We really enjoy watching Law & Order: SVU. I’d like to be able to do both of the following:
Record first-run L&O: SVU from NBC. These would be kept until (watched and) deleted, with the intent of not missing any new episodes
Record rerun L&O: SVU from non-NBC channels. Essentially recording reruns from the previous 19 seasons. These recordings could be more ephemeral and could be “keep X number of recordings”, since it’ll just be a grab bag of L&O: SVU reruns for when nothing else is on
The Tablo UI seems to indicate recordings are based on the show itself, and I can’t set up two L&O: SVU recordings with different recording options. The thing I’m trying to avoid is having reruns nudge first-run episodes off the Tablo. A second goal would be an easy way to tell the difference between first-run and rerun episodes.
We do have a current Tablo subscription, if that matters.
The good news is that the Tablo will record shows that are on multiple channels. So if you set SVU to “record all”, you will get both new episodes and reruns (and it won’t re-record a rerun if it is on your hard drive).
Also, the recordings list for a show is divided by seasons, so you can tell which recordings are current and which ones are reruns (I assume that episodes not on NBC are from previous seasons).
I would just keep all episodes and delete them manually as you want. However, if you really want to keep all of the current season and keep only a few reruns, you can set up a manual recording for the reruns. You just need to know the channel and time they are on. Manual recordings can be set to “keep X”. The main negative to this approach is that you won’t know anything about those episodes (name, season, air date, etc), since they are just manual.
Space has never been an issue for my Tablo, and I have had it for over 5 years. I am still only around 2 TB of my 4 TB drive.
Sounds good–turns out I don’t really want to save all the new episodes, I just don’t want to have them deleted before we get a chance to watch them. I’ll just open up the SVU recording to all channels and keep all the episodes until I delete them. Thanks!