HD Olympics and TiVo

I do enjoy watching the Olympics. I like watching gymnastics, track and swimming and other big events, though not so much the team sports (soccer, baseball, basketball). It seems like those get enough air time the rest of the time. I also like the more unusual sports like fencing, judo, archery, table tennis and handball. Mutliple cable channels covering the games make it easier to catch the odd sports and watching in HD is just great.

So tonight I setup my TiVo to record the Beijing Games. I'm traveling this weekend to Brooklyn NY to visit friends (probably not that many blog posts coming) so wanted to record the opening ceremonies (often fun to fast fwd through). Rather than record everything, I created a wishlist that I could scan through what was on and choose what I wanted.

First off, good planning on FiOS' part to upgrade the number of HD channels not on 8/10 as originally planned but on 8/20, just a couple of days before the games are over. As a result it seems like I get the Olympics in HD on only two channels, NBC and UHD (they are also on CNBC HD and USA HD but I don't get those until the 20th). My TiVo Series 3 can hold 32 hours of HD programming (I haven't upgraded the drive). That's also 300 hours of regular TV and it hasn't been a problem at all and I have some movies on there for many months that I haven't gotten too (in some cases well over a year, yeah I'll get to them).

The opening ceremonies are over 4 hours. UHD then has blocks of programming that are 4 and 8 hours long. 8 hours! I appreciate the continuous coverage, but really, could you break up the scheduling into smaller pieces? Even NBC's evening blocks are 4 hours long.