Later today, TiVo subscribers will gain the ability to re-order, transfer, or delete their Season Passes online at www.tivo.com/spm. Which is quite powerful when combined with the pre-existing web scheduling capabilities and To Do List functionality. This may seem like a minor feature, and perhaps it is in the grander scheme, but I can tell you it’s infinitely more efficient and practical to handle these tasks via computer than remote.
In addition to effectively segregating his and hers DVRs, as we have above, the new online Season Pass manager is also good for quickly cleaning up shows you’re no longer interested in (or the networks have removed for you). And it should even allow you to migrate all your Season Passes to a new TiVo – assuming they’re simultaneously active for a time.
Deleting and copying Season Passes is pretty straight forward. Check the shows, click the button. Reprioritization is done via some slick AJAXy drag and drop functionality. While I’ve had access to the feature for a few days, I haven’t actually been home to track how quickly changes are propagated from the cloud down to our actual TiVo hardware. However, I’m told it should happen in under 15 minutes. And, in some cases, Season Pass modifications may even appear near instantaneously.
To address some concerns that have cropped up in the forums… No, this is not solely limited to Premiere hardware. And, yes, it’s not quite the whole home (automated) cooperative scheduling many of us have been pining for. But it’s a solid start. (Plus, in my case, cooperative schedule may not help much – we attempt to record “must have” shows on both TiVo units as our Cisco tuning adapters regularly flake out.)
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Dave, thanks. I am a TIVO person again thanks to your promotion of the $20/month deal. Nevermind that I had to see it through your web site rather than Tivo’s.
And wow. What a hot stinking mess!
But it’s good to see these small improvements.
Now on the tivo iphone streaming app….
I’m excited to try this out. The Season Pass manager is so painful to use on the TiVo. I only have about 50 shows and the thing is so dog slow. Any little change causes the “Wait” popup.
Wait. I’m confused. How is this going to help TiVo’s REAL customers… advertisers ?
Could this be an honest-to-goodness end-user feature?
Wow it’s about time.
Now only if DirecTV would follow suit. To Do list management / Season Pass/Priority management is a must!
@ Rob only 50 shows, you should see how slow it is with 120 shows in the season pass manager. I would love to see this for my Directivos.
Wow, if I can transfer season passes… that makes me want to buy a Premier. The biggest pain with a new tivo was always moving all the season passes.
So does the Premier software actually work well enough now that I should think about buying it?
Derek, Ha!
Dan, the HDUI is still too slow and incomplete. But it’s mostly stable and does look pretty. If it’s time to get a new TiVo, I’d definitely go with a Premiere over a deal on a THV or S3. If you have a THD or S3, there may not be enough reason to upgrade now unless you can get a good deal (like some of the one Electronics Expo has run – ~$150).
“If you have a THD or S3, there may not be enough reason to upgrade now unless you can get a good deal (like some of the one Electronics Expo has run – ~$150).”
I’d happily pay the full retail price on a Premiere to replace my THD if TiVo would go ahead and make it easy for the 3rd party community to create free tools to swap hard drives.
(I’d run the classic UI, but I could make excellent use of the better performance and larger capacity of the Premiere. Not to mention that forward compatibility has value.)
I don’t see why it’s in TiVo’s interest to not make it easy for the 3rd party community to create disk utils at this point. There are already 3rd party proprietary shops offering pre-upgraded units. Once the cat is out of the bag, TiVo should proactively make life easier for its hard core users, enthusiasts, and evangelists. Not too many customers actually will unscrew the box, after all…
Yeeha! Welcome to 2008!
A welcome feature for sure… A little late for fall season…. Also I want to see how well it handles conflict resolution
Okay, I need to stop bitching about the little things Tivo does and accept them as something positive. I WILL make use of this and it WILL make my life better. Thank you Tivo?
Wow, TiVo is actually enhancing their core DVR functionality rather than finding new ways to display advertisements and compete with roku? What a gratifying change of pace.
This is the first actual improvement in TiVo’s DVR service since they introduced online recording scheduling, which was what, like 2004?
Rodalpho,
You’re exaggerating! They added support for folders in Tivo To Go like 2 years ago!
Here’s hoping the little red dot in the guide indicating something WILL be recorded is coming any minute now…
Just posted to twitter … @tivodesign TiVo Margret Schmidt
A software update for TiVo Premiere is rolling out, starting today. All Premiere boxes will get 14.6 within a week.
Any idea on the details of whats included with 14.6 Dave???
I thought I had 14.6, but maybe I have 14.5? Either way, I just emailed my PR contact for info. If she replies with anything meaningful, I’ll pass it on.
“Okay, I need to stop bitching about the little things Tivo does and accept them as something positive. I WILL make use of this and it WILL make my life better. Thank you Tivo?”
TiVo makes the worst DVR’s in the world except for all the other DVR’s…
Well I just tried it. I have two Tivo units and brought up both lists of Season Passes. Tried Deleting some. A little slow. Tried rearranging some, quite slow–you get a significant multi-second delay after each move. And then noticed that some of my deleted shows had shown up again. Tried deleting them again. Now the reordering was lost, though oddly things did not return to the old order, but to a different order than I’d set up (I moved Amazing Race to the top from way down and now it was number 3… WTF?)
Mixing operations to copy Season Passes between boxes, Deleting Season Passes and Reordering Season Passes isn’t reliable. Appears to be quite buggy. About par for the course I’d say.
Glen: Probably user error.
From the notes on the website: “WishList® recordings and manual recordings are not currently displayed in the Season Pass manager.”
Dang! I use a lot of WishLists… I wonder what happens when you reorder everything else around them? Stay in the same position?
This new feature has worked well for me. Any changes have appeared on my boxes within an hour. I just wish it would have been available in the spring when I replaced all my S3 boxes with Premiere boxes.
It doesn’t work for me at all.
It only shows 11 season passes, out of 30+.
The order of those 11 is totally random as well.
Hmm… this would be on no help to me in moving season passes from S2 DT unit to new Premier XL (thanks, EExpo!) since I just plan to move my account from S2 to XL and not use S2 anymore (I still have some recordings, but I think I’ll be able to access them without subscription, right?).
P.S. It’s ridiculous that TiVo is just now releasing this functionality. Even AT&T has U-Verse app that darn near-instantaneous.
Jack: Nope. After I noticed the errors I tried the same pattern again and saw the same errors. It just doesn’t work that well.