Yesterday, my TiVo recieved a service update, with some new functionality. I really like the “Recently Deleted Folder”, which shows everything you’ve deleted but hasn’t yet been recorded over. It’s a good concept, since I’ve accidentally deleted things I’ve realized later I actually wanted to see. I have a few quibbles with the implementation—for one thing, it could use a nicer icon in Now Playing (right now it looks the same as any other folder, which it’s not), and I had gotten used to hitting Page Down in Now Playing until it bonked to get to TiVo Suggestions, which doesn’t work anymore—but I think it’s a good thing overall.

What I don’t like about the update is the “Improved TiVo Suggestions”. The message tells me that “the TiVo service is better than ever at suggesting shows you might like”, but I don’t want it to do that. I want it to suggest shows I will like. I had gotten TiVo into a nice rut where it was recording episodes of basically the same seven or eight sitcoms whenever they were on (if you must know, Frasier, Friends, Cheers, Mad About You, Wings, That 70’s Show and a few others I delete), and I like all those shows, so I would watch them. Since yesterday, it’s been recording all sorts of odd things I don’t usually watch, or have never seen before—it just picked up a bunch of really old sitcoms from TV Land, like The Dick Van Dyke Show, Green Acres, I Dream of Jeanie and Leave It To Beaver, and as we speak it’s recording The Tonight Show, so I don’t know what to think. And, of course, it managed to find one of the half dozen episodes of Ellen I’ve seen before. Maybe these are shows I would like, but I had gotten used to the old behavior, and TV isn’t where I want to experiment with change.