Whine & Cheese

Express Lane: Issue 48

'Brothers & Sisters' Star Comes Out - Coming out stories are always good, but have to admit I would have been more surprised if Luke Macfarlane (Kevin's BF Scotty) had announced he was straight. (4/16/08)

Does TiVo Predict 'Idol' cast-offs? - If rewinding or fast-forwarding is correlated to the voting, David A is in great shape and Syesha maybe be waving goodbye tonight.  Update:  Wrong!  Michael Johns went home in arguably the first "shocker" elimination of the season. (4/10/08)

Joey Fatone, Mel B. to Co-host TLC Show - The DWTS alums set to head a show that sounds like 'Idol' meets 'The Office.'  (4/7/08)

'Idol' Download Rankings Appear On iTunes - It's the second time the "to remain anonymous" sales rankings have leaked... and once again it is good news for the guys ... David A, Michael, David C, and Jason were the highest pre-orders for Dolly week. (4/4/08)

Mariah Carey surpasses Elvis in No. 1s - Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this one of the signs of the apocalypse? (4/2/08)

"Rent" Extension - Due to high ticket demand, the Broadway hit gets one more season of love as closing night shifts from June 1 to September 7. (3/26/08)

HD TiVo Expansion

Despite not having a whole lot of backload on our TiVo (thank you -- or not -- writers' strike), I did not have a valid or good comeback to Todd's "You're kidding me, right?" expression when I told him one of the things that I wanted to do this past weekend was to expand our HD TiVo's recording capacity via their "approved" My DVR Expander external drive.  But having stuck with me for this long, he has learned that once something gets in my head there is little chance of shaking it loose and that resistance is pretty much futile.

According to their web site, our nearby Best Buy showed it was in stock... good news... but that didn't mean that we (let alone an employee!) would be able to find it!   But after 5-10 minutes of searching... whoop, there it was!  Just an FYI, after previous window shopping... I knew that, at least in our store, it is stocked over by the external/internal hard drives ... not by the TiVos.

It was quite easy to install.  Just had to get the "right" order of plugging the eSATA and electrical cords in and re-powering up the TiVo... plus a little patience (not one of my virtues).  The last step was to "follow the on-screen instructions"... but there were none... I re-started the TiVo again... still nothing... took a little break... but 2 minutes later, I was on the TiVo website and quickly panicked (one of my "virtues") that I didn't get the set-up screen shown.  I headed back to the TiVo... popped the TiVo button... and guess what?  The set-up screen!   Followed the instructions... and it showed all of our new goodness!

Our original HD TiVo gave us 32 HD recording hours ... which now figures we have a 250GB internal hard drive.  The external drive is 500GB... according to the info screen, our new capacity is 98 HD hours... and a snort-inducing 927 hours of standard definition!    Though not sure what's inducing the snort... the 900+ hours or the idea of watching TV in standard definition... yes, we have pretty much morphed into HD snobs.

Back to the original question... why?

Well, HD programming takes up a lot of space!  Even if you are recording a program on an HD channel and its not in what I call "full HD splendor," it seems to take up approximately 5x the space of the same program recorded on a SD channel.  And while, yes I agree... 32 hours seems like more than enough time... free space still got dodgy from time to time.  Right now, I am recording a lot of the Australian Open (thankfully in "full HD splendor" on ESPN2)... and a 2.5 hour block of tennis took up a whopping 20GB... and while the "watch it" turn-around time is quick... it still would have made me worry about older programming (i.e. even though their seasons have been long over, we're still watching October episodes of HBO's Tell Me You Love Me and Showtime's Weeds).

I know, I know.  There are ways around it... "keep until I delete" on stuff like that... but it's certainly nice not to have to worry (yet another one of my "virtues") about it.   While I certainly would have been content with doubling the space, no complaints about the extra space and time.  And if you think I am nuts, I've read plenty of folks hooking up terabyte drives (of course, non-approved and "unsupported"). 

It will also be nice to be able to maintain a collection of HD movies recorded off HBO and Showtime to match whatever mood we happen to be in... movies were usually the first things to go if space was getting low.  Also, our cable company recently informed us that at least a dozen new HD channels are coming on board in March... with many, many more by year's end (Great news!  Though they conveniently did not mention what channels!)... but I'm guessing many of the same programs we currently watch, but taking up much more room.

