Asymmetrical Information

I'm trying to remember which science fiction author suggested that "artificial intelligence" should be called "artificial stupidity" instead, just so people don't expect too much. 8-)

"three-thumbs-down". its your new best friend.

It takes awhile to get your tivo to learn what you like, so spend an hour scanning through the listing and telling it what you really, REALLY hate. Once youve got some viewing history established it works pretty well.

that said however, my kids are forbidden to put 'thumbs up' on certain shows, because Tivo will end up taping "spongebob-squarepants" for the 10th time in the same week.

I sold my older 15 hour tivo to my mother in law, who called at me after she had it for a week complaining that it was "always recording some damn thing on the history channel"

if you visit someone with a tivo, its a great practical joke to just thumbs up alot of really stupid shows ( 700 club, yoga and you, the news on the spanish language channel)

ah, technology........

The latest barroom lament - "My Tivo doesn't understand me!"

maybe it feels it's not being used enough and this is a "not so subtle" hint?

My Tivo thinks I like infomercials.

I'm not some kind of freak staying up late eating pints of Haagen-Dazs and watching Suzanne Somers squeeze a thighmaster.

Go Suzanne!

My Tivo thinks I like Spanish news shows. No matter how many times I thumbs down, there's a new Spanish news show to take its place. Yet, it won't tape Sabado Gigante - which I like.

I think your TiVO might be confused as to which cable company you have. Out here we have three competing services and if you don't tell your system which one you're on, the cable guides and VCR Plus gets confused. Your Tivo thinks it's recording Megan's Holy Grail of TV enjoyment on ch. 86, but it really should be recording ch.34.

And I thought I was being sniffy about Amazon.com's book recommendations - you people actually PAID for a device that doesn't understand?

Those TV-listing channels are among the best things on TV! Get into it! I don't think they have this in Manhattan but another channel I recommend is the one showing live feed from various highways in your area. Talk about Reality! You can taste it. Maybe your TiVo knows what's good for you.

I had to erase all the thumb settings on my Tivo and start it over with the basics, because it got into this pathological mode where all it was recording were foreign language newscasts. It was like ODub said above, only with Chinese, Korean, Tagalog, and Japanese thrown into the mix along with Spanish. I'd thumb a Korean newscast, and it would replace it with a Chinese one, etc.

After about a week of this, I put it out of its misery and I've been very careful about thumbing since then. Tivo is pretty dumb, so when you thumb something you simply alter the score of the program's subject keywords and actors. It's apparently not smart enough to understand that "English" is one category, and "all other languages" should be another.

Tivo's still basically a proof-of-concept, and someday a bright entrepreneur will come along and build something that lives up to its promise.

Incidentally, here's why your Tivo is screwing with you, Jane: HELP! Tivo has screwed up Time Warner Cable NYC listings! There's some way you can fix it, apparently.

See, you're not boring after all.

Comments are Closed.