Tivo Help, Please

[barking_iguana]

I basicly never use my Tivo for what it's for. But it is the front end for my TV (which I also rarely use, but I'm trying to watch some baseball games today). Why does Tivo keep wanting to switch to a religious channel to start recording? If I'm not in front of the TV at just the right time to say no, the channel changes.

I think I also remember it making suggestions about what I should watch when I tried to make a prefernce list, and it kept putting religious programs on that, too. I've never voluntarily turned to any religious channel. Is this a known problem? Has Tivo taken money from Pat Roebrtson or somebody to spam me like this?

In the most annoying case, it turned away from the end of the phillies game, and the stupid Guide interface wouldn't let me figure out the channel number, so I never got back to the game in time.

Comments

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

The Tivo "learns" by recording programs and seeing what you think of them. Go through the stuff it has recorded and give all of the religious programs a triple "thumbs down." Then go to "Pick programs to record" and choose "sports" and then "baseball" to choose which baseball games you want it to record. If you've given it something to record, it won't change the channel to record something else.

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

Don't use triple thumbs down, that can really screw things up if you ever actually want to use Suggestions. You're not rating just the program - but any actors, director, and category. And one thumb down is enough to keep it from every recording something as a Suggestion. If you use three down you can 'poison' a large pool of content, even things you'd never think were related just because it happened that someone involved with the show you didn't like is on other things.

And this channel changing does sound like it is due to TiVo Suggestions. There is an activity timer - if you do anything with the remote it resets, and it goes 30 minutes. So if you don't touch the remote for over 30 minutes, then the unit believes you're no longer watching and it is free to change the channel to record a Suggestion. Either use the remote more than every 30 minutes or turn off TiVo Suggestions.

I run tivolovers and TiVoLovers.com.

Also, if you hit 'Enter' on the remote (Enter, not Select) that should also act as a 'Last' button and toggle back to the last channel the TiVo was on.

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

Given the programs I suspect barking_iguana's TiVo is suggesting and what I know of Iguana himself, I suspect that 'poisoning' that particular pool of content is exactly what he's after.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

Well, s/he could be right that some actor who's interviewed on a Chritian show might be in a movie I'd some day want to see. for now, I'll stick to two thumbs down. If that doesn't solve the problem, I'll go to three.

I probably accidentally thumbed up something in the past when I didn't realize what I was doing. If I can access my history and undo that, that would a better solution.

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

I suspect that any such movie would also contain actors and subjects that you've given a thumbs-up or two, and would therefore make it into your TiVo's Suggestions list even if you 'poisoned the pool' by giving Pat Robertson and his ilk the triple thumbs-down. Even if it didn't you could simply make wishlists for your favorite actors, instead of relying on TiVo Suggestions.