Ok, I am pretty sure I haven't justified it... but then again, I guess I don't really have to!

Check Those Season Passes!

Look for a lot of changes in the television schedule come the New Year.  NBC and Fox are shaking things up.  It is making my head spin wondering if we have all of our TiVo bases covered... we had one 3-show conflict this fall... so I am hoping we avoid that with these latest changes...  here is the day-by-day situation:

Monday
The fifth season of 24 beings Sunday, January 15th and moves to its usual Monday timeslot (9pm EST/8 pm MST) on the 16th

Prison Break returns on March 13th airing before 24 (8pm EST/7pm MST)

Tuesday
American Idol debuts on Jan. 17th (8pm EST/7pm MST)
Scrubs returns (hurray!) on Jan. 3rd  with back-to-back episodes thru January (9pm EST/8pm EST)

Now this puts Scrubs up against Commander-In-Chief... so no problem, unless the next edition of The Amazing Race also airs in the same time slot (after the Family Edition, I am kind of hoping for a TAR break)... then we may have to .. gasp! ... watch live television!

Wednesday
American Idol Results Show on Jan. 18th (8pm/7pm) and rumored to be moving to a permanent "1 hour" long show... ugh, 58 minutes of Seacrest filler!

Thursday
NBC returns to 4 sitcoms for the first two hours of the night... Will & Grace leads off, followed by new entry Four Kings... then moving from Tuesday night... My Name Is Earl and The Office (now up against CSI)

This makes me happy... thanks to the Commander In Chief/Amazing Race conflict... we had only been able to watch episodes of Office and Earl that NBC has re-broadcast on another night... and I don't watch CSI... so hurray (well at least for me)!

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Now this all goes out the window come February when NBC airs the Winter Olympics from Turin, Italy!

Joey and The Apprentice (Trump, not Martha) will return post-Olympics, with Joey potentially joining Scrubs on Tuesdays.

And who knows what ABC & CBS has up their sleeves... if you watch anything else on NBC or Fox you might want to check out these two Zap2It articles:

'Earl' Heads to Thursdays, 'Scrubs' Back as NBC Shakes Up Schedule
'Idol' Stays Put, Lots More Moving for FOX Midseason

TiVo Musical Chairs

TiVo definitely is a life-altering gadget for die-hard television fans... but lately it seems as if I am having a brain melt trying to figure out how to get everything to "work" between our two TiVos (which btw, we named "Mary" and "Rhoda" ... Mary of course is our "main" TiVo, Rhoda is the back-up).

So here's the latest:

Monday night we have a conflict between Las Vegas and Prison Break.  I will be the first to admit that Vegas is a sucky piece of television... but Josh Duhamel is still worth looking at for an hour and I do enjoy some of the other characters.  So, we ended up recording Vegas on the main, Prison Break on the backup.  However, then we got that "bug" where Fox shows were/are red-flagged on our TiVo... so we could not transfer PB to our main set (and the episode was deleted in one week's time) and, on top of that, the 4th episode of PB failed to record... so we just stopped watching/recording PB. 

But then this weekend, F/X did a marathon of all of this season's PB episodes... so we decided to try again.  We shifted Vegas over to "Rhoda," PB back to "Mary" (to avoid the red-flag issue that only plagues "Rhoda")... and then I found out that first-run episodes of Vegas run on TNT one week after they air on NBC... so while I do have the "Rhoda" pick up the Monday night airing of Vegas, I plan just to have "Mary" record the TNT repeat.  Got it?!

Well, Tuesday is more of an ordeal... we have Amazing Race vs. Commander In Chief vs. My Name Is Earl/The Office.  We decided to go with TAR on "Mary," CiC on "Rhoda"... and just pick up Earl and Office when they re-run.  What has been nice is that ABC has re-aired a couple of episode of CiC on Saturday night (so no need to transfer) and NBC did a mini-Earl marathon recently on a Saturday night (so we got our first look at that series and kinda liked it).

So I ask why can't/don't the major networks regularly re-air their shows on one of the other dozen or so networks that they own?  I'll answer my own question... I know it is all advertising related... the networks don't want you viewing their shows as a second-choice on a basic cable network.  But I would love it, if say Earl and Office aired again (even a week late) on Bravo or CiC was shown on ABC Family.

