Reader Paul is pissed because he found out that DirecTV’s DVR will only let you schedule 50 shows to record and watched. Having more than one person in his house, he hit this limit pretty fast. So how can you record more than 50 shows on the DirecTV in-house brand DVR? One thing you can do is use the enhanced search function with “boolean operations.”

“Boolean” is a type of logic that most computers and databases sort. Whether you know it or not, you’ve probably used it to search for things online. “cat AND hat” is an example of a basic boolean search.

The DirecTV DVR lets you set up search queries and then records the results.

“AALL” – all the words typed must be in the program title
“AANY” – any of the words typed can be in the program title
“NNOT” – excludes the words that follow from the search

For example, one Tiger’s fan has a search for AANY TIGERS EVENTS LIVE HDTV CCHAN 663 665. “That gets any Tigers games on 663 and 664-1, and I set it for 3 extra hours.”

Folks say that using these searches, you can create recording rules that will allow you to record more shows than your 50 show limit.

For more examples and keywords to use in designing your searches, check out this post on “enhanced search” at dbstalk.

Enhanced Search [dbstalk]

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