Here’s the rundown about what you have to do and why:

1. If you have an HD TiVo, don’t use the Guru Guide.  It’ll only record in SD, even if you removed those channels from your lineup!  Oh, and that Guru Guide doesn’t show up on the TiVo web site anyway!
2. Consider getting a DVR Expander hard drive for your Series 3 or HD TiVo (if you don’t already have one) because NBC is scheduling their Olympic coverage in massive 5- to 7-hour blocks and cutting between sports.  So if you want to watch anything, you’ll be recording multiple blocks at 35 GB to 49 GB a pop!
3. Olympics coverage is showing up on NBC, Universal, USA, CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, and Oxygen, as well as two new special HD channels that you probably don’t receive.  Good luck keeping it all straight!
4. TiVo has the coverage on NBC HD, Universal HD, and USA HD listed as “XXIX Summer Olympics“, but with conflicting episode numbers.  So there’s an episode 1 of this “show” listed on each of the three channels and all are different!  This will break your season pass.
5. How about a wishlist?  TiVo is including individual sports events in the “show” descriptions, so you could set a wishlist for “Olympics Swimming”, but again, it’ll record a massive 8-hour chunk of programming on Saturday, taking up 56 GB of disk space for a single event.
6. I decided to set a max-priority season pass for the main NBC HD channel for “XXIX Summer Olympics”, keeping 5 episodes and recording only first-run, which will get the main popular/USA-dominated sports and the opening ceremony.  I also set lowest-priority “record all” season passes on UHD and USAHD keeping 2 to catch some more.  This ought to slurp down the space on my Series 3′s 500 GB Western Digital expander drive in no time!
7. If you want to get really tricky you could consult NBC’s online schedule and set manual recordings for events.  But don’t count on NBC actually showing things when they’re scheduled…

What are your ideas?  Or will you just give up and watch the games on YouTube, Bittorrent, or follow on the official site?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Tough To Watch the Olympics on TiVo
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