# Setting a OnePass for MLB Games on Several (But Not All) Channels



## ajw (Mar 28, 2015)

Hi Everyone,

With the baseball season coming up, and with "OnePass" being new since the last season ended, I am trying to set up a OnePass for some MLB games. Here's what I would really welcome some help with.

My team broadcasts its games on two different channels. And I would like games that my team plays in to occupy the #1 slot on my list of OnePass priorities.

Unlike Season Pass, OnePass seems to offer me two choices, neither of which really fits. 

Choice One is to record ALL MLB games on every channel. I don't want to do that because I'm not interested in games where my team isn't playing, and (since I am prioritizing the recording) I don't want games played by other teams "bumping" other programming I would like to record.

Choice Two is to select a OnePass for only one channel. But of course the problem there is that the team plays on two different channels.

With the old Season Pass I created two parallel season passes, one for each channel my team can be seen on, and the problem was solved.

OnePass doesn't appear to offer me any in-between option. I either record ALL channels or one of them.

Is there something I'm not aware of, something I'm not doing, a "workaround" on this?

Thanks!


----------



## sangs (Jan 1, 2003)

I used the "Wish List" function to set up recordings for my Mets and Tigers. It's worked pretty flawlessly during Spring Training. I suggest you give that a try and see what populates in your "To Do List."


----------



## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

Why not set a Wishlist for "MLB Baseball" and "New York Yankees" (or whatever team)? If you want spring training games too, you can make "MLB Baseball" optional (by hitting the thumbs up button until it has a parenthesis around it) and add "MLB Preseason Baseball" (and make that optional as well).

One thing I have noticed is it can be hit or miss for spring training because of bad guide data. But I have used this wishlist for years and it works great for regular season.


----------



## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

One more for the pile- wishlists are way more powerful for sports.


----------



## kokishin (Sep 9, 2014)

ajw said:


> Hi Everyone,
> 
> With the baseball season coming up, and with "OnePass" being new since the last season ended, I am trying to set up a OnePass for some MLB games. Here's what I would really welcome some help with.
> 
> ...


I had a similar issue as well which I resolved with a Wishlist. Here are my Wishlist parameters:
Keyword: -
Title keyword: San Francisco Giants
Actor: -
Director: -
Category: Sports: Baseball

Other parameters I have set:
Get in HD: Yes
Record: New only
Keep at most: 25 episodes
Keep until: Space needed
Start/Stop: On time/1 hr

When I check Upcoming, I only see Giants games (home or away, preseason and regular season) currently scheduled to record on either MLBHD, ESPN2HD, or CSNBD).

GO GIANTS!!!


----------



## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

The only problem with baseball wishlists is when the guide says it's on a national broadcast and it's also broadcast locally. Most of the time the national broadcast will be blacked out in the local market. But Tivo always seems to choose the national broadcast to record. I go in every week to check my sports wishlists to correct this problem. 

The other issue, for some reason Tivo doesn't seem to have any guide data for the Comcast Sports Channel Plus. It just shows 8 hour blocks of SIGN OFF.


----------



## minimeh (Jun 20, 2011)

kokishin said:


> I had a similar issue as well which I resolved with a Wishlist. Here are my Wishlist parameters:
> Keyword: -
> Title keyword: San Francisco Giants
> Actor: -
> ...





midas said:


> The only problem with baseball wishlists is when the guide says it's on a national broadcast and it's also broadcast locally. Most of the time the national broadcast will be blacked out in the local market. But Tivo always seems to choose the national broadcast to record. I go in every week to check my sports wishlists to correct this problem.
> 
> The other issue, for some reason Tivo doesn't seem to have any guide data for the Comcast Sports Channel Plus. It just shows 8 hour blocks of SIGN OFF.


I second all of that. The wishlist is the best way to capture sports events no matter what channel they are presented, but the gotchas crop up infrequently enough to lull you to sleep. Then when you sit down to catch the game of the day and you only have MLBHD filler because of blackout, or a basketball game because the local team is into the post season and the baseball game has moved to an auxiliary channel, or Tivo selects the WGN broadcast over the local broadcast, you swear to yourself that you'll diligently check your ToDo list. And you do, until you're lulled back to sleep because none of the gotchas have cropped up for a while.

And I haven't figured out the algorithm, but I do know that given more than one hit on the wish list search criterion, Tivo will select the least desirable every time.

Really sucks when you miss a key game due to a gotcha that you forgot to check. Just saying....

Oh, and go Giants!


