American Idol fans that didn't watch the finale live are shocked to learn their TIVos didn't record the last 6 minutes of last night's American Idol finale. The finale ran a bit long - 10 minutes according to my calculation, but some TiVo users do pad in a little extra time at the end which might account for the slight discrepancy (6 min vs. 10 min).Apparently not enough "padding time", since a few of my fellow co-workers are peeved they didn't get to see Jordin Sparks get the nod over Blake Lewis. Yes TiVo users, you missed out on Jordin Sparks emotional and tearful acceptance and her final song on the show. At least one American Idol fan was instead watching the popular Lost TV series and set American Idol to record.
Moral of the story: Always watch live TV shows since there is a chance it could go long and set pre-recorded TV programs to record on your TiVo.
Well, if you missed the final minutes of the finale, you can click here and download the finale from The Pirate Bay using a Bittorent client.
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TiVO users pay a monthly fee for the TV Guide service. So one would think that as part of that service, TiVO will in real-time adjust the TV Guide information, which would in turn control the recording. In any event, this problem will be more acute for sports fans.
Good example of the potentialty of collaborative P2P platforms
I think real-time updating is difficult, since most TiVos use the PSTN line to update the guide data. The live American Idol show themselves probably didn't know they were going to go long.
Some TiVos do use an Internet connection for updating the guide. But even that is flawed, since TiVo would need to simultaneously update millions of TiVos once they realized the American Idol show was going long. Also, I think each TiVo unit pulls the guide data at very long intervals.
The real solution is IPTV, since they can encode the show data real-time into the stream. Thus, you will know exactly when each show ends. Maybe they'll even encode when commercial breaks are, so you can instantly fast-forward them?
(Note: I believe some cable companies do encode commercial breaks into their video stream for their own tracking - wasn't mean for their customers to FFW through them)
Maybe they'll even encode when commercial breaks are, so you can instantly fast-forward them?