To add even more chaos... our cable shows shift this coming weekend thanks to the end of Daylight Savings.  While we don't change our clocks here in AZ, our non-major network TV shows do shift!  So, for example, on Sunday nights we have been watching: Rome, West Wing, and Desperate Housewives ... which start airing at 6 pm.  But with Daylight Savings ending, Rome (the East Coast feed) will shift to 7 pm... thus conflicting with West Wing... so TiVo won't record Rome until 10pm...  and there is no way we are staying up that late on a Sunday night!  So we are going to keep our Sunday viewing order intact by intentionally getting a week behind... so the "new" Rome will record at 10pm and we'll watch it before a "new" West Wing the following Sunday... got it?!

While TiVo is pretty smart, it is only a smart as the person that is behind the remote... and sometimes that can get pretty challenging!

Help Name Our TiVo

We have a new member of the family... no, don't worry... it does not have four legs and it DOES actually follow our instructions (well, most of the time!).  We have a new TiVo! 

As you may recall, our "backup" TiVo died last week... we weighed the options... replace the hard drive (which is likely what crashed), get a low-end TiVo replacement (since we just use the back-up for those rare conflicts)... or something else?!

Well, I talked Todd into we opted for something else... not the most economic decision (never the strongest motivator for me!)... we moved our "main" 80-hour TiVo to the bedroom to now act as "the back-up" and got a snazzy new one for our main television.

Screencap please!

Yes, we now have a 140-hour TiVo!  Well, not exactly, we'll never record at "basic quality" (does anyone record on basic??).  It is currently the biggest size available for a retail TiVo... of course, you can get a zillion hours if you want to install your own hard drive(s).  Apologies for the crappy pic... but taking a picture of one's television screen is never an easy proposition.

While we never ran out of space with our 80-hour TiVo, I tended to record a lot of program at "medium quality" in order for that not to happen.  So, our rationalization reason for getting a bigger TiVo was to more consistently record our regular programs (as well as have a handful of premium channel movies that I like to have "on hand") at higher quality and not worry about space.  And this should help with the "we need to get it off TiVo" pressure that we sometimes feel.    

So, back to the title of this post!  We are looking to name our TiVos. 

With the first two we used generic names like "TV Room" and "Bedroom".... but now that "TV Room" is in the bedroom, we I thought it would be fun to give 'em real names that are not location-specific.  And there has to be something better than the uninspired "TiVo3" tag that we gave the new arrival.

Here are some ideas... I thought of maybe naming the TiVos as they do hurricanes... i.e., our first TiVo would begin w/ the letter A, our second (now defunct) would have been B, and our new one is C. 

But it seems to make even more sense (wait a minute, this doesn't make ANY sense?!?!), to name that after famous couples, particularly TV couples....

Edith and Archie
or
Laverne and Shirley

... more current, from our favorite sitcom Scrubs, Turk and Carla
(I am guessing Brenda & Nate isn't such a great choice anymore)

Or should it be something with more of a primary and "second fiddle" angle to it...

Mary and Rhoda
Wilma and Betty (Fred & Barney?)
Lucy and Ethel (Ricky & Fred?)

Or have I just officially gone insane?!   

Don't worry I am just having some fun... well, kinda! ;-)

Dead TiVo?

Well, I think I have to report a death in the family... it appears one of our TiVos appears to have died overnight.  Now, the main reason I am not in a total sweat is that it is our "backup" TiVo... nothing of any importance is/was on it... and hasn't been really put to use since the end of the regular television season.  Now, if it was our primary TiVo I would likely be already camped out in front of Best Buy waiting for the doors to open!

We noticed of late that this TiVo was occasionally freezing up... we would turn on the television and the picture was stuck... but it generally would correct itself when we (or TiVo) flipped the channel.  However, this morning when I was checking out our primary TiVo to see what new goodies it added overnight, I noticed the row for the "bedroom" TiVo was not showing up on the network.  Not a good sign.  I went to investigate and the TV was stuck on a TiVo screen saying "Welcome. Powering up..." but alas it never proceeded beyond that.  I tried powering down the TiVo and seeing if that would kick start it... but nothing beyond that grey screen.

