Recording a Series

The capability to record a series of programs is another impressive feature that your old VCR will be hard-pressed to match. Whereas the VCR can be set to record any program that appears on a given day, at a given time, on a given channel, the computerized recording features in Media Center and other DVR devices use the show title to seek out multiple episodes of a series and store them on your hard disk.

You can record a series from the Guide or from Search. In this section, we'll look at each of these approaches individually.

Recording a Series from the Guide

If you liked the capability to record a show from the guide with one touch of the remote control, you'll love the capability to record an entire television series by simply pressing the Rec button a second time. To confirm your series recording command, the guide listing will display the multiple red dot icon (see Figure 8.5).

Figure 8.5. The symbol denoting a series recording command is visible both in the program guide grid entry and in the show description.

To cancel the scheduled recording, you can simply press Rec a third time, and the red dots will disappear, confirming your choice.

When you record a series from the program guide using the procedure noted previously, the recordings will reflect My TV's default Series Record settings. These defaults include the following:

• Both first run and rerun episodes will be recorded.

• If the show airs multiple times per day, My TV will record it every time.

• All episodes will be kept on disk, until space is needed for other, higher priority recordings.

• My TV will record using the "best" quality level.

• All recordings will start and stop on time, according to the program guide listing information for each episode.

As you can imagine, selecting an older and popular TV series, such as the Saturday Night Live example in Figure 8.5, would potentially yield many recordings per day, using the default series record settings. In addition to the first-run shows on Saturday evenings, SNL airs frequently in the form of reruns on multiple channels. We'll talk a little later in this chapter about how to fine-tune those record settings to avoid "episode overload."

Recording a Series from Search

First, conduct a search using the Categories, Title, or Keyword search options, following the steps outlined in the last chapter. Then do the following to record a series:

1. Use the navigation buttons on the remote control to scroll through the search results and select the show you want to record.

2. Multiple episodes are likely to be rolled up under the initial show listing, so your next view will display a list of upcoming episodes (Figure 8.6). You may need to select a title, and then select the title again to pick an episode that airs at a specific date or specific time. Depending on which episode air time you select, the series record features of My TV will schedule upcoming recordings that match your choice. For example, if you select a 10:30 PM air, My TV will record episodes at 10:30 PM each day and ignore other daily showings with the same episode title.

   Figure 8.6. This search results page displays multiple episodes of a series.

   

3. When you have the series episode you want highlighted, you can press Rec twice to record the series using default settings described previously.

4. As an option, you can select the series episode you highlighted previously, and select the Record Series option (see Figure 8.7).

   Figure 8.7. This Program Info page from search results offers another opportunity to record a series, a single episode, or access the Advanced Record menu.