ABC messing with DVR times?

[JEFFinINDY]

Okay, whose fault is this.

Picture it. Boston Legal. Great show, also on ABC. We record it, amongst others, to watch whenever. Last week ABC decided we needed to know more about the devasting fires out west. Never mind that at any given time you could tune to any of the news channels and learn all you ever wanted to know. They pre-empted Boston Legal.

The next week, Boston Legal didn't record because the DVR and/or the guide info apparently listed the program as not new and since we have the DVR set to record only new episodes, not repeats, we missed it.

Sometimes you can't win for losing!!!

This happened to my friend who has a TiVO series 2. My 622 DVR picked up the "repeat" Boston Legal just fine.

 

[Jim5506]

My TiVo Series 2 for some reason Friday night had Stargate Atlantis starting 3 minutes late and ending three minutes late. Tribune strikes again.

 

[articos]

My TiVo Series 2 for some reason Friday night had Stargate Atlantis starting 3 minutes late and ending three minutes late. Tribune strikes again.

Tribune's data had Flash Gordon running 5 mins longer than its actual running time. They've messed up that listing several times...due to that, Atlantis and everything after was listed in the guide data as starting at XX:05 for the rest of the evening. It's listed correctly on SciFi's guide page, so somewhere, Tribune didn't get the message. To be safe, pad SciFi by 5 minutes now, just in case.

 

[aperry]

And as I pointed out previously, Tribune's data does include the majority of these 1 and 2 minute overrun/start early situations.

Dish ignores most of these and indicates the show starting/ending on the hour.

Take for example Monday night. Check tvlistings.com, which is Tribune Media's online listings service. Chuck starts at 8:00pm EST, Heroes starts at 9:00pm EST, and Journeyman starts at 10:01pm EST. The Dish guide shows Journeyman starting 1 minute earlier than that.

This "rounding" they do needs to stop.

 

[DishSubLA]

This is a HUGE problem with the way that Dish handles the guide data they receive. For example, tonight, Women's Murder Club runs from 9pm Eastern to 10:02pm Eastern. 20/20 runs from 10:02 to 11:00.

The guide data that Dish gets IS CORRECT. They CHOOSE to ignore the fact that the times are off by a minute or two or more and just show it ending on the hour.

This is my biggest complaint about Dish and their DVR.

They NEED to fix this!!! I'm tired of missing the very beginning, or worse, the very end of a show because Dish does not provide me good guide information.

Most people will think, well, just extend the timer. I have, but if you have a show starting at 8pm on one channel, then at 9 on another channel, the system can use the same tuner to record both shows, meaning I can miss part of one of the shows.

As often as the networks change start/end times of shows, Dish needs to address this. Frankly, I'm surprised they haven't already.

It is the fault of the broadcaster/network. ABC and NBC will start or end their shows late, but the time late or short VARIES, and they will do it to a few shows for about 8 weeks or so, then all of a sudden that show ends and starts right on time, but they now mess with different shows playing the same early/late start/end. I won't go into detail about some of the "cable" channels that reliably start/end their shows unpredictably late or early.

This is not to mess with people who have DVR's (as so many of us DVR users feel the pain because we may miss part of a show), they play these games to mess with people who are watching the channel in a linear format: those watching live and not using a DVR to timeshift. The method was used extensively by Ted Turner and his old TBS. The difference is that Ted openly schedualed and publish his HARD time start and end of 5 minutes after the hour. Today's practitioners of the "ha ha. Made you stay over a few minutes, now that show you wanted to see on the other network has already started, so why don't you stay with us and watch our crap?" show no mercy with viewers. Part of the strategy is instant segues between shows that start/end early so you don't dare turn that dial. YES, my dear and fellow DVR owners, there are still far too many who must "turn that dial" or miss the show since they don't have a DVR. We DVR folks have such a different experience than those who still live in the "linear" universe.

Remember, the vast majority of households still do not have DVR's. All the nets are still battling over the linear watchers. The sad part is this terrible tactic of early/late start/end can often work as intended on those poor linear creatures, as it did for ol' Ted.

