# Conflict Handling



## jpete20024 (Sep 22, 2008)

It would be nice if a conflict exist, two programs already schedule to be recorded, be given the option to select which program already schedule to cancel instead of the clip and cancel request option.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

You do that with the Season Pass sequence - it's in the order of priority - and you can override it by going to the To-do list Recording history. If it says "xxx will not be recorded," you choose options, record this ...., and it will, and warn you which show won't be recorded.


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## spocko (Feb 4, 2009)

That's not the same thing. I agree with the OP. There have been some excellent suggestions posted here in the past on how conflict resolution could be improved.


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## chrispitude (Apr 23, 2005)

I agree with the OP. Conflict resolution is terrible. When I add a season pass and there's a conflict, it tells me the highest priority show that it conflicts with, but not the second-highest priority show. So, my wife and I have a routine:

1. Agree with the season pass as-is (previous highest priority show wins).
2. Note which episode(s) will not be recorded.
3. Go to the upcoming episodes list and try to "record this also" - doing this will show what conflicts on BOTH tuners.
4. Note which shows are winning, then quickly remember them and go back to the season pass list to reorder appropriately before you forget.

We complain about this every time we add a season pass and there's conflicts. Cmon Tivo, it's been like this for YEARS. Quit adding more swivel search crap and fix this already.

- Chris


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## daleslad (Jan 15, 2009)

chrispitude said:


> I agree with the OP. Conflict resolution is terrible. When I add a season pass and there's a conflict, it tells me the highest priority show that it conflicts with, but not the second-highest priority show. So, my wife and I have a routine:
> 
> 1. Agree with the season pass as-is (previous highest priority show wins).
> 2. Note which episode(s) will not be recorded.
> ...


I agree wholeheartedly, it's a pain the neck having to go through all those gyrations just to find out which programs are the ones in conflict.
Tivo really needs to do something about this, it has been like this for years now, and also stop hiding behind the "no email support at this time" crap.


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## chrispitude (Apr 23, 2005)

I just sold my Series 3 and moved to a Premiere. While re-adding about 50 season passes, I was reminded how annoying this problem is.

When I try to add a season pass and it conflicts with something, I am only told which single highest priority shows conflict with the newly-requested show. Since there's two tuners, there's also a second show which also conflicts at each conflicting time slot. I am not given this information, nor am I given a choice to add the new program below the highest priority conflict but above the lower priority conflict. The season pass manager will only add the show to the very top or bottom of the season pass list, and that's that.

To resolve this, I need to go through all the gymnastics described in the original post. In 2006, I proposed a different system of selecting season pass priority here:

Idea for another way of determining recording priorities...

I believe Moxi already does something like this (click on Automatic Conflict Detection).

When presented with a new program and two existing choices, it's easy to decide which of the existing two programs I would/would not sacrifice in factor of the third. It's much harder to go through the mechanics above every time a season pass conflicts. After adding about 50 season passes in an afternoon to set up my Premiere and having to go through this manual conflict resolution many times, I was reminded just how much I dislike the current method of Season Pass conflict handling...


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## solutionsetc (Apr 2, 2009)

Yup&#8230; this is a long standing TiVo idiosyncrasy. So is the inability to schedule the conflicting show to another TiVo on your network. My ReplayTV did this SEVEN years ago!


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## chrispitude (Apr 23, 2005)

I can think of two reasons why this hasn't been done yet:


The original conflict-handling code was written in the days of the single-tuner TiVo, and hasn't been touched since. It hasn't been updated to be smart about two tuners.
Two-tuner conflict handling can get tricky. Let's say your new season pass is an hour long, and conflicts with four 30 minute shows at one slot, and four 30 minute shows at another.

For the second point, you'd need a UI which lets you specify just the right ranking. An ordered list might work - you could be shown a list of all conflicting shows, and you could raise/lower the new show in the list. Of course, that doesn't tell you whether your show would actually record or not. Let's say your new show E conflicts with A and B in one slot, and C and D in another slot. If the ordered priority list of conflicts was:

A (highest)
C
B
D (lowest)

then you'd need to move E up to:

A (highest)
*E*
C
B
D (lowest)

so that E wins over both C and D, and is recorded in the second slot.

I really think that the idea of telling the TiVo explicitly that you want to sacrifice some set of shows in favor of another is the best solution. That gets complex too, but the complexity is in the algorithm and the user does not have to deal with it. Now that the Premiere has two cores, TiVo could set the second core to work in the background doing some very efficient conflict resolution/time slot juggling to maximize coverage and minimize the number of shows which are missed.


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