Thread: DVR Programming Guide is Less Than Accurate

Below is a message that I sent to my Congresswoman and Senators which you may wish to emulate:

I know this is not one of the more critical issues that needs to be addressed but I'm hoping you might able to help find a resolution.

The cable and satellite tv industry has been advertising their digital video recording (DVR) technology very heavily. What they do not tell you is that when you use their electronic programming guide to schedule recordings that some percentage of these recordings will *not* record accurately. The recording may start late (after the program has already started) or may end early (before the program has ended). This is not advertised (even in the fine print) and it can be very annoying to schedule the recording of a program and later watch the program only to find that you missed the critical first few minutes or the last few minutes when the cliff hanger was resolved.

I have contacted my local cable provider and they are sympathetic yet unable to resolve the issue short of telling me that I would have to manually adjust every recording schedule to change the start and end times to provide a recording 'window' to capture the entire program.

The correct solution is for the electronic programming guide, which the cable/satellite companies buy from a third party should be accurate which may require that the broadcast channels themselves provide accurate times.

How to do that is beyond me but I'm sure that legislation or regulatory rule could resolve this.

Thank you

not much you can really do if a network runs over or under what they planned on as far as time goes. The guide is set based on what the networks have planned on for programming, and it is subject to change at any time...the reason that it is not in their fine print is because they can't make the networks start or end at the time they are supposed to, because they are just re-broadcasting straight from the network. It's not really an issue that needs to be sent to your state reps as far as it being the cable/satellite companys problem...maybe try dealing with the networks directly.