Quote:
I noticed something on the tivo site about season passes where youget the entire season of a show. that seems like a cool idea.

I'm sure that ReplayTV has a similar feature, so don't choose a Tivo based solely on that.

Keep in mind that the Tivo feature named "Season Pass" is merely a nickname and it doesn't actually have anything to do with a show's "Season". All it does is say... for example:

- For the show named "The West Wing"...
- Capture the following episodes: <all episodes> or <only first-run episodes>
- Cap it at a maximum of <1-5> unwatched episodes
- Save them until <space needed> or <until I delete them>

As you can see above, the Tivo has no way of knowing what a "Season" is, it merely names the feature that so you have a vague idea of what it does. And it works best when you "keep up" with the series. For instance, if you let it go for the whole season without watching anything, you'll only see the last five episodes.

An example of where "Season Pass" wasn't really a season pass... Bravo channel started showing The West Wing, all episodes starting from season 1 episode 1, in sequence, Mondays-Thursdays at 4pm. I wanted to get them all in sequence. Well, there's no way to program Tivo to get them all in sequence because it doesn't know their initial airdates. And since Bravo shows West Wing at a bunch of different times (but only the Mon-Thu 4pm episodes were what I wanted), it basically wanted to record a random smattering of West Wings instead of the exact seasons in exact order.

BUT... once I programmed a season pass for the thing, I was able to say "View upcoming episodes", and, using a very clear and simple user interface, choose which episodes I wanted it to tape based on their episode names. It was very easy to compare the episode names to an episode guide a printed off the internet. So, the "Season Pass", combined with a small bit of manual labor, allowed me to see all West Wings in sequence.

Now, for a first run season, it works perfectly. I'm getting a bunch of TV shows as first-runs using the Season Pass feature. It works well for new shows. You just tell it "First Run" and it'll grab the first-run episode of the show, no problem. The only time you need manual labor is if you want to capture old rerun episodes in any sort of a semblence of order.

So that's what season pass is all about. Just some info for your decision.
_________________________
Tony Fabris