Wish List of DVR Features - Next SW Upgrade

[ZBoomer]

A few I'd love to see (in addition to all the wonderful ones already mentioned):

The option to have the receiver turn OFF the output when the unit is turned off. My TV, and most have the capablity to turn off automatically if they don't receive a signal for a certain period of time, but my VIP's output that "Screen Saver" screen, even when turned off, so the TV never turns off in these cases. (Fall asleep while watching, kids leave TV on, blah blah.)

Some kind of intelligence to automatically record a sports program till the end, no more, no less. I know this sounds impossible, but my first DVR years ago on DirecTV (Microsoft Ultimate TV I think it was called) did it. If a football program ran long, somehow the machine kept recording, and then cut off right when it was over. This tells me that there is some kind of signal being sent to signify the program is over, but no DVR's I've had since then (Tivo, Dish, etc.) can do this. Dish adds 60 minutes to a "sports" program, but this is weak compared to how well my Ultimate TV handled this. I still miss many things about that old DVR.

Single button CC.

 

[eddieras]

A few I'd love to see (in addition to all the wonderful ones already mentioned):

The option to have the receiver turn OFF the output when the unit is turned off. My TV, and most have the capablity to turn off automatically if they don't receive a signal for a certain period of time, but my VIP's output that "Screen Saver" screen, even when turned off, so the TV never turns off in these cases. (Fall asleep while watching, kids leave TV on, blah blah.)

Some kind of intelligence to automatically record a sports program till the end, no more, no less. I know this sounds impossible, but my first DVR years ago on DirecTV (Microsoft Ultimate TV I think it was called) did it. If a football program ran long, somehow the machine kept recording, and then cut off right when it was over. This tells me that there is some kind of signal being sent to signify the program is over, but no DVR's I've had since then (Tivo, Dish, etc.) can do this. Dish adds 60 minutes to a "sports" program, but this is weak compared to how well my Ultimate TV handled this. I still miss many things about that old DVR.

Single button CC.

i've been calling for this for years too! imagine the marketing they could do - "never miss the end of your game"! i had directv as well and while i don't remember it extending the recording i can confirm it cut the recording off as soon as the game was over. i put this up on a board years ago and someone said they'd be able to do it because of something to do with closed captioning programming - how the CC changes when the show itself changes?? not sure- but would love it as well !

 

[eacalhoun]

I agree with the ideas in the very first post, especially the ability to "on the fly" select whether TV1 or TV2 should record an event, instead of having to pre-arrange this in the setup. If there's a conflict, then you'd get a screen giving you the option to select the other tuner, otherwise resolve the conflict, or just cancel the action and abort the new event.

Here's a another feature I would like to see --

Add additional recurring record options. In addition to DAILY, WEEKLY, MON-FRI, etc I would like to see WEEKENDS (Sat & Sun to record shows airing at the same time on weekends only), and TUE-SAT. The "TUE-SAT" option would create recordings similar to MON-FRI for those weeknight primetime programs that repeat after Midnight.

Eric

 

[nyvram]

Back to the adult thing...

Another thing that would be helpful is doing something about catching the last 3 minutes of an adult show prior to something you recorded for the kids.

I did a search for a movie on one of my cinemax channels and recorded it without knowing what the 'lead in..' was. Luckily I happened to start the DVR before the kids were in the room and it was softcore porn from one of those Women From Venus shows that Cinemax sprinkles all throughout the channel guide.

This is HORRIBLE. Now I have to go individually check every movie I've recorded ahead of time to look for an inappropriate lead-in. Either that or change the default record settings. Neither of which is a very nice solution.

FWIW, I do have a password set and that does kick-in, but do I have to scoot my kids out of the room every time I go to play a movie off the DVR that might have something they shouldn't be seeing before it plays?

I guess when my "free year of cinemax" runs out this won't be much of an issue..but right now its HUGE because I'm recording TONS of stuff showing on the free HBO, Starz & Cinemax channels right now.

Regarding the other post..its more difficult to 'black out' adult shows when cinemax sprinkles them throughout their channel guides along with other legit movies.