----------



## um3k (May 3, 2005)

After hearing the outrage in many other threads regarding OnePass and the suggestions that Wish Lists solved the issues created, I've muddled through Spring Training with a WL for "MLB Preseason Baseball". Not perfect, but it was rare that MLB and CSN covered the same game, and the MLB broadcasts were often delayed, which I think helped Tivo make the "right" decision about which broadcast to pick.

Now that we have 1 1/2 to 2 weeks of regular season in the guide, I can see this is going to be a pain. Like midas above, there are mutliple instances of my local team airing on MLB as well, and Tivo seems to pick every one of them. I've played around with the Wish List extensively, but in the end it is the exact same game with the exact same data airing on two different channels at the exact same time. I don't really think there is any magic left to make this happen automatically and correctly. I can't even delete MLB from the "channels I receive" because I record other programs from there. It seems the only way to handle this is to go record the correct broadcast on CSN, which cancels the MLB recording.... Every time MLB carries the game.... Manually.

I'm really trying to love One Pass and I hate to be another one of those people... but this did "just work" with multiple SPs. Does anybody out there have a way they're working around this that I haven't thought of?


----------



## L David Matheny (Jan 29, 2011)

um3k said:


> I'm really trying to love One Pass and I hate to be another one of those people... but this did "just work" with multiple SPs. Does anybody out there have a way they're working around this that I haven't thought of?


As Morpheus said, "Welcome to the real world." Unfortunately, there are some things that TiVo simply must fix because there are no good workarounds, assuming that they still hope to be the high-end DVR solution.


----------



## minimeh (Jun 20, 2011)

um3k said:


> I can't even delete MLB from the "channels I receive" because I record other programs from there.


If what your are recording on MLB is being handled by onepass, you _may_ be able to go ahead and mark the channel as unavailable. In my experience with previous software versions, doing so does not remove guide data or any scheduled recordings. You can also still tune live into the channel by directly entering the numbers for it.

I haven't tried with the latest version, but it might be worth an experiment. Then theoretically a wishlist search would exclude MLB while the previously created onepass items would continue to function. Any time you need to modify/create any onepass' on MLB, just activate it again and deactivate when done.

If you try this, diligent usage of the todo list will let you know how it's working before it's too late.


----------



## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

Doesn't ESPN and FOX still do MLB games too? I don't' remember if those get blacked out in the local markets.


----------



## dbattaglia001 (Feb 9, 2003)

I continue to be very surprised why people are complaining so much on this topic in reference to MLB. I record all Chicago white sox games. Other than a cable outage or that tribune media doesn't supply TV listing for overflow Comcast sportnet plus channel, I have a 100% success rate in my games getting recorded. 

Wish list does work flawlessly and the one pass thing should not be an issue. When you set up an auto recording wish list, you simply just need to select the record "everything" option. That means if MLB Networkand Comcast sports net both show game in TV listings, tivo will record BOTH games and you can just delete out the blacked out mlb network show. Again, this has worked flawlessly for me for a long time. Try it out and you will see problem solved.


----------



## dbattaglia001 (Feb 9, 2003)

um3k said:


> Like midas above, there are mutliple instances of my local team airing on MLB as well, and Tivo seems to pick every one of them. I've played around with the Wish List extensively, but in the end it is the exact same game with the exact same data airing on two different channels at the exact same time. I don't really think there is any magic left to make this happen automatically and correctly.


In your auto recording wishlist, select the option to record EVERYTHING. All games will record and you can delete out the unneeded ones.


----------



## cherry ghost (Sep 13, 2005)

dbattaglia001 said:


> I continue to be very surprised why people are complaining so much on this topic in reference to MLB. I record all Chicago white sox games. Other than a cable outage or that tribune media doesn't supply TV listing for overflow Comcast sportnet plus channel, I have a 100% success rate in my games getting recorded.
> 
> Wish list does work flawlessly and the one pass thing should not be an issue. When you set up an auto recording wish list, you simply just need to select the record "everything" option. That means if MLB Networkand Comcast sports net both show game in TV listings, tivo will record BOTH games and you can just delete out the blacked out mlb network show. Again, this has worked flawlessly for me for a long time. Try it out and you will see problem solved.


