Anybody know?

[coyote6]

And that's useful. Seems like networks nowadays change around time slots every other week, or let shows sit fallow for months and months at a time. Makes it hard for a guy like me who doesn't follow much anyways to follow what I wanna follow.

That's why DVRs are things of beauty. You set it up, whenever the danged show has new episodes, it records it. If you check your recorded shows and suddenly find two new episodes of something, woo-hoo!

Of course, at least with my Comcast DVR, that only works for shows already on -- if a show is brand-new, you have to wait until it shows up on the guide to be able to add it to a list, which means you have to check or know when to check. But I blame Comcast for that, based solely on the fact that they suck.

 

[Umbran]

Of course, at least with my Comcast DVR, that only works for shows already on -- if a show is brand-new, you have to wait until it shows up on the guide to be able to add it to a list, which means you have to check or know when to check. But I blame Comcast for that, based solely on the fact that they suck.

Yeah, really! It is as if they thought that being psychic wasn't a customer service requirement these days!

But really, would you want your cable compay to be able to read your mind? That'd be scary.

 

[Mercutio01]

I don't think that's what he was getting at, but I'm no mind reader either. What I do know is that my DVR won't let you put in a show more than 2 weeks in advance.

So, for example, I knew when Fringe was going to premiere. I went to the DVR sometime in late July and tried to set it up to record Fringe, but since it wasn't in the guide, I couldn't set it up. I had to wait until 1 week and 6 days in order to set it up.

It's by no means any kind of big deal whatsoever, but that's what I got out of coyote6's post. Not that he wanted the DVR to just record a show because he "thought" about it.

 

[Umbran]

I don't think that's what he was getting at, but I'm no mind reader either. What I do know is that my DVR won't let you put in a show more than 2 weeks in advance.

I was being sarcastic. The DVR gets data on sows from some source, right? Of course you cannot expect it to take requests for shows it does not know about.

However, almost all DVRs will allow you to record based not on the listing, but on date, time, and channel. If you knew that it was Wednesday three weeks from now on your local CBS affiliate (or whatever) you can tell it to record whatever is there at that time. Then, it is up to you to make sure you got the right program.

 

[coyote6]

I was being sarcastic. The DVR gets data on sows from some source, right? Of course you cannot expect it to take requests for shows it does not know about.

However, almost all DVRs will allow you to record based not on the listing, but on date, time, and channel. If you knew that it was Wednesday three weeks from now on your local CBS affiliate (or whatever) you can tell it to record whatever is there at that time. Then, it is up to you to make sure you got the right program.

I can find out a show's name far in advance of knowing when it will be on; if I could enter, say, "V" and channel 7 (the local ABC station), and have the DVR be smart enough to tag "V" when it shows up on channel 7, and maybe even send me a message to tell me it found it, so I can confirm that it is the show I wanted -- that would be awesome. Text matching isn't a terribly experimental part of computer science.

Local Comcast would almost certainly still suck, though.

(Now if Comcast didn't cripple their DVRs, then they might rise out of the suck and towards the awesome.)

 

[Orius]

A general resource for this stuff is the SFTV Web Page. Simple, yet effective:

The SFTV Page

The current/upcoming fall season:
http://www.sftv.org/sftv/sftvschd.txt

Very useful website. I was wondering when the new season of Legend of the Seeker was going to start, that show is still grinding through reruns. I guess they figured just to delay till November when the sweeps start, and avoid the rush of new shows in September.

But I blame Comcast for that, based solely on the fact that they suck.

Fact? More like a divine truth.

 

[Jack7]

I had to miss Fringe and Flashforward last night because of a squadron exercise.

I never used to watch much TV, and still don't really, but TV to me is undergoing a sort of Renaissance, so sometimes I regret what I can't see.