So, my fellow TiVo aficionados... is it dead?!  Don't worry... if you tell me otherwise, I'd be surprised. 

Ironically enough this was our newer TiVo ... our older/primary one is still happily churning on and keeping very busy.

TiVo Auto-Recording Wishlists

I have sung the praise of TiVo over and over again... honestly I can not imagine life without it!   While the Season Pass is one of its most heralded features, another feature that I think is equally, if not more, amazing is the Auto-Recording Wish List (henceforth known by the acronym ARWL).   Having read around some discussion boards, I suspect this feature is highly under-utilized.  But perhaps I am wrong... given my little teaser yesterday... at least a couple of folks use it... do you?

Here is how we use it with our TiVos -- anything in CAPS is the wishlist name:

AMAZING RACE, AMERICAN IDOL, SCRUBS, SIX FEET UNDER, SOPRANOS, "BIG BROTHER"
Sure all these could be set up as Season Passes... but ARWLs will pick up any other show on any channel that is related to the program.  If one of the stars from the show appears on a talk show (Leno, Letterman, Oprah, Regis & Kelly, etc) ... or if there is a story on one of a "news" program, such as Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood, it will pick it up.

For HBO shows this is particularly a must, since it'll record the show at the earliest available opportunity on any of the 6+ HBO channels that we have. 

For AMAZING RACE, it'll pick up the next day's The Early Show that has an interview with the latest eliminated team. 

BIG BROTHER is in quotes so it only picks up that exact phrase -- granted it is a fairly common phrase so occasionally it will pick up a show (i.e. the movie version of 1984) not related to the summer reality show -- but no re-programming a Season Pass when it is turns from BB4 to BB5 to BB6 (same goes for AMAZING RACE).

xxx & TALK SHOWS (where xxx is WEST WING, LOST, LAS VEGAS, SURVIVOR, 24)
These shows have the traditional Season Passes, but these ARWLs pick up just talk show appearances.   Why not just do an overall wishlist like I did above?   

1) This doesn't work well with shows in syndication... unless you want TiVo recording every old episode of West Wing that is airing on Bravo.  Ditto on Will & Grace.

2) Too common of a word... "Lost," "24," "Survivor" and "Las Vegas" would all make TiVo go into overdrive... so need to get a bit more specific with the TALK SHOW tag.  This is 100% full-proof, i.e., I still get some talk shows about cancer and other "survivors" -- but not an overwhelming amount... and easy enough to prune off the To Do list.

SURVIVOR & ACTION & ADVENTURE/REALITY
Set it and forget it.  Similar to BIG BROTHER and AMAZING RACE in avoiding having to deal with slightly different names are new numbers of each new season.  The extra tag prevents the recording on "Survivor" shows not not hosted by Jeff Probst.  Put this in and you don't have to worry about where the heck the show is... Outback, Palau, or Pearl Islands.  It also automatically picks up the finale/reunion part of the show (which sometimes has something else added onto the title... and is not picked up by a traditional Season Pass).

DIAMONDBACKS
Will pick up Arizona Diamonbacks baseball games on any channel... also picks up other special shows regarding our hometown team.

HILLARY CLINTON, BILL CLINTON
Our household's favorite politicians... again will pick up any talk shows (Larry King, Sunday morning news programs, etc.) ... as well as biography-type programs on any channel.

BILL MAHER
Picks up one of our favorite comedians... recording his HBO series Real Time on any of our HBO channels... as well as talk show appearances (recently recorded a Tonight Show appearance)... and a comedy special when it comes around.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN
One of our favorite journalists.... again those talk show appearances, but also his semi-regular special programs on the Discovery Channel.

xxx & SPORTS/TENNIS (where xxx is NASDAQ, AUSTRALIAN, FRENCH, WIMBLEDON, US OPEN)
I have Season Passes for ATP Tennis and WTA Tennis... but when it is a dual-gender event like the Grand Slams it is not tagged either way.  So this picks up all the matches and is particularly helpful when the event is on multiple channels (i.e. a cable channel on weekdays, major network on the weekends).

QUEER
Picks up queer-titled shows (Queer Eye/Queer As Folk) ... and talk show appearances by anyone from those shows... and occasionally a surprise special show like VH-1's Totally Gay.

Do you have any TiVo tips or tricks?  What are your ARWLs?