Do you get any Guide data for Comcast sportsnet plus in Chicago? Mine never shows anything but "SIGN OFF"


----------



## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

dbattaglia001 said:


> I continue to be very surprised why people are complaining so much on this topic in reference to MLB. I record all Chicago white sox games. Other than a cable outage or that tribune media doesn't supply TV listing for overflow Comcast sportnet plus channel, I have a 100% success rate in my games getting recorded.
> 
> Wish list does work flawlessly and the one pass thing should not be an issue. When you set up an auto recording wish list, you simply just need to select the record "everything" option. That means if MLB Networkand Comcast sports net both show game in TV listings, tivo will record BOTH games and you can just delete out the blacked out mlb network show. Again, this has worked flawlessly for me for a long time. Try it out and you will see problem solved.


The problem is then conflicts. I have a lot of times that I have all 6 tuners in use. I may try it though and see if I can manage the conflicts.

EDIT: Now I see that that's really a bad idea because it also records all the repeats that Comcast shows.


----------



## um3k (May 3, 2005)

midas said:


> The problem is then conflicts. I have a lot of times that I have all 6 tuners in use. I may try it though and see if I can manage the conflicts.
> 
> EDIT: Now I see that that's really a bad idea because it also records all the repeats that Comcast shows.


I'm in the same boat... Plus I pad the recording by 1 1/2 hours due to the potential for extra innings and am recording on a Premier so that really makes it a difficult solution with regards to tuner usage/conflicts.

Also, I only keep 3 so I don't accumulate too many if I don't watch them in a timely manner so I guess it is a choice between manual management ahead of time in to do list or afterward in my shows...

I'm currently trying the "remove mlb network from channels I receive" workaround suggested above which surprisingly does not seem to effect manual recordings or one pass. We'll see if new recordings get scheduled correctly with this solution. I also didn't think about this solution in relation to national telecasts like ESPN or fox since they haven't carried any games yet. I guess I'll have to either remove them as well or manually fix the to do list before they are recorded.


----------



## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

Unfortunately, when it comes to Chicago baseball, it's really difficult. We not only have the national games to worry about, we also have them spread out on so many channels. And sometimes they are even on some of the sub channels. So even setting up multiple season passes (the old way) wasn't much of an option. You just needed so many of them, and some wouldn't even show up till months into the season. 

When i had DirecTV it was easier. You could specify a channel range that excluded the national broadcasts.Then just setup a second one for all channels. As long as it was on the local channels the all channel SP wouldn't record.


----------



## minimeh (Jun 20, 2011)

I was just checking a few things and have some observations.

Setting the wish list to "Everything" is not a solution for me. Yeah, it records re-broadcasts with the 3 hour padding I use to cover rain delays, replay delays, injury delays, pitching change marathons, and extra innings. But that also doesn't solve the issue of the guide listing a game on two channels in parallel anyway.

This Monday, the Giants are at Arizona. Comcast Sports Net Bay Area is listed for broadcasting the game. So is ESPN2. When I set the wish list to "Everything", only the ESPN2 game is shown in the todo list as being scheduled to record. When I change to "New", then only the CSNBA is scheduled to record. Never are both scheduled to record simultaneously.

This Tuesday, the Warriors are taking precedence over the Giants on CSNBA. The Giants pregame show and game is scheduled to record on CSNBA's plus channel. And, for the first time in my experience, the plus channel actually lists it (yay!). Tivo picked that up correctly and scheduled it to record.

An hour after the Tuesday game starts, the guide shows the game being listed (presumably picked up in progress) by CSNBA. That does not get scheduled for recording by the wish list either with "Everything" or "New" set.

In an abundance of caution in case the plus channel drops the broadcast when the main channel kicks in, I tried to set the main channel to record in parallel. Of course, that caused Tivo to cancel the plus channel recording. The only way to accomplish the parallel recording was with a manual recording.

After all is said and done, nothing automatic and reliable about the wish list at all.


----------



## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

minimeh said:


> I was just checking a few things and have some observations.
> 
> This Monday, the Giants are at Arizona. Comcast Sports Net Bay Area is listed for broadcasting the game. So is ESPN2. When I set the wish list to "Everything", only the ESPN2 game is shown in the todo list as being scheduled to record. When I change to "New", then only the CSNBA is scheduled to record. Never are both scheduled to record simultaneously.


You might need to give your system time to process when you change it to everything. I'm showing parallel recording for CSN and MLB.


----------



## minimeh (Jun 20, 2011)

Of course I did allow time for Tivo to process the changes. The results observed for switching from "New" to "Everything" and back to "New" were very quick, probably owing to the affected recordings being very near in time. Letting the changes settle for a few minutes made no difference.

I have yet to see parallel recordings without using a manual recording. On the other hand, I had never seen the Comcast plus channel listing show anything other than "Sign Off" so anything's possible, I suppose.


