What can I say, I’m a sucker when it comes to recommendation technology. I hate having to make decisions and one of my favorite features on TiVo is their suggestion technology that helps me find programming instead of making me go out and get it. While their suggestions are far from perfect, I still find TiVo’s suggestions to be right more then they are wrong and use the feature all the time to find programs I’m interested in.

Because TiVo suggestions always have the lowest priority on my hard drive, I’ve found that I can use their suggestions as a way to tell how much free space I have left. Fortunately with a 750GB internal weaknees drive installed, I’ve typically got more space then I need for my favorite content, but it’s still a nice indicator to have. (right now my TiVo Series 3 is recommending a little over 200 suggested programs)

When TiVo first introduced TiVo suggestions, it didn’t take me long to figure out the mojo behind their recommendation algorithm. Since then, I’ve adjusted how I rate shows, in order to maximize the benefit from the TiVo suggestion feature. Basically, pretty much nothing gets three thumbs up because it means that TiVo will focus on that program and give me a less random lineup of potential shows that I might like. I’ve also noticed that their algorithm gives a heavy weighting towards programs that I actually watch, instead of what I tell it I think that I want to watch. When I recently watched a Perry Mason film that TiVo had suggested to me, I noticed that for the next few days, TiVo went on to suggest several other Perry Mason films that aired as well.

I like this aspect of the TiVo suggestion program because it looks beyond what I’m telling my TiVo and instead focuses on my actual television habits.

As much as I like the TiVo suggestion feature though, there is still quite a bit that they need to do before they perfect the system. After thinking through all of the things I like and don’t like about the TiVo suggestion feature, I put together a list of the top five ways that I think TiVo can improve their suggestion box.

Suggest More Time – What can I say, deep down inside I’m your typical red blooded American male. Football, Basketball, Boxing, pretty much any sport, with the exception of Baseball, and I love it. One of my favorite things to do on a Sunday afternoon is to crack open a few cold beers and watch the last quarter of every football game that was recorded over the weekend. By and large it doesn’t matter who’s playing who, whether it’s college or pro, as long as it’s a close game, it keeps me interested.

Most of the time, I tell TiVo to record these games manually, but because I watch a lot of sports, their suggestions have learned to automatically record sports too. Now normally this would be a good thing, but unfortunately most sports go way longer then scheduled and TiVo suggestions will always cut off the end of a game. Because you can’t tell if the end of the game is cut off or not without spoiling the program, I pretty much ignore TiVo when it suggests sports because nothing is more disappointing then to invest 3 hours of your time into a game, only to discover that it went to overtime and you don’t get to see the end.

I’m not sure why TiVo suggestions don’t pad for overtime, but TiVo should build a feature that automatically adds extra time to live events. They could leave the length of time up to the user to determine or set a default depending on the sport, but with football and basketball games almost never finishing on time, this would vastly improve the customer experience when they suggest sporting events to their subscribers.

Suggest New Shows – One of the problems with TiVo’s suggestions is that they put too much weighting on the thumbs ratings and not enough on finding new programming. Because of TiVo’s suggestions I’ve found shows like the Jamie Kennedy Experiment and Reno 911, but most of the shows that get recommended aren’t new programs I’ve never heard of, but rather reruns of CSI: Miami.

TiVo should build a feature that allows users to automatically exclude programs they’ve rated. This would be especially helpful when it comes to recommending movies.

When it comes to movies, TiVo suggestions almost never record something unless you’ve rated it to begin with. The problem is though, that if I’ve already rated a film, it likely means that I’ve already seen it. With so many new films coming out each week, I’d love for TiVo to recommend films that it thinks I’d like, but isn’t sure because I haven’t rated it. By allowing me to limit the TiVo suggestions to either no ratings for everything or no ratings for certain genres like movies, it would cut down on the number of repeats it records and offer me programs that I may have never heard of before. This may decrease the relevancy of their suggestions, but it would increase the number of new programs that it would recommend and it would help me find high quality programming that I might be interested in subscribing to a season pass for.

