Once again this week, Michele noticed that the Sopranos had not been recorded to Tivo on Sunday night. WTF? This happened two weeks ago as well and was a pain to get a copy.
We’ve been noticing that several shows that we have on Season Passes for are missing shows that should have been recorded. I was a bit baffled as to the problem and started checking the To Do List to ensure that everything was scheduled correctly.
This morning Michele and I realized what the trouble was. It’s the kids.
We’ve known for a while that the girls can drive the Tivo remote like pros. What we’ve figured out is that the girls can be watching TV and the “Tivo wants to change the channel to record * ” dialog box comes on screen. Since we have season passes to a variety of shows it’s usually OK if an episode of Good Eats or The Saddle Club is missed. The trouble is that the girls are willing to cancel and kill any show that tries to get recorded when they are watching TV.
The girls also know how to record a show they are watching and are will to tell Tivo not to record the previously scheduled show. Damn smart kids…
I’m not sure how to deal with this situation, but I have named it.
Passkilling is when someone cancels a Tivo request to change channels and record a Season Pass show.
A Passkiller is someone who cancels an in-progress Season Pass recording or cancels a channel change request.
Can anyone else share passkilling stories? What essential TV have you missed due to passkillers?
15 thoughts on “Passkilling”
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Passkilling is a good name for what amounts to a blood sport in my household. With my daughter and her college friend both here, it is hopless to see a Modern Marvels recorded. I’m second class to ‘what not to wear’, QEFSG and SATC.
I’ll also add this new term that you will become used to as your kids get older: preference-jacking. That’s when what you want TiVo to suggest and record is replaced by something you don’t like to watch (say for instance, the Golden Girls).
PS – I found your site very helpful when I started extracting from my TiVo.
mg
It’s easy to avoid pass-killing for cable shows.
Make a habit of setting the timer for the wee hours of the morning, or in the day parts when no one is home.
If you set passes for prime time airing, it’s more likely to get stomped on. You’re going to watch it days later anyway, why should you care about getting the first airing?
We haven’t really had this problem. We haven’t watched live tv in a long time. When our son wants to watch one of his shows, he just watches ones of the recorded ones.
Tivo needs some kind of “super” season pass that you could protect with a password or PIN code. Then nobody could override the recording. Tivo engineers, get to work on that right away!
My mother was visiting and watching TV at my home while I was at work. She called me up to tell me that she was watching Matlock (or Murder She Wrote or some other benign program) and the TV changed channels by itself to put on The Osbournes. My poor mother.
Worse is when people (my roommate in this case) who changes the channel like a minute or two into the recording, so I come home and it LOOKS like the show recorded but once I decide to watch it you see that only like a minute of it recorded. I’ve been watching the first 2 minutes of Good Eats every other day now because of that…
And then it’s when friends visits and add shows onto your season pass, bumps them up, and a few days later all I have is realworld and Jackass on my Tivo.
pass-sneaking jackasses!
Here’s a new term: How about “passjackers”, people who hijack your TiVo? I had a “friend” who was feeding my cat while I was on vacation. He knows how much I hate Julia Roberts, and thanks to his Thumbs Upping my TiVo started recording every crappy thing she ever made. These are the same people who embarrass you by thumbing up adult shows on Cinemax.
This is a good topic…maybe you can cover a related one as well. Baby-fu? I don’t know what to call it, but it is when I am watching something and our 10-month old jacks the remote and causes mass hysteria. Did she turn off the TV? Change channels? Cancel the recording? Delete the episode? Up until now she hasn’t actually destroyed anything, but any Tivo user knows that in a couple quick clicks you can go from watching Jack Bauer draw his gun to “Delete now?” [YES] AHHHH
dude,
get the dual dish and quit messin around.
DUAL? Dude, on Wednesdays I’d need a quad dish to get everything I want.
TIVO comes from the devil. It takes hold of our minds and makes us watch too much TV.
I have the same problem as Mister P. But, because of his kind heart, I won’t miss any of the Wednesday Season Finales.
the reasons to keep a VCR around…I have two VCR’s on the same tv, if I need to tape two different shows and still watch a third I can and not go crazy!
You people watch too much TV.
My daughter passkills all the time. It’s because she’ll often be the first to turn on the TV in the morning, and will catch (to our chagrin) live television before hitting the TiVo button.
Why TiVo hasn’t made it possible to simply disable the standard “default to live TV” setting I have no idea. (The ability to “lock out” access would be even better.) I don’t want it cut off completely, but why can’t the TiVo menu or the Standby setting be other ways to “park” your device?
Hello,
Hello people
Got cable? TImewarner? Get the TIMEWARNER DVR, RECORD “2” shows at once and watch tv at the same time.