TiVo Suggestions Improvement Suggestion
Man, I wish TiVo Suggestions could be programmed to know, “Yes, I’ve seen every re-run of Gilmore Girls; no, you don’t need to record those again for me. Thanks, though.” I have the show with three thumbs-up because I’m hopeful that, someday, TiVo would upgrade its software to support this concept, and instead of showing me re-runs, help me find new TV. I’m aware that this is somewhat second-generation/second-order thinking, but it seems obvious to me.
Also on the list of shows I never need to be shown re-runs of, despite my great affinity for them: Northern Exposure and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. The wonder of TiVo has allowed me to see all three shows in their entirety [minus, of course, the ten or so episodes of Season Five of Gilmore Girls that I've yet to watch, but have taped].
[...] Don’t Suggest Repeats – I’m much less interested in seeing a repeat of a show then I am in finding new content that’s out there. Just like I can tell TiVo to only record first run episodes of my season pass programs, I wish that there was a way to tell TiVo to quit suggesting repeats. While this would limit the number of programs that the unit would suggest, it would also ensure that I’m finding fresh content instead of stale episodes of CSI and Law & Order that I’ve already seen a million times. By allowing users to limit the programing only to new shows, it would help to make the TiVo suggestion feature feel new and exciting and improve the user experience for those who’d rather have fresh content, then an endless stream of shows that we’ve already seen. Make Suggestions Social – Television is a special medium. People might argue that television leads to anti-social behavior, but because of it’s influence on society there are certain shows that create a water cooler effect around them. These are shows that you enjoy watching, but you enjoy talking about them even more. It could be that TV shows give us a common ground to communicate on or that they are just so entertaining that we feel compelled to share the experience, but regardless, when you can talk about a show, it extends the appeal of the programming beyond the 30 minutes that you spent watching it. [...]
November 27th, 2006 at 00:01