said:


> They have their own forum and when I have something important to say, I post both here and there. Allegedly, they read their own forums but very infrequently. Doesn't TiVo Ted work for TiVo?


Yes, TivoTed does work for Tivo. He's one of those rare Tivo employees who take an interest in what goes on here sometimes. TivoMargaret did so before him.

Even though Ted, and any Tivo employees, may be here unofficially they are very much appreciated.


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## TiVoEvan74 (Sep 11, 2004)

What is going on with Wishlists?

I set up a Do Not Record Wishlist — of Science and Nature shows — and it's been recording some of them! I reviewed my other wishlists to see any of them could have caught the show, but nothing applied.

Plus, in the To Do list and Show Conflicts screen, many shows from the Do Not Record Wish List show up. Weirdly, a show will shown with a red X next to it and when I check using Info, it says that “Will Not Record Conflicts with 4 shows! When I look at what the shows are, they include shows that are NOT scheduled to record, but are part of the Do Not Record Wishlist.

This is really bad design. It also makes me wonder whether the incorrect listings could actually block shows that should be recorded.

Making matters worse, there's no way I could find to delete the shows with the red Xs. Even deleting the wishlist or rearranging the One Pass list made no difference.

TiVo really needs to fix all this!


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## pfiagra (Oct 13, 2014)

TiVoEvan74 said:


> What is going on with Wishlists?
> 
> I set up a Do Not Record Wishlist - of Science and Nature shows - and it's been recording some of them! I reviewed my other wishlists to see any of them could have caught the show, but nothing applied.
> 
> ...


If you read through this thread, you will learn that there is a flaw in the wishlist creation logic. By default, the wishlist is created as an Auto Record Wishlist (ARWL) before you can change the setting to not record. This erroneous WL behavior appeared sometime a few years ago, IIRC.

What this means is that your To Do List (TDL) was populated to record the ARWL hits before you "changed" the WL to not record.

Someone in this thread wrote that the TDL will eventually correct itself. That has not been my experience, so the simple thing is to delete the scheduled shows from the TDL before they record.

My preemptive workaround, as I wrote about in this thread, is to always create a WL with a nonsense word (to not generate any hits), change the WL to not record, then fix the WL by deleting the nonsense word.


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## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

Mine cleans up the recordings but not the conflicts. I believe the issue stated above was conflicts that don’t have a conflict. That is consistent with what I’ve seen.


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## Furmaniac (Apr 3, 2018)

TonyD79 said:


> Mine cleans up the recordings but not the conflicts. I believe the issue stated above was conflicts that don't have a conflict. That is consistent with what I've seen.


There are so many other Wishlist problems. I have a wishlist with a financial expert named Clark Howard in it, but it records programs with Dick Clark and other Clarks in it. There are show hosts listed in the cast but the shows won't record when you put that name in the wishlist. I have documented many of these bugs in the TiVo Suggestions area of their website, but I wonder if they have any intention on fixing any of this.


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## Lurker1 (Jun 4, 2004)

Furmaniac said:


> I wonder if they have any intention on fixing any of this.


Doubtful. Many of us have been reporting these same bugs for years already, with no change.


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## TiVoEvan74 (Sep 11, 2004)

What's especially bad is that the Roamio continues to record these shows even after one delete the Wishlist entirely!

As I was experimenting with all this, I twice entered a Science and Nature wishlist and, so, now I get TWO folders, identical, for Science and Nature!

It's ridiculous!

This is worse than a bug, it's a defect!

*Note: THE SHOWS DO NOT SHOW UP IN MY TO DO LIST AT ALL!*


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## Furmaniac (Apr 3, 2018)

TiVoEvan74 said:


> What's especially bad is that the Roamio continues to record these shows even after one delete the Wishlist entirely!
> 
> As I was experimenting with all this, I twice entered a Science and Nature wishlist and, so, now I get TWO folders, identical, for Science and Nature!
> 
> ...


After the shows from the older wishlist or watched that older wishlist will disappear


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## TiVoEvan74 (Sep 11, 2004)

I wasn't quite sure what you were saying — there seems to be a word missing.

But I think you mean what I discovered, which is that if one deletes the final show from one list, both lists will vanish. That's fine, but it doesn't explain why it's recording for two wishlists, when both have been deleted, and none of the shows appear in the To Do list!

I guess I'll hunt up a feedback form for TiVo and refer them to this thread. They really need to fix one of their prime features —even if they want to abandon it, they should at least turn off auto-recording so that it stops the bug from happening!


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## dfreybur (Jan 27, 2006)

I once noticed a bundled wish list. I think they are called collections. Academy Award movies by year. I selected it and added it to my One Pass list. Two years later it never once recorded even a single movie. I can not imagine a two year period were no channel ever plays any Academy Award winning movies. I see those in the schedule at least monthly.

Worse, it never once listed a single movie as a streaming option. Yet I entered the collection at least a year before Tivo's merged catalog rotted and fell off the tree.

I deleted the collection this week.

Yet I noticed something hilarious on the to-do list. My wife entered a wish list for Doris Day movies. It recorded a talk show with a guest who had Doris Day as a part of their full name. Chortle.


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

Can't remember if I mentioned this, but I have a partially invisible wishlist.

