# Season Pass Manager Needs an Upgrade



## masdoggydogg (Dec 16, 2003)

There are two major improvements I would like to see for the Season Manager:

1. *Online Season Pass Manager*
Rearranging the season pass list through the TiVo interface is such a pain. It would be so nice to be able to go online and drag to reorder shows, the same way I can with my Netflix queue.

2. *Season Pass 'Buckets' Instead of Granular Priority Assignments*
Most of the time, I don't need to precisely rearrange all of my shows from 1 to 100; managing my season passes with that much specificity is a pain and is really overkill. I just want to put a show into one of three buckets.

The reality of my TV watching is that:

a) some shows are important to me, and I never want to miss them
b) some shows I like, but don't really care if I get every episode, I just like having a few episodes now and then
c) some shows I NEVER want to record in place of something. Examples of this are shows like cartoons or cheezy VH1 shows, which run multiple episodes a day.

The problem with the current interface is that when I add a new show, it goes to the bottom of the list by default, below all the 'crap' I've already placed at the bottom. IF there happens to be a conflict, I'm given the option to put the new show at the VERY TOP of my list, but that's not really what I want.

Instead, each show could have an "Importance" setting (low, medium, or high) and shows would be grouped into three 'buckets'. Sure, if there were conflicts within a bucket, I could rearrange them on a more granular level like today, but this would resolve 90% of the issues I have with season passes.


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## masdoggydogg (Dec 16, 2003)

Another fringe benefit is that it would allow for more contextual alerts. For example, I really don't care if the 60 episodes of Seinfeld coming up in the next few weeks are 'not going to be recorded'; however, I DO care if I'm going to miss one of my "Important" shows...if the season pass had some awareness of these buckets, I could ask to be notified whenever I was going to miss new episodes of my important shows.


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## megory (Jan 23, 2003)

:up:
I came to the forum today because I'm so frustrated with the length of time it takes to sort my SPs. It would take me far too long to rearrange, because it takes a few minutes to move on SP to another location. 

Because it takes so long to rearrange, I keep adding and not rearranging. The list gets longer, editing becomes more cumbersome.

I thought there might be a way to rearrange them online to avoid the lengthy lag, but can't find anything.

Frankly, I think TiVo needs to start paying attention again to constantly update its software and improve all the defects and illogic, instead of giving us new and, imo, stupid add-ons that have little value (at least to me).

The long time to rearrange SPs is just one of many problems that will eventually cause the demise of TiVo.


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## generaltso (Nov 4, 2003)

megory said:


> I thought there might be a way to rearrange them online to avoid the lengthy lag, but can't find anything.


http://www.tivo.com/spm


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## vurbano (Apr 20, 2004)

If you want to swap locations of two Tivos its a real mess. There is no real "swap" passes option. At least add the ability to create a dummy tivo to park one set of the passes while I do this procedure otherwise you must have pen and paper in hand to delete all the unwanted passes off of the two tivo's


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

megory said:


> :up:
> I came to the forum today because I'm so frustrated with the length of time it takes to sort my SPs. It would take me far too long to rearrange, because it takes a few minutes to move on SP to another location.
> 
> Because it takes so long to rearrange, I keep adding and not rearranging. The list gets longer, editing becomes more cumbersome.


In addition to the brand new (released last week) online season pass manager linked in a previous post, there are also a few tips for using the built in manager.

You can use the channel up/down keys to move an SP an entire screen at a time.

Don't mix moving with adjusting settings. As soon as you leave the main SPM screen (either out to the main menu, or down into a submenu) the TiVo starts it lengthy recalculation of the ToDo list and prevents you from making further adjustement for a few minutes. Make all your moves and only then exit the menu - that way the TiVo only recalculates once.


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## megory (Jan 23, 2003)

generaltso said:


> http://www.tivo.com/spm


Thanks, that looks like what I want.


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## SpyderGST (Nov 10, 2006)

Jonathan_S said:


> In addition to the brand new (released last week) online season pass manager linked in a previous post, there are also a few tips for using the built in manager.
> 
> You can use the channel up/down keys to move an SP an entire screen at a time.
> 
> Don't mix moving with adjusting settings. As soon as you leave the main SPM screen (either out to the main menu, or down into a submenu) the TiVo starts it lengthy recalculation of the ToDo list and prevents you from making further adjustement for a few minutes. Make all your moves and only then exit the menu - that way the TiVo only recalculates once.


