What Was TiVo Thinking?
 

So I turn on the TV and it just so happens that it's on Starz and "The Fast & The Furious" was playing. Well obviously I want to change the channel as fast as humanly possible, so I put on the Live TV Guide to see what else is on. In the process I notice something very peculiar in the description:

Fast and Furious
Sat 5/3 1:35 pm - 3:30 pm Rated NR

Comedy, Suspense (1939) ** Franchot Tone, Ann Sothern, Ruth Hussey, Lee Bowman. A book dealer and his wife solve murders related to a seaside beauty pageant. (CC, Stereo, SAP)

Does this sort of thing only happen to me?

It's certainly not the first time. A similar incident occured around two years ago...when a "Sesame Street" episode had a description from "Sex & The City".

Just thought I'd share this with everyone since it's a very dull Saturday afternoon, and this is television related afterall. Yeah, I know it should probably be posted over in the the TiVo community, but I got this message:


TiVo Community Forum is down for hardware maintenance and upgrades. We are working hard to have the site back on-line by next week. We are sorry for this interruption and understand you may miss your on-line friends as we do.

Resume what you were doing.

I've found numerous mistakes in the TIVO descriptions - mis-spellings of names, wrong credits, not to mention some major spoilers.

Never had what you describe above, but I'm not really surprised.

Not TiVo's fault, but the fault of who supplies the guide data to TiVo.

I've seen this happen before. One time there was a listing for "Ice" on SHO. It said it was scifi and the Ice Age returns and a group set out to go to the only warm place left in a submarine. It turned out to be some other movie called Ice with Traci Lords. SciFi airs the disaster movie occasionally.

It is still Tivo's fault. Their fault for not hiring a competent data provider.

On the bright side, Tivo is much more accurate than my local news, which usually lists certain cable channel's shows by their eastern time even though it's pacific time here.

tasha

It bugs me sometimes when the show descriptions are cut off.

Not TIVO related, but the Dish Network tv guide is notorious for giving up too much information. A few weeks ago, when Det. John Clark's father killed himself on NYPD Blue (kinda out of the blue, and definently not as part of the main story), the guide basically said "John Clark's father commits suicide."

I'm pretty sure there's a way to read the complete show description. I think I did it once, but I forget how.

I see the arrow down at the cutoff point but when I press down, it takes me to the next program instead of finishing the show description.

Well they can't hire new networks as the networks are the ones that provide the data. Blame the networks.

Press the enter button on the remote, it will give you the full description, as well as a bunch more information about the program.

Hey, that version of Fast and the Furious sounds a lot better than the movie I saw.

Do you mean the select button? I'll try it. Thanks.

TiVo gets their data from Tribune, the same people that run www.zap2it.com .. in case you didn't know that.

The other day I was looking for at a list of shows by Channel (for QVC-don't ask) and I accidentally found the Chris Matthews Hardball special with special guest Bill Maher. I did a "View Upcoming episodes" and I selected it to record one on MSNBC. Two were listed on other channels- one on QVC and another on another network I didn't recognize.

But I thought it was funny that an MSNBC show was listed on QVC.

Well, sometimes, both networks are trying to sell us a load of crap.....

-smile-

Another TiVo oddity: next week CBS is playing 8 Simple Rules.... (which is, of course, an ABC show) rather than JAG and UPN is playing a show I've never heard of instead of Buffy.

I think a few channels got a little messed up.