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Well, it’s happened again.

DVRs everywhere didn’t record the final crucial minutes of the season finale of American Idol last night because the live show ran about 7 minutes long. And everyone (including me) that recorded the show to watch later were devastated to find out that they missed the crowning of Jordin Sparks as the new American Idol.

The Washington Post said it best with its headline: American Idol + Fox + Tivo = Rage.

How could this happen? Isn’t technology supposed to transcend all and make our lives better? Yes, Tivo and other DVRs have an option where you can extend a recording a few minutes–just in case. But who ever remembers to do that? I don’t have the foresight to program that when I set up the Season Pass.

As a big fan of American Idol, I’ve noticed that the shows have been running long almost every week this season. Unfortunately, I never bothered to edit my Season Pass settings and pad the ending of the recording. I hate having to be bothered with details like this when I’m watching TV.

The main problem are live events like sports, award shows and yes, American Idol.

When you Tivo a non-live TV show (for example “My Name is Earl”) it records on the set times and there’s no chance you’ll miss the end of the show. The TV networks run things pretty timely. But with live shows everything changes.

Live TV shows oftentimes run long. I knew that Idol had been running long all season, but I never padded the end of the recording time. That’s my fault.

But really, it’s American Idol fault. They should have run on time. Fox knows that millions of people will be Tivo-ing American Idol and they need ensure that this doesn’t happen ever again. Even those of us in the west coast were affected–didn’t Fox have time to trim the show a few minutes? What’s more important: watching the Idol singers sing another lame medley or announcing the winner of American Idol?

Don’t Fox executives own DVRs?

This isn’t Tivo’s fault by any means. They don’t schedule TV shows, they just get a program guide. Nevertheless people are mad at Tivo. One article I read has a statement from Tivo:

“At TiVo, we’re huge ‘American Idol’ fans too, so had we known the program would run over, we would have alerted our subscribers to pad a few extra minutes,” said video recorder manufacturer TiVo in a prepared statement.

Unfortunately, DVRs aren’t smart enough to “sense” when a TV show is running long and extend a recording. But wouldn’t that be cool? Can someone please invent this?

Another way to prevent this from happening is to record the show that’s playing directly after your show. That way you can catch anything that runs long. But isn’t this a bit too backward?

Fox, please keep Idol and Seacrest on schedule. Because you know what happened last night after the ending of American Idol was cut? Many of those people rushed to the Internet and YouTube to watch the last final minutes. (Although some people want Fox to replay those final minutes on TV.)

By the way, in case you want to get those last few minutes, here they are. Thanks YouTube!

Bonus: The Mercury News has a story too, with lots of commenters grumbling. Makes fascinating reading.

Earlier this year, a story on Broadband Reports said that Time Warner’s network DVR service called Mystro received “rave reviews from trial participants.” Unfortunately Time Warner Cable decided to scrap the service because it was getting legal threats from the TV networks and movie studios.

That’s why Cablevision was sued last year by Hollywood and what recently led a judge to rule in favor of the entertainment giants.

As a result, Time Warner scaled back Mystro and introduced “Start Over” instead. That means that you can watch “selected” shows on “designated” channels which lets you watch the TV show from the beginning. A “Start Over” logo appears on screen and if you chose to watch it, the show will be available for “two and a half times the length of the original program.” That means a 30 minute show has a viewing window of 1 hour and 15 minutes using Start Over. Users can pause and rewind shows, but you cannot fast forward past commercials.

Guess that’s another downside of network DVRs–providers can enable or disable features as they wish, even if they are really popular like skipping ads. However, providers may start charging customers a premium (say $10 per month) in order to be allowed to have ad-skipping on their network DVR. Another idea: Time Warner can sell advertising (that can’t be skipped) in these network DVRs.

Time Warner reps say that Start Over is producing more than “450,000 viewing sessions per week on 160,000 different digital set-tops.” Plus, viewers are watching an average of 75 to 90 minutes of shows every week.

It seems like customers like it because it’s free and convenient. For example, if you arrive home late and miss the beginning of a show, you have the option to start from the beginning. Tivo can do this already of course. It can record from the beginning of a show if you press the ‘record’ button provided it has been tuned in to the channel since the beginning of the show.

Having a VOD/DVR system like Start Over is great because you can watch shows you almost missed and you don’t have to dedicate valuable storage space for the shows.

Start Over is available in parts of six markets only but should be available in 18 markets by the end of 2007.