Does anyone ever watch "live" TV anymore, aside from Football games? With today's busy schedules, and active people, I am willing to bet a lot of us record our shows, such as ER or CSI or Law and Order, and then view them at a comfortable time and date. Today's gadget folks have a DVR, like TiVo; others use the old VCR. Either case, we both get burned when the networks run a show "overtime", and when they move it to a "special date and time".

TiVo, a leading DVR service, has designed into TiVo 7.2.1 software the ability to keep recording a show, and run it to completion before switching to the new show. For example, if you were recording a show, and it ends at 7:32, but you have a new show starting at 7:30, you can use the Season Pass manager to determine a priority for which one should be recorded.

A better fix would be simple: force the TV networks to start their shows on time, and end them on time. But we all know the real truth -- the commercials are the name of the game, and if a commercial is long, we need to air that at the expense of meaningful programming. We also know that TV networks don't really care if we watch the show -- I have seen several shows now get moved, clobbered, cancelled and no real notification to let us know. I lost track of Star Trek Voyager for that very reason: I could never find it!

Thanks to the guys at TiVo for building some decsision-making abilities into their software.

Christian