 

[ZBoomer]

Why do you have a 3 minute lead in? I find VERY few shows that need any lead-in whatsoever. I have that set to zero.

Some need a minute or two extension on the end, but I don't find myself ever needing lead-in.

 

[BobaBird]

EHD Navigation

- Make this similar to that for the internal drive, keep the file size but add running time.
- Allow changing the sort method while viewing the EHD (currently have to go back to the internal drive).
- When sorted by title, allow using the remote's keypad to jump to a beginning letter, with successive presses going to the next letter on that key.
- Add a Delete option when EHD playback is finished.

 

[neoabacus]

handy feature

one feature of the dvr i really miss from my old time warner dvr is

record a show only on a specific channel at a specific time

this is handy when a chanel, (scifi, usa, hdnet) plays a show in prime time them repeats it 2 hours later.

I used to set it to record the later show to avoid missing recording other shows

(i used to record blade the series at midnight every week to avoid recording 2 other shows at the 10 timeframe)

and i ditto the folders on the EHD what a nightmare the current method is...
also would like the play a set of shows at a time.

 

[HDRoberts]

Hey, how about the ability to select multiple shows for deletion. Cleaning out the DVR can be a pain, especially when I realize I won't find the time to watch those 32 episodes of Seinfield.

 

[eddieras]

Hey, how about the ability to select multiple shows for deletion. Cleaning out the DVR can be a pain, especially when I realize I won't find the time to watch those 32 episodes of Seinfield.

can't you just select edit and then select all? i'm not in front of my tv and i'm too lazy to check...

also why would you want to delete Seinfeld!!?? :up

 

[HDRoberts]

can't you just select edit and then select all? i'm not in front of my tv and i'm too lazy to check...

I don't want to select all, but most. I still want to check out some episodes.

 

[nyvram]

Why do you have a 3 minute lead in? I find VERY few shows that need any lead-in whatsoever. I have that set to zero.

Some need a minute or two extension on the end, but I don't find myself ever needing lead-in.

I dunno. That's the default so I figured they had a good reason for setting it that way.

 

[KKlare]

I agree with the ability to truncate shows EHD or internal. It would be more difficult to remove before a position especially with MPEG-4 as it must be on a full frame, I think. More complicated editing is probably beyond the DVR--see marks idea later.

Need to remove recording holes from the whole disk as the system seems to be limited on the number of segments. I have had 15 GB available and cannot transfer 6 GB, more or less on 699 GB disk. On computers it is called "defragging." It should be on demand or as background task only.

How about allowing using the numbers 1-9 to position in all lists? You can do this in the internal recordings list. Please add EHD-recordings and search-item (*) lists. This works both for alphabetic and date sorted. Position is (#-1)/8*items. Another possibility is to enter the item number in the list--a little more complicated and more presses but more versatile.

Note on turning off the "screen saver", some TVs will no longer recognize that input or will turn on--see the discussion of the Westinghouse problem.

How about an automatic commercial skip (on playback) as one DVD recorder I have/had does. It marks segments somehow and usually works. The marking of segments could also be used to edit a recording for copy to DVD or EHD (yeah). Worse comes to worse you can still play the whole show as usual--sorry, it does not make the recording smaller.

I've only used the list edit about once, perhaps because it is not on the initial menus--it shows up later.

-Ken

 

[eddieras]

I don't want to select all, but most. I still want to check out some episodes.

i just checked my 722 - unless i'm not understanding your question - you can certainly do this - select edit then you can individually select shows or select all - and then delete -

 

[nyvram]

How about an automatic commercial skip (on playback) as one DVD recorder I have/had does. It marks segments somehow and usually works.