----------



## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

Well I show parallels recordings on mine. I can't explain it. See attachment.


----------



## dbattaglia001 (Feb 9, 2003)

cherry ghost said:


> Do you get any Guide data for Comcast sportsnet plus in Chicago? Mine never shows anything but "SIGN OFF"


 For csn plus games, the guide usually shows the white sox game airing on CLTV which is standard definition only. When I see that in the to do list, that's what prompts me to set up a manual recording on the CSN plus HD channel that has no guide data. Not perfect but definitely manageable if you spend a few minutes each week to look through the now playing list. It gets extra tough on the day or 2 a year where Bulls and Blackhawks games push the baseball to CSN Plus Plus.


----------



## dbattaglia001 (Feb 9, 2003)

midas said:


> The problem is then conflicts. I have a lot of times that I have all 6 tuners in use. I may try it though and see if I can manage the conflicts.
> 
> EDIT: Now I see that that's really a bad idea because it also records all the repeats that Comcast shows.


I'm of the opinion that since I would rather not miss a white sox game recording, the record everything feature is good enough for me. I understand conflicts come up and you could have hard drive space issues, but I tend to believe those can be muted with some to do list maintenance. I know in a perfect world it would truly be automatic, but especially these days with the convenient apps on phones and tablets, it's not horrible to periodically scan through and clean up the to do list. I've tried recording new only and invariably I sometimes miss the MLB network issue where the blacked out game is recorded, so for me the evrything approach has served me better as its a nice backstop in my opinion.


----------



## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

If you still have to search and destroy the CLTV games you still need to be fairly diligent and look at least once every 10 days or so. I'd rather manage the upcoming on the wishlist than the to do list. My wife records a lot of crap and on a typical day we have anywhere from 25 to 30 things on the to do list.


----------



## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

dbattaglia001 said:


> I continue to be very surprised why people are complaining so much on this topic in reference to MLB. ...
> 
> ... Again, this has worked flawlessly for me for a long time. Try it out and you will see problem solved.





dbattaglia001 said:


> In your auto recording wishlist, select the option to record EVERYTHING. All games will record and you can delete out the unneeded ones.





dbattaglia001 said:


> ... Not perfect but definitely manageable if you spend a few minutes each week to look through the now playing list. It gets extra tough on the day or 2 a year where Bulls and Blackhawks games push the baseball to CSN Plus Plus.


"Do this, it's *flawless*! As long as you don't mind going through the now playing list and doing everything by hand!"


----------



## um3k (May 3, 2005)

Well, so far so good with removing MLB from "channels I receive"... Non-1P recordings are still getting done and 1P recordings are still scheduled in to do list. Would have thought I would get alerts for recordings/1P scheduled on a channel I "don't receive".

The more I think about it, national airings are not going to be an issue since there is no "dual broadcast" with one blacked out like there is with MLB/CSN. It only airs on the national channel. Looks like you guys in Chicago have a much more complicated setup 

It looks like using "everything" on the WL will have more fallout for me with conflicts and disk space. Right now the only fallout I've noticed with this workaround is if I want to schedule a new recording on MLB I need to add it back in since MLB is invisible to search and guide. A workaround to the workaround... down the rabbit hole I go! Funny that this is forcing someone who is a big baseball fan to pretend I "don't receive" MLB network... and disappointing since this is the first season I've had to do any manual maintenance at all to my MLB recording configuration - and I've had a Tivo for over 10 years.


----------



## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

um3k said:


> Looks like you guys in Chicago have a much more complicated setup


I don't know if we're unique. But this time of year it's not unusual to have the White Sox, Cubs, Bulls and Blackhawks all playing at the same time. It can be a real mess trying to find the game you want to watch.


----------



## um3k (May 3, 2005)

midas said:


> this time of year it's not unusual to have the White Sox, Cubs, Bulls and Blackhawks all playing at the same time.


In Philly, we only have one team per sport, and none of them are particularly good right now.  The upside is that everything's on CSN/TCN or our NBC affiliate.

Looks like I spoke too soon on the "remove MLB from channels I receive" workaround... I'm noticing that some shows have "no upcoming showings" when I look at the 1P, when I know they do. I knew that workaround was going to bite me somehow. I guess I'm back to manual to do list maintenance and/or conflict resolution.

I noticed in another thread that web/podcasts download functionality was silently killed as well recently. "Download Manager" still shows my podcasts but selecting them does nothing and they're not downloading any more. I haven't posted so much on the boards since I joined. Over the years, a few posts about HDD upgrades and I was a happy camper. Now they're causing me problems left and right.