I also find that if I am going to be messing with my SP list, the tivo reponds much snappier if I change the channels (both tuners) to channels that do not have any signal. That way the live TV buffers are not chugging and the drive bandwidth can be used for rearranging the SP. (In my case, I have S3s with Cable cards and I just tune to channel 999 and 998).


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

SpyderGST said:


> I also find that if I am going to be messing with my SP list, the tivo reponds much snappier if I change the channels (both tuners) to channels that do not have any signal. That way the live TV buffers are not chugging and the drive bandwidth can be used for rearranging the SP. (In my case, I have S3s with Cable cards and I just tune to channel 999 and 998).


Interesting. I've done that to speed up transfers between the TiVo and my PC, but never thought to do it for rearranging season passes. (But, aside from the post rearrange recalc, I never really though of rearranging as particurally sluggish)


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

masdoggydogg said:


> The reality of my TV watching is that:
> 
> a) some shows are important to me, and I never want to miss them


That is indeed the purpose of the Season Pass. It is designed specifically with that in mind.



masdoggydogg said:


> b) some shows I like, but don't really care if I get every episode, I just like having a few episodes now and then
> c) some shows I NEVER want to record in place of something. Examples of this are shows like cartoons or cheezy VH1 shows, which run multiple episodes a day.


Both of these are really better served by Suggestions. As long as you have a large enough hard drive, the Tivo can and will record plenty of suggestions based upon your thumbs-up and thumbs-down selections. No suggestion will ever overwrite a scheduled recording, and with a healthy amount of drive space, both b and c are very well served by Suggestions. (Be sure to make use of *BOTH* thumbs-up an thumbs down liberally to get suggestions working nicely.) This also can significantly reduce the number of Season Passes, thereby mitigating your overall issue of being able to manage your Season Passes, perhaps by quite a bit.



masdoggydogg said:


> Instead, each show could have an "Importance" setting (low, medium, or high) and shows would be grouped into three 'buckets'. Sure, if there were conflicts within a bucket, I could rearrange them on a more granular level like today, but this would resolve 90% of the issues I have with season passes.


I vote, "No" on the idea. Although it would make things a bit more segmented, it would complicate the overall management of the Season Passes, particularly when one wanted to promote or demote a season pass. In addition, I personally would have a hard time remembering in which "bucket" I may have stuck a particular pass. Finally, clearing out old passes would require visiting three different lists to find all the inactive passes.

Truly, categories b and c above are better served by Suggestions. They fit the paradigm extremely well.


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## megory (Jan 23, 2003)

Hah. I finally have the time to focus on this, (after seeing it was a great idea) and I can't connect. I entered through TiVo.com and through the link on this thread, and both give me:
Error 500--Internal Server Error
.​
Oh well.


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## Newbie (Jan 19, 2002)

How about just be able to create some separators in the season pass list? These separators are just visual cue to help you rearrange the list, but doesn't do anything else. E.g. 

================= dad's stuff ==============
1. news
2. car show
3. sports
4. finance
================= mom's stuff ===============
5. soaps
6. who wants to be rich
================= jr's stuff ================
7. sat cartoon
8. ...

You still have to rearrange the list manually, but with the separators it's much easier to keep things organized. This is a very simple feature to implement.

Of course we can get fancy, e.g. have a block move that allows moving the stuff between separators as one unit, or be able to collapse the stuff under one separator while working on the others. It would almost be like having folders.


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

Newbie said:


> How about just be able to create some separators in the season pass list? These separators are just visual cue to help you rearrange the list, but doesn't do anything else. E.g.
> 
> ================= dad's stuff ==============
> 1. news
> ...


That might be nice, although the need to prioritize might screw things up; Dad's show #5 might repeat constantly, but airs first in the same timeslot as Mom's show #1 which never repeats. Wouldn't want Dad's to take priority.

That said, you can fake up visual seperators now. Just use auto-recording wishlists with impossible search terms, then edit the title to whatever you want the seperator to say, move them as desired in the season pass manager and presto, visual seperators.


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