 

[KKlare]

I think one reason that ABC runs Housewives early and late, thus sticking into B&S is that ad time for it must be worth more than the other shows. The same for Heroes running into Journeyman. This allows them an ad or two more in the "prime" show.
-Ken

 

[FitzAusTex]

All the above is annoying, and i need to test the ending 5 mins late instead of 2 or 3 mins late solution.. but something else that annoys me is that if i set up back to back recordings on the same channel, i still seem to miss a few seconds to a minute in between the two recordings (not exactly sure how much is not recorded).

I want E* to fix that so that if i do back to back on the same channel, that there is no gap. the 2nd recording shouldnt miss more than 1 second. surely they could provide continuous recording coverage across the 2 recordings.

(i.e. i'd like to hear the last word out of someone's mouth captured on the first recording, and the next word out of their mouth on the 2nd recording.)


another thing annoying about the guide is the 'jumping' the guide does when the next half hour has arrived (i.e. it is 7:59pm and you're looking at shows that start at 7:30pm. at 8pm the guide jumps/advances to 8pm shows...this is fine, but the same thing happens when 8pm arrives and i'm looking at shows in the (i.e) 10pm range. 10pm guide info jumps/advances to 10:30pm or later. i wish they'd fix that, since there is no need for it to do this.

 

[abricko]

Known issue even from back in the Tivo days... Networks figured out if they mess with their start and end times it'd throw off DVR users.

 

[AdamGott]

I wonder if the networks have done any research into how people actually use their DVRs. It just ticks people off if they can't watch the entire show when they do stuff like this, and they STILL don't watch the commercials. The most valuable spot in a commercial block is now the last one, right where they usually put station promos, because that is the only one that most people watch as they skip through the rest.

I have always figured that THIS is why they do the shows this way - they know that you are watching on DVR's and they are trying to either get you to quit using your DVR or to record two hours when you only want one. Who knows?

 

[aperry]

If Dish would just use the data that Tribune is providing, as they provide it, many of these problems would go away.

At least for the networks, Tribune does indicate the program starting at the correct time (like Journeyman starting at 10:01pm EST tonight). Dish takes that and changes it to 10:00pm, figuring, I don't know, that's close enough???????

 

[Andyman33]

I used to have Charter cable and they always had correct guide data and the DVR wouldn't go haywire. It would record until 9:03 or whatever then switch to the next program. Now on dish it seems everything ends on the hour...personally I think its just dish being lazy...but that's just me

 

[Fitzie]

The manual time setting is handy when you know what's happening. If you're just guessing, nothing works as well as it should.

One DVR recording that bothered me was recording "Dexter," which is shown in the Showtime guide as being 55 minutes long, thus ending at 9:55. For some reason the DVR (722) only recorded the first 50 minutes of the show. I had to ask someone else what happened in the last 5 minutes. (My method of recording was the usual, just click on "Dexter," set it to record and not worry about the length. I thought it might run 5 minutes over, but not 5 minutes under. Weird.)

Fitzie

 

[bacchus101]

My general rule of thumb is trust my DVR timers. If a network purposefully messes with the ending time of a show just to mess up my recording, I will download said show from the internet from then on, commercial free.

Call it a micro rebellion....


The reality is they are doing it less to mess up DVRs and more to push hit shows into the next ratings hour to boost ad rates for inferior shows. No matter, it is at cost to us, the viewers who time shift and we shall fight back one torrent at a time.

 

[drummerguy]

Okay, whose fault is this.

Picture it. Boston Legal. Great show, also on ABC. We record it, amongst others, to watch whenever. Last week ABC decided we needed to know more about the devasting fires out west. Never mind that at any given time you could tune to any of the news channels and learn all you ever wanted to know. They pre-empted Boston Legal.

The next week, Boston Legal didn't record because the DVR and/or the guide info apparently listed the program as not new and since we have the DVR set to record only new episodes, not repeats, we missed it.

Sometimes you can't win for losing!!!

This has been a problem for years. I never use the "New Episodes" option because of this. I use "Weekly" then just delete if the ep is a rerun.