I create a wishlist for Marvel movies - put the ones I wanted in by title with all of them set as optional keyword (thumbs up to put parenthesis around the keywords after creating them). Mostly just to have them grouped in a named folder in the Now Playing list for easy access. Well at some point something when weird, the couple movies I'd already recorded under this wishlist stopped appearing in the folder and were just listed as standalone entries in Now Playing. Even weirder the wishlist can't be found anymore under wishlists, it's just not there. If I want to edit it I have to find it's entry in the Season Pass manager and jump from there to updating the wishlist. But any new movies matching the current settings will get recorded and they do appear in the folder in Now Playing. 

So it seems to have been some bizarre one time glitch that partially hid the wishlist and disassociated the earlier recordings from it.


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## Furmaniac (Apr 3, 2018)

Jonathan_S said:


> Can't remember if I mentioned this, but I have a partially invisible wishlist.
> 
> I create a wishlist for Marvel movies - put the ones I wanted in by title with all of them set as optional keyword (thumbs up to put parenthesis around the keywords after creating them). Mostly just to have them grouped in a named folder in the Now Playing list for easy access. Well at some point something when weird, the couple movies I'd already recorded under this wishlist stopped appearing in the folder and were just listed as standalone entries in Now Playing. Even weirder the wishlist can't be found anymore under wishlists, it's just not there. If I want to edit it I have to find it's entry in the Season Pass manager and jump from there to updating the wishlist. But any new movies matching the current settings will get recorded and they do appear in the folder in Now Playing.
> 
> So it seems to have been some bizarre one time glitch that partially hid the wishlist and disassociated the earlier recordings from it.


Someone had suggested the following and I find it to be true 
..
if you make an edit to a program that's in a wishlist to change its "keep" status or its start and end status, it will remove itself from the wishlist folder and become a standalone program on the my shows screen


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

Furmaniac said:


> Someone had suggested the following and I find it to be true
> ..
> if you make an edit to a program that's in a wishlist to change its "keep" status or its start and end status, it will remove itself from the wishlist folder and become a standalone program on the my shows screen


Changing keep until on a recorded show doesn't usually, in my experience, move it out of the wishlist folder. But making any edits to it in the ToDo list will prevent it from ever being put into the wishlist folder because it'll convert it from a wishlist recording to a manual recording.

But I've never (before, or since) seen recorded movies spontaneously move themselves out of the Now Playing folder. (Coincidentally? when that wishlist stopped appears in wishlists and only shows in One Pass Manager)


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## Furmaniac (Apr 3, 2018)

Furmaniac said:


> Can you tell me the advantage of turning off auto recording? When auto recording is on, all the upcoming shows are shown on the wishlist screen and you can review them there and delete the ones you don't want recorded.
> With auto recording off, you review the shows and choose the ones you want to record. Is there any advantage to turning it off for that reason?


... and with auto record off, the shows do not go into the wishlist folder. I want them to go into that folder.


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## TiVoEvan74 (Sep 11, 2004)

The biggest issue with automatic recording is that it will record *everything* that matches the Wish List. That could include lots of junk that you don't want -- and it could, depending on your TiVo, quickly eat up most of your valuable free space!


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## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

I often use wishlists as a better and storable search. Like I have a wishlist for movies made in the last few years. Hard to do as a search and i sure as heck don’t want to record them all. 

I also have one for college football and other sports.


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## juanian (Oct 2, 2002)

(I found this old existing Discussion Thread (talking about WishList issues), and since my issue is 'on topic', I'll add my comments here.)

Well, I can confirm that Wishlists are still 'broken' (at least they are on my Bolt). Setting up a WishList can't find a match on someone in the "Hosts" detail, using either the Keyword or Actor search parameters. (Older TiVos (like Series 2 and 3) could find shows that way.)

It is apparent that there is probably not going to be a fix for our "obsolete" TiVos (like Roamios and Bolts) - does the problem also exist on the "new" Edge TiVos? (I'm assuming the answer is "Yes".)

Even more interesting - you can't even SEE "Hosts" information in shows that have not been recorded yet. For example, check out shows that currently broadcast episodes more than once a week (for example, America's Got Talent, or Celebrity Dating Game). Record the first broadcast of the episode - when you view that show in the Now Playing list, it shows the Hosts detail in the recording's info. Then look at the exact same episode to be recorded later - no Hosts detail in the show's info! (You can find the subsequent broadcast of the episode a variety of ways, like 'Explore this show / Upcoming'.)

I'm still puzzled as to why I sometimes get a warning about conflicting recordings when I create a WishList, but it doesn't show what episodes are conflicting, and (checking the To Do List) I can't see any conflicts. (Good to know that someone else has been seeing some 'hidden recordings' - maybe they are pending 'TiVo Suggestions' recordings?)

I do like pfiagra's (and TonyD79's) suggestion about first using something (that won't be found) when creating a multi-part wishlist to prevent extra recordings from being scheduled.

(I have other 'loss of functionality' gripes about my Bolt (as compared to older models), but they are not related to WishLists, so I won't mention them here.)

It appears that the best option to get any of these things fixed (albeit a very remote chance) is for someone in field trials to try and find a way to relate these issues to something being tested. (Might be difficult, but not impossible.) Any takers  ?


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## juanian (Oct 2, 2002)

One odd follow-up - I noticed that "future" episodes of the once-a-day show "The List" *do* show Hosts, but the description is the same for all showings (the "First Aired" appears as 9/17/12, which indicates this is the "general" entry for the show, and not a regular description for each episode.)


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