Archived from groups: alt.video.ptv.tivo (
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> But Howard makes an excellent point. It deleted those shows for a
> reason, because it *immediately* reused that space. Therefore those
> shows would never be able to be *undeleted*.
Like any other software it's always a balance between what people think it
does versus what's actually going on. As well as the difference between
what people think they WANT it to do versus what's practical for the widest
audience.
People that have used a Tivo 'for a while' and those that understand
software will pretty easily recognize that some of the stuff is done in a
particular way for straightforward, if quite complex, reasons. Those new to
Tivo or just not grasping the complexities are sometimes befuddled by it.
No insult to their intelligence intended, there's just more going on in
there than seems obvious at the start.
When you consider that the software has to do in order to record it's really
not too much of a surprise to see why things like undelete and free space
aren't already present. Balancing between placements in the season passes
list, recording later broadcasts of conflict based on it, suggestions, free
space, managing deletion of excess or old episodes and manual recordings...
it's a wonder it works as well as it does.
I think one point most folks miss is the need to have as big a hard drive
(or drives) in there as possible. A lot of the issues with multiple people
using a Tivo can be greatly minimized by not have too small a drive. The
stock 40 hour units are really not suitable for anything other than the most
basic of uses. New users will tend to record "more" than they actually
watch (the hoarding tendency) and multiple new users only makes it that much
worse. Trying to do that on a tiny drive while also learning to use it is
asking for trouble. But, of course, larger drives cost more and
sales/marketing are trying to push units as inexpensively as possible.
This isn't made any easier by DirecTV refusing to implement MRV. They'd
sell more units and more subscriptions by making it possible for a household
to have the ability to combine the double tuners across multiple units. One
for each 'family purpose' would be a tremendous benefit. But hey, that
would make sense and DirecTV doesn't seem to excel in that area...