no "star" ratings on DirecTivo - what's up with that?
 

I used to have a standalone tivo where I would tivo movies off of cable -
many that I had never heard of before - and decide whether it was worth my
time watching them based on how many stars the movies were given. The
"stars" information was always given in the program details.

I've recently switched to a DirecTivo and am finding that there is no
"stars" info. on any movies. It's as if DirecTV doesn't want me to know that
I'm paying a lot of money for a majority of movies that got poor reviews.
Any other explanations??

In article [email protected],
writes:

I've recently switched to a DirecTivo and am finding that there is no
"stars" info. on any movies. It's as if DirecTV doesn't want me to know that
I'm paying a lot of money for a majority of movies that got poor reviews.
Any other explanations??

Short of a post from somebody from TiVo or DirecTV, any explanation you'll
see will be either speculative or far enough removed from those who made
the decision that you should take it with a grain of salt. (Of course,
anybody could CLAIM to work for TiVo or DirecTV, too....) Anyhow, there
are many possible explanations for this and other differences between
TiVo's and DirecTV's guide data:

- TiVo and DirecTV may buy different data packages (for different amounts
of money or for other business reasons). (I believe they at least used
to use the same data source, but I'm not sure if that's still true.)
- One or the other (probably TiVo) may supplement the data they receive
with additional data from another source.
- DirecTV may have designed their guide data distribution format without
the star data at a time when that data wasn't available, and they can't
easily change it without disrupting service to some units.
- DirecTV may have designed their guide data distribution format around
technical limitations that required them to drop some data.
- Kofi Anan sent a fleet of black helicopters to DirecTV HQ to implement
this limitation because the space aliens are annoyed by star ratings
being beamed by satellite. ;-)

I'm sure others can think of other possibilities. Whatever the real
reason, though, it's not widely known.

--
Rod Smith,
http://www.rodsbooks.com
Author of books on Linux, FreeBSD, and networking