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TiVo Suggestions

Posted by Agent Squirrel on February 18, 2009

Last week my TiVo died on me!

I went out and bought a new TiVo HD and had it up and running by that same evening. I was lucky because I had downloaded most of my programs to my computer. It was still a painful experience, as I’m sure any TiVo addict like myself knows.

What really surprised me was the TiVo Auto Record Suggestions feature. I have had that feature turned off on all my TiVo’s for the past couple of years because my TiVo was usually too full to record anything but what I told it to record. I remember using it a little bit back when I got my first TiVo but I turned it off pretty soon after hooking it up (maybe two weeks at the most) so I never really got into using it. This feature is a little different from the TiVo Suggestions that you can view from the Find Programs menu. That just shows you the different TiVo suggestions that it thinks you might like to watch. By default, TiVo will record programs for you based on what you watch, give a thumbs up or down to, and what you record. When I tell friends, co-workers, and anybody who will listen, how great TiVo is, I always mention this feature. Yet I haven’t really used it myself.

Well, when I set up the new TiVo last week, I forgot to turn this feature off. It wasn’t until the next morning that I saw it had recorded some things for me. I figured it couldn’t really pick anything that good since it only had about half a day’s worth of my watching TV to guess what I might like. Ah, to say I was surprised at what it picked would be an understatement. It recorded the following:

Charlie Rose
The Today Show
NOW on PBS
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Pardon the Interruption

Okay, this was based on my watching NFL Network because Brett Favre retired (yes again – but I still love him), The Rachel Maddow Show, Countdown with Keith Olbermann and having set the TiVo to record Frontline on PBS for later in the week. I can understand everything except The Today Show – which I usually watch.

Well, it got even worse the next day. It somehow figured out that I like Cops because it recorded just about every copycat program of Cops. I had watched about 15 minutes of one episode and gave it two thumbs up.

Now a week’s gone by. There’s only been about three or four things that TiVo recorded for me that I didn’t want – and one of them was becuase I had already seen it. It leaves me thinking that either TiVo is super smart, or most of us have very predictable viewing habbits. Sort of like how I buy a book from Amazon.com and the suggestions are actually books I’m interested in.

The point is that the TiVo Suggestions feature is great. Even if it makes me feel unoriginal