When setting up a manual recording, or picking a programme from the schedules,
you could never guarantee that something would start on time. Some channels
are reliable, but both BBC and ITV are far from that and will require you to
add a few minutes before the recording or to add some afterwards.
The first thing you'll notice in the "recording options" sub-menu is that the
'record quality' has been moved here, so you can pick from Best, High, Medium
or Basic, as usual.
Most programmes will be kept for at least two days on the hard drive, pending
anything else pre-set so if they're not lasting that long then you're recording
too much. However, for anything important, "Keep at least" will keep a programme
for either 'until space needed' (the default), 1-7 days, or 'until I delete'.
Options have also been included now to adjust the start and end of the
recording time, in addition to what has been already set up. Manually recording
a programme, you used to only be able to set up a programme in five-minute
blocks, which isn't much good when you have two programmes close to each other
in which one is bound to slightly over-run and the next will start slightly
too late. Similarly, for some consecutive shows, one will slightly under-run
while the next starts early.
The new update allows you to start a programme 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 10 minutes early,
or to end it 1, 2, 5, 15, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 1½ hours or 3 hours later.
This is definitely welcome, but it's difficult to understand why I can't just
specify exact times by entering them on the remote keypad now that the TiVo can
think in individual minutes. For an example described above that works, E.R.
always over-runs on E4 to just past 10.30pm on a Thursday night, while ITV's
Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned always starts slightly late, even though
it's meant to begin at 10.30pm. I worked out that 10.32pm is a safe programme
junction to swap over and I can set this up.
However, for early finishers, things aren't so lucky. On a Tuesday evening,
Hollyoaks will end at approximately 6.58pm and, on BBC1, Watchdog
starts around the same time, but if I was to record the former manually from
6.30 to 6.55 I could only extend the finishing time to 6.56, 6.57 or 7.00
given the current software. 6.57pm is the closest match but no good for my
needs as it won't have finished by then.
The overtime scheduler option also allows you to alter recording times for
programmes already in the 'To Do List'.
