The Virgin TiVo Files, Part 3: Your Wish(List) is TiVo's command

Digital TV means more choice, and with dozens of channels available, it can be difficult to locate content to record. The previous part of the Virgin TiVo files showed off the content search system, but wouldn't it be nice if you could tell your PVR to record specific content?

Sure, you could record Game of Death from Syfy HD. But, wouldn't it be nice to locate all martial arts movies, regardless of what channel they are on? Or even all content featuring Bruce Lee?

Your wish - or, WishList, is TiVo's command.

From Virgin Media's TiVo site:

We even take searching and browsing to the next level with WishLists. All you have to do is save one of your favourite searches for a programme, genre or actor. Then, if something comes up that fits with your selection, it'll be saved for you, automatically - whether it's on tonight, next month or even next year.

Wishlists allow you to create very specific search criteria for content, regardless of what channel that content is on. You can define a keyword; programme title; Actor; Director and Category (Documentary; Movie, etc).

You could, for example, create a Wishlist which finds all football, or just all Football which features Man Utd. Want to find all content related to Stargate? OK. What about all Bruce Lee films? Sure thing. You can even define wildcards for a search cretia, so that, Road* would find Road Wars on Sky 1, along with the film Road Trip.

Once you've created and named your Wishlist, you can tell TiVo to show all content matches for that list. You can select which content to record from that Wishlist, or, you can even tell TiVo to automatically record all content it finds for a Wishlist. So, if you really wanted to record all football games featuring Man Utd, you could. If you really wanted to.

You can also change the recording priority of each Wishlist if you wish (no pun intended) to give it a higher priority then series link recordings. Once Virgin gets that pesky third tuner activated, there will be less chance of recording clashes anyway, and with 1TB of recording capacity, lack of space for Wishlist recordings shouldn't be an immediate issue.

In the next instalment of The Virgin TiVo Files, I'll take a look at how TiVo can make suggestions and recommendations based on....well, you, mainly.