-Ken

Did you not pay attention when ReplayTV was almost sued out of existence due to this feature? This is why the 5040 model > 5400 (or whatever the new one was that removed this feature)

 

[Edgar_in_Indy]

My first DVR was a DirecTV Tivo, I then went to a Dish SD DVR, and then a cable HD DVR. I now have a Dish 622. My experience has been that each of the DVR's have their strong and weak points. Overall I'm satisfied with the 622, but here's a list of improvements/modifications I would love to see (in no particular order):

• One touch Closed Captioning (or at least don't bury it so deep in sub-menus)
• Recording back-to-back overlapping shows that extend (such as back-to-back NFL games on the same channel) should not take two tuners.
• Option to opt out of On-demand movies (to reclaim the drive space)
• Background buffering (like on my old cable DVR)
• One-touch recording (like on my cable DVR)
• Change recording so that it does not default to series recording. (It seems like my in-laws and parents are always accidentally creating a series recording when they want to record a single show).
• Option to choose which channel lists cycle when you press "guide" button, so you don't have to cycle through so many lists (All Chan, All Sub, All HD etc).
• Longer names for favorites lists
• Option to adjust for overscan (at least for the guide screen so the bottom listing doesn't get cut off).
• When recording a show in progress, automatically start recording from beginning, or as close to beginning as possible (or at least offer the option to start recording from current spot, from beginning, or from as far back as possible).
• Get rid of the "part of recording lost due to signal loss" message that must be cleared when OTA has bad signal. (It adds insult to injury when you're trying to watch a show that has some drops, and you have to keep clearing the message).
• Ability to skip to segments (30 min blocks) when fast forwarding (takes a long time to fast-forward on very long recordings, such as Olympics 6 - 8 hrs blocks...My Tivo had this ability)
• Screen saver when paused for long period of time (for those of us who still have CRT projection TV's...I think my cable DVR had a screen saver).
• When channel is available on two satellites, automatically default to best signal
• Ability to delete a show while watching it (it makes cleaning house even more of a chore if you want to check something before deleting it).
• Extended pause time (at least an hour, but the more the better)
• It would be nice to be able to customize the guide display, or to have different "themes" or "skins" to choose from.

That's off the top of my head, but I'm sure I'll think of more. Some of these things are a pipe-dream (such as opting out of On-demand), but I think most of them could easily be added.

 

[Stargazer]

That is one of the Replay advantages... if you have 100 hours left, you have a 100 hour buffer...

I wish the Dish Network DVR's were this way. A few steps above this could be to set your buffer on the DVR to whatever you want so that a certain amount of space is dedicated to that or have it tell you how much space is left for buffering while you are pausing it and it letting you to use the leftover space for the buffer.

 

[Stargazer]

Mediashare like the Directv boxes have... I can access my Replay mpegs(from HD Sources) on my pc's with my Directv dvr...

Dish Network's solution is the slingbox and they will probably build that into a future HD DVR similar to the 722. I wish that they would share the media across receiver throughout the house though and on the PC. I wish it had wireless built in which would allow transmission of a wireless signal to a laptop or adapter or another receiver in the house.

 

[Stargazer]

I would like to see these features added:

- > Lock Channels in a certain range - example: from 495-550
(this prevents you from having to select each individual channel in that range in which could take a bit of time)

- > Screen Saver with different types of clocks for an option - digital, analog, both, with date
(this would give us a functional screen saver)

- > View recordings from one receiver on another through phoneline and/or ethernet wire

- > View recordings wirelessly to another receiver or laptop or desktop

- > After viewing a pre-recorded show take me back to the next selection instead of all the way at the top of the DVR Events so that I do not have to scroll all the way down and find the shows that I am watching in order of episode again.

- > Record a show to multiple DVR's at the same time
(this could use a media share function to send it to the other DVR to record as well)

- > Have content on external hard drive shared with all DVR's in the house
(this would go hand in hand with the media share functionality)

- > View Sling Media on any satellite receiver
(this would give some functionality like a media share since you could view media from another source on any of the receivers if this was possible)

- > Extend Pause time to as long as I want it, or at least to two hours.

 

[sm5574]

A very simple change, one which TiVo has:

Press play to show the timeline.

As far as I can tell, the only way to see how much time is left on a recording is to press pause. WTF?

This should work for live broadcasts, too.

 

[Primus]

A very simple change, one which TiVo has:

Press play to show the timeline.

As far as I can tell, the only way to see how much time is left on a recording is to press pause. WTF?

This should work for live broadcasts, too.

This!! There must be a way to do it now, I just can't figure it out.