# record three shows at once.



## Armond

There should be a Tivo that can record three shows at the same time. Being as how the new tv season is about to start I have to pick and choose what tv shows I watch and its quite annoying having to leave a show out of my season pass just because I already have two shows in that time slot.


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## dwit

Why only 3. Why not 4, or 5...

There's *always* going to be those that want more than is being offered.


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## MikeMar

get another tivo

then you can record FOUR!!!


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## lambertman

I want a TiVo that can turn into a pony and poop rainbows.


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## lrhorer

Geez, the poor guy just submits a wish and immediately he gets trashed.

In hopefully a bit more civil vein, M-cards support up to 6 simultaneous video streams. Of course, adding more tuners will definitely increase the cost of the TiVo, but as such things go, the incremental cost to add another two tuners would not be horrendous. The main thing, however, is the CPU and I/O would have to be made much beefier in order to handle the extra load. The bottom line is, a 4 or 6 tuner TiVo would be substantially more expensive, and I don't think most users would appreciate the extra capability nearly as much as they would dislike the extra expense.


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## waldo143

There is a niche market for 4-6 tuner Tivo's with one MCard support. Maybe this could be a Series4 Option. The one time extra cost for the tuners will eventually have a ROI do to the savings on having to pay CableCo for multiple Cable cards (I currently have 3 cards) and paying TiVo for mutiple Boxes (if LifeTime is not selected). Not to mention the green factor of less power needed for only running one box. Just a thought though.


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## flaminio

AT&T is advertising a DVR in this area that has four tuners. I'm definitely in the "more is better" school, but I think once you get past two, each additional tuner is a diminishing return. Lots of times there are two shows I want to record at the same time. Sometimes there are three. Rarely four. And almost never more than that.


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## magnus

Yep. 4 would be more than enough. A lot of times where I would have 4 things at once to record then there's been an encore on a different day anyway.



flaminio said:


> AT&T is advertising a DVR in this area that has four tuners. I'm definitely in the "more is better" school, but I think once you get past two, each additional tuner is a diminishing return. Lots of times there are two shows I want to record at the same time. Sometimes there are three. Rarely four. And almost never more than that.


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## ct1

They could just scale the CPU/IO with the unit so adding another two tuners wasn't a big deal. And, come to think of it, maybe put an extra antenna and output hook up so I can run it to my second TV. Actually, it would be nice to have a remote unit for the other two tuners and extra CPU/IO and antenna and output hook up so I wouldn't have to run the wires up the stairs. Maybe two separate boxes, but I could still connect them to the same network so they could communicate as one.

Yeah, that would be really cool. Wonder if they'll come out with something like that?


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## classicsat

I don't think they will this decade. In the meantime, you want two TiVos.


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## the big "D"

call the station and tell them to stop or you will call any commercial sponser and boycott their product. it does work


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## innocentfreak

I definitely would like a 4 tuner tivo even if it uses dual drives. As someone who has 3 dual tuner DirecTivos in their room it would be great to eliminate one box especially for the fees. 

This would also be beneficial just for handling season pass conflicts. As it stands now I spend every Sunday setting up my Tivo for the next week based off a guide I make in a text file. I then have to go into the other Tivo and repeat the process but flipping shows that are conflict issues.


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## lrhorer

innocentfreak said:


> As it stands now I spend every Sunday setting up my Tivo for the next week based off a guide I make in a text file. I then have to go into the other Tivo and repeat the process but flipping shows that are conflict issues.


Why are you doing something every week? Just put one season pass on one machine, and the season pass wth the most conflicts in that same time slot on the second machine. Select the second machine for the season pass with the next most conflicts and finally the first machine for the season pass with the 3rd most conflicts. Repeat for all other time slots with single show conflicts.

In the case of a conflict where at least one of the shows has the same episode broadcast more than once a week (Discovery, the Sci-Fi channel, and others often do this with their series), set the season pass with the fewer number of weekly repeats to a higher priority with a "First run and reruns" status. Then set the other(s) to lower priority and "record all, including duplicates".


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## innocentfreak

lrhorer said:


> Why are you doing something every week? Just put one season pass on one machine, and the season pass wth the most conflicts in that same time slot on the second machine. Select the second machine for the season pass with the next most conflicts and finally the first machine for the season pass with the 3rd most conflicts. Repeat for all other time slots with single show conflicts.
> 
> In the case of a conflict where at least one of the shows has the same episode broadcast more than once a week (Discovery, the Sci-Fi channel, and others often do this with their series), set the season pass with the fewer number of weekly repeats to a higher priority with a "First run and reruns" status. Then set the other(s) to lower priority and "record all, including duplicates".


