No, I mean a long-established Season Pass and it'll only manage to record the last 59 minutes.


Clarify, please. Is the recording itself only 59 minutes long instead of the expected 60 minutes? If it is in fact the full 60 minutes, then in all likelihood the broadcaster started the program a minute early. That is, the show was scheduled to start at 8pm and actually started at 7:59pm. Tivo, of course, started recording at 8pm just as it was supposed to do.

NBC network (I think it was NBC) a couple of years ago thought they'd be clever and scheduled some of their shows to begin a minute before the hour, on the theory that they would lock people in a minute earlier and they wouldn't surf around the other channels looking for something better. That meant that for TiVo users, NBCs "early-start" show had to compete not just against the 8pm shows, but also against the 7pm shows as well. NBC discontinued that policy after a lot of people complained, but in my case it was too late. I had already deleted every season pass from my TiVo that had an early start time, and I have never, ever watched any of those shows again, even though NBC discontinued the practice.

As for your stations (perhaps) starting shows a minute early sometimes... I'll trade you TV stations any time. Here in Alaska, all the network programming is time-shifted, which means that the local TV stations can play the shows any time they like, which means they put in extra commercials and start the programs late -- as much as six to eight minutes late quite frequently. So now when I start to watch a show on my TiVo, the first thing I do is click to the end of the show, and if there aren't credits rolling, I delete the show without watching it. Probably 25% of everything I record gets deleted that way.

tanstaafl.