Anyhow what I think I'll do around Christmas time is buy a new big screen, HD TV with all the works (so the kids can play video games on a theatre style TV - we only have one TV in the house so it might as well be as big as possible with all the doohickeys), get a new satellite receiver with built-in Tivo or whatever the current state of the art device is, and then I'll record all of the shows I wnana see during the week and watch them on the Saturdays I have open. Maybe I'll juts dedicate one Saturday a month to entertaining myself, watching TV shows and movies and what not, and vegetating without any real world to do. That way I won't miss anything and can review whatever interests me instead of having to catch it in rerun, or just seeing part of a thing, etc. and that will leave the whole week free to work without having to think to remember about anything like TV. I hope I won't be working tonight and miss Stargate Universe, but I figure I might. I got another exercise coming up soon, and a show to help ready. So given my casework load and other stuff my whole weekend may be pretty much tied up. I reckon though I can catch it in reruns.

Anyways I guess I'll have some research to do about the bets recording technology available and how it works and so forth. Never much worried or even thought about it before, but that approach would save me a lot of TV trouble, and wouldn't interfere with work. And would give me an excuse to have one Saturday a month where I don't have to do much. 'Cept eat pizza, drink a beer, and relax a little.

Anywho you guys got some kinda advice on the best big screen, digital, HD TVs and whatnot? I really want something that looks the most like a 3-D picture. And what about the best Tivo or DVR, and whatnot? Remember I know next to nothing about this kind of technology, generally speaking. Never had the real need or desire for it before. Guess I shoulda done this years ago, but kept putting it off cause of doing other things.

 

[Umbran]

I can find out a show's name far in advance of knowing when it will be on; if I could enter, say, "V" and channel 7 (the local ABC station), and have the DVR be smart enough to tag "V" when it shows up on channel 7, and maybe even send me a message to tell me it found it, so I can confirm that it is the show I wanted -- that would be awesome.

And also frought with the problem that often the official title of the show does not match what you expect.

For example, my wife likes to watch "Top Chef" on occasion. We have a TiVo, with a season pass for Top Chef that has worked for the past two seasons. Lo and behold, this season the title is slightly different: "Top Chef: Las Vegas", and we missed an episode because of it, and had to set up a new season pass.

 

[coyote6]

And also frought with the problem that often the official title of the show does not match what you expect.

For example, my wife likes to watch "Top Chef" on occasion. We have a TiVo, with a season pass for Top Chef that has worked for the past two seasons. Lo and behold, this season the title is slightly different: "Top Chef: Las Vegas", and we missed an episode because of it, and had to set up a new season pass.

They probably key series recordings/season passes on some hidden identifier rather than the actual name; when a show changes names, it probably gets a new ID tag in the database. I wonder what company creates the listings -- I'd bet TiVo & the cable companies don't do it internally.

But in any case, they ought to be able to do better string matching on show names.

The real horror show is trying to record something off Adult Swim. They start late, end late, completely switch shows in a timeslot, label shows as "new" that are years old . . . and that's before Comcast adds in their layer of SNAFU.

(Seriously, our local Comcast operation isn't very good. You know how cable companies stick their own commercials in slots on shows? Well, Comcast occasionally has timing issues, and runs their commercials over parts of the shows. It used to happen almost every episode of Buffy. I think there was an episode of Alias I had to go watch online, because Comcast played a commercial in the middle of a big reveal of some sort.)

 

[FoxWander]

Of course you can always just skip the network, scheduling and dvr nonsense in favor of simply downloading whatever show you like via bittorrent. Pretty much any show you like is available just a few hours after it's broadcast. And you can get any back episodes you want as well.

When the new season of Fringe started up, I decided to start watching it again (I'm not sure why it didn't click with me last year). To catch up I just downloaded a compilation of the whole 1st season. You just can't beat convenience like that.

Bittorrent could be just what the OP is looking for to avoid all the schedule nightmares. And, so long as you don't use it for downloading movies or music or anything else that isn't broadcast freely to the entire world, you're not really pirating either- if that's a concern of yours.