I change my season pass order every week based on what new shows are premiering that week. A lot of the stuff I record is prime time shows so they only air once. I only end up reorganizing the top 50 shows or so since everything below that has multiple airings. I have around 150 season passes per box. If I put every season pass on every box I would be over 300 since I do have some duplicates so I can watch the show anywhere since no MRV on DTIVO.

Sunday I go through and add season passes for everything premiering in the next two weeks. I usually add about 10 shows with even more during the premiere weeks. Then I sit and organize the primetime schedule based on the returning shows for that week. Then when next Sunday comes I repeat the process all over again. For most timeslots I am running 3 if not 4 tuners recording. The only reason I am not on 5 or 6 tuners is because I have the E/W feeds for NBC or ABC.

I have tried not reorganizing my list but if I don't I end up missing multiple recordings since the primetime shows aren't recorded since they fall after the Discovery, FX, Spike, USA type shows.


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## mike3775

If AT&T can offer a 4 tuner DVR, Tivo should be able to do so just as easily.

I would like to have a third and 4th tuner myself, because there are times where I may have multiple shows recording at the same time. Tonight is a great example. I am recording the Bears/Colts game on NBC, Family Guy on fox, Ice Road truckers on History, Sand Hogs on History, and the Nascar race on ESPN. Now those shows are airing at 7:15pm(football), 8-9pm(family Guy), 8pm(IRT), 9pm(sandhogs), and 6pm(Nascar). I have a second Tivo recording the football game, but I would like to be able to have it on the same Tivo as the others right away when I get home though.

And there have been times where I actually had to set a recording on my Comcast DVR as well, since there was 5 shows I wanted to see at one time before


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## ZeoTiVo

lrhorer said:


> In hopefully a bit more civil vein, M-cards support up to 6 simultaneous video streams. Of course, adding more tuners will definitely increase the cost of the TiVo, but as such things go, the incremental cost to add another two tuners would not be horrendous.


yes it would be horrendous in terms of sales - TiVo tried an upscale TiVo S3 at 800$ and it was not what most wanted. As a niche it did alright but clearly price point is a main driver of sales for DVRs and ANY added cost will have a direct impact on bottom line in some form.

AT&T does 4 recordings at once because it just pulls digital streams direct to the hard drive without need for analog tuners or other hardware coming into play. TiVo is selling a DVR that can hook to anything so it needs to have analog tuner and encoder.decoder for each or else explain the 2 analog 4 digital stuff. Even at that, as others posted, the hard drive and other resources need to be beefed up because TiVo DVR is also capable of copying shows or having downloads from others sources that the AT&T is not doing.


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## bobrt6676

mike3775 said:


> If AT&T can offer a 4 tuner DVR, Tivo should be able to do so just as easily.
> 
> I would like to have a third and 4th tuner myself, because there are times where I may have multiple shows recording at the same time. Tonight is a great example. I am recording the Bears/Colts game on NBC, Family Guy on fox, Ice Road truckers on History, Sand Hogs on History, and the Nascar race on ESPN. Now those shows are airing at 7:15pm(football), 8-9pm(family Guy), 8pm(IRT), 9pm(sandhogs), and 6pm(Nascar). I have a second Tivo recording the football game, but I would like to be able to have it on the same Tivo as the others right away when I get home though.
> 
> And there have been times where I actually had to set a recording on my Comcast DVR as well, since there was 5 shows I wanted to see at one time before


But, in AT&T's fine print only 1 of four recordings can be in HD. The 3 others are in standard definition. Even TWC allows 2 HD programs to record at a time.


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## mike3775

bobrt6676 said:


> But, in AT&T's fine print only 1 of four recordings can be in HD. The 3 others are in standard definition. Even TWC allows 2 HD programs to record at a time.


That is bad, but I still think Tivo could do it though

I don't even know if my Comcast DVR can record two HD shows at once, never had to record two shows at once on it yet(needing 6 tuners lol)


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## classicsat

I would find it hard to believe a cable DVR would not allow two HD channels to record, since the channels are right there to tune (mostly; accounting for SDV limitations).


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## bobrt6676

classicsat said:


> I would find it hard to believe a cable DVR would not allow two HD channels to record, since the channels are right there to tune (mostly; accounting for SDV limitations).


I went back and checked. They have changed their description from when I researched last. Although I am not sure what "based on geographic restrictions" means.

"Four channels can be recorded to the DVR or viewed simultaneously, up to 2 can be HD based on geographic restrictions."


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## mike3775

Maybe geographic restrictions is what channels are offered in the area

AT&T is not offered in my area, yet if I were to move 20 miles west, I could get AT&T.

I hope Tivo see's that a competitor is offering something that could potentially be better than them, and will try to find a way to implement more recording


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