Refine Suggestions – One of the biggest problems with the TiVo thumbs up rating system is that many of the ratings are based on pretty broad programming choices. For example, I generally hate baseball, but I love watching the Mariners play. Unfortunately though, there is no way for me to tell TiVo that I want to give baseball three thumbs down, but to give the Mariners three thumbs up. I’ve either got to tell TiVo that I love all baseball or hate all baseball. If there was a way to designate favorite teams, TiVo could then suggest Mariner games, but would also know that if it suggested a Yankee game, that I’m liable to put a baseball through my TV screen.

The same is true for movies. I love watching a good action flick, but if it has Steven Seagal or Jean Claude Van Damme in it, then I really have no interest in seeing the film. I’d love to be able to refine my ratings down to the genre, director and actor level, so that TiVo could then suggest films that have my favorite director and movie stars in them, instead of recording Short Circuit 2 again. (Johnny 5 is definetely not alive in my household) By letting their users give more information to TiVo, it would allow for more sophisticated algorithms and better relevancy when it comes to suggesting shows and movies that have never aired before.

Don’t Suggest Repeats – I’m much less interested in seeing a repeat of a show then I am in finding new content that’s out there. Just like I can tell TiVo to only record first run episodes of my season pass programs, I wish that there was a way to tell TiVo to quit suggesting repeats. While this would limit the number of programs that the unit would suggest, it would also ensure that I’m finding fresh content instead of stale episodes of CSI and Law & Order that I’ve already seen a million times. By allowing users to limit the programing only to new shows, it would help to make the TiVo suggestion feature feel new and exciting and improve the user experience for those who’d rather have fresh content, then an endless stream of shows that we’ve already seen.

Make Suggestions Social – Television is a special medium. People might argue that television leads to anti-social behavior, but because of it’s influence on society there are certain shows that create a water cooler effect around them. These are shows that you enjoy watching, but you enjoy talking about them even more. It could be that TV shows give us a common ground to communicate on or that they are just so entertaining that we feel compelled to share the experience, but regardless, when you can talk about a show, it extends the appeal of the programming beyond the 30 minutes that you spent watching it.

One of my problems though, is that a lot of the shows I watch aren’t always the most popular shows on TV. In fact, some of my favorite TV programs are the ones that none of my friends have ever seen. It may be that they are too busy or it could be that it’s the wrong genre to appeal to them, but more times then not it’s because they haven’t taken the time to check out the program.

As more and more people network their TiVos and as microcontent begins to become available on the platform, I believe that word of mouth is going to become an increasingly important tool in helping to spread the popularity of these niche shows. If there was a way for me to tell my TiVo to suggest certain programs to a friend’s TiVo’s, then TiVo could help to facilitate this word of mouth phenomenon. By letting my peers suggest programming to me either based upon what they know about my personality or automatically based on their season passes, TiVo could help to make TV more social. While creating buzz around the top Thursday night shows isn’t a problem in the workplace, when it comes to video logs, niche cable channels and podcasts there is a huge vacuum in this area. By giving tools to their customers to classify and recommend these niche programs, TiVo could make it even easier for people to find good quality content that’s relevant to their own lives and the lives of their peers.

Not everyone likes TiVo suggestions and it’s probaby a good thing that TiVo offers their users a way to opt out of this feature, but as an avid TV watcher, I can tell you that TiVo’s suggestions is one of the greatest things about owning a TiVo. When it first came out the it was fresh and exciting, but with more efficient recommendation systems being developed, I’ve been a little disappointed to see such little progress on TiVo’s own recommendation algorithms.

Before I got the series 3, I had hoped that with my upgrade to the new box, there would be significant changes in their algorithms, but after using the series 3 for a couple of months, I still feel like it’s the same technology that was in the series 1 box. With an explosion in the amount of content being created, it will be the aggregators that can filter these choices the best, that will win the digital home. While TiVo is clearly not leading in this aspect of search technology, by implementing some of the changes that I’ve suggested, along with an even more powerful algorithm, I believe that they can make this feature feel fresh and exciting again and help their customers find relevant niche programs in the process.