----------



## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

Well this is weird. When I was playing around with the idea of recording everything, somehow I ended up with 2 wishlists in my 1P manager. One was my original and one was the new one with everything set. Since I had already changed back to not use everything I deleted that one. 

Now my wishlist shows up in the 1P manager but it doesn't show in the Wishlist section itself. This is really annoying.


----------



## max99 (May 23, 2004)

MLB Network puts "Region Coverage" as the episode name for most of their games. I put _-regional_ as one of the keywords and that seems to eliminate all the games on MLB network from my wishlist.


----------



## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

max99 said:


> MLB Network puts "Region Coverage" as the episode name for most of their games. I put _-regional_ as one of the keywords and that seems to eliminate all the games on MLB network from my wishlist.


Regional coverage only appears to work if they have more than 1 game. Look at the noon game on 4-13. But it's something to at least alleviate a good portion of the problem games.

I thought I had another way because all the MLB games appear to have BLACKOUT in the description. But for some reason most of my local games show the same thing. So frustrating.


----------



## kokishin (Sep 9, 2014)

So far, my Wishlist has been working very well. Normally the Giants are on Comcast 720. The other day, they were on 780 because 720 was carrying the Warriors. Tivo scheduled it perfectly. During preseason, the Giants were on 720 mostly, 721 a few times (playing the A's), and occasionally 729 (MLB) or 725 ESPN2, and Tivo scheduled them all correctly. No game replays or other Giants related shows have been scheduled. Not saying that OP shouldn't be improved to make it more flexible as was SP, but the Wishlist is getting the job done for recording my Giants. GO GIANTS!



kokishin said:


> I had a similar issue as well which I resolved with a Wishlist. Here are my Wishlist parameters:
> Keyword: -
> Title keyword: San Francisco Giants
> Actor: -
> ...


----------



## minimeh (Jun 20, 2011)

Just heads up on that WL: There have been times in the past when MLBTV, ESPN(2), or TBS (for Braves games) or WGTV (for Cubs games) will also show in the listings for Giants games, but in some cases (e.g. MLBTV or ESPN) they will actually be blacked out in the Bay Area or in other case (e.g. TBS or WGTV) you'll be picking up the opposing teams broadcast even though the game is also scheduled for Comcast or KNTV (local broadcasts). 

Also it has been typical that if the game is pushed to the Comcast plus channel, there is no listing reflecting that so you either end up recording something pseudo-random on the Comcast channel or no recording at all.

I've been burnt by that.


----------



## kokishin (Sep 9, 2014)

minimeh said:


> Just heads up on that WL: There have been times in the past when MLBTV, ESPN(2), or TBS (for Braves games) or WGTV (for Cubs games) will also show in the listings for Giants games, but in some cases (e.g. MLBTV or ESPN) they will actually be blacked out in the Bay Area or in other case (e.g. TBS or WGTV) you'll be picking up the opposing teams broadcast even though the game is also scheduled for Comcast or KNTV (local broadcasts).
> 
> Also it has been typical that if the game is pushed to the Comcast plus channel, there is no listing reflecting that so you either end up recording something pseudo-random on the Comcast channel or no recording at all.
> 
> I've been burnt by that.


I'll let the community know when my WL FUBAR's because I presume it will. I would definitely prefer using OP if TIVO enhances it to be similar to SP.


----------



## bretlinford (May 23, 2015)

kokishin, how does your wishlist work for the games on kntv? Thanks!


----------



## minimeh (Jun 20, 2011)

I'm not kokishin, but I have used a similar WishList search for a long time. It will work fine with kntv (Comcast Bay Area 703) if you ensure that you have the "Get only in HD" option set to "No". See http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10513091#post10513091 for details.


----------



## SrLANGuy (Dec 26, 2001)

kokishin said:


> I had a similar issue as well which I resolved with a Wishlist. Here are my Wishlist parameters:
> Keyword: -
> Title keyword: San Francisco Giants
> Actor: -
> ...


I've used a Wishlist even before they switched to OnePass and it works perfectly. I never miss a live Cardinals game. Here are my Wishlist parameters:

Keyword: -
Title keyword: St Louis Cardinals, At
Actor: -
Director: -
Category: Sports: Sports Event

Recording Options:
Auto-record: Yes
Record: NEW only
Keep at most: 2 shows
Keep until: Space needed
Get only in HD: Yes
Start recording: On time
Stop recording: 1 hour longer

GO CARDS!!!


----------

