DirecTivo does well. The programming is updated every day, and for the most part the schedule is set at least a week in advance. The only thing I would recommend is using a manual 2.5-hour record on the channel instead of a Season Pass or Wish List -- the Shooutout blocks on Directv are six hours, so unless you've got a 120GB recorder you'll burn through your open hard drive space really quickly.
Shootout and TiVo I love my TiVo. One minor problem with it, though, is that it doesn't usually have the MLS Shootout on the schedule. I don't know why. I had NHL Center Ice this season and sometimes the games and channels were incorrect on the TiVo schedule. I have Dish Network and the games and channels were always correct in the Dish Network guide for NHL and are always correct for MLS. As Obie said, I just manually record whichever Shootout match I'm interested in recording, and I'm fine. To do this, I have to look ahead on the Dish Network guide or find out the channels on MLS' website. That's not a problem during the regular season. But, last year during the playoffs, MLSnet was SLOW to get the satellite channels posted on the website...sometimes not even getting them posted before game time. Overall, as long as I remember to record games, I'm fine with my system.
I have Directivo and love it. I agree about the 2.5 hour block. The schedule tends to show up on the day of the game so it is very difficult to set it up ahead of time.
DISH does a pretty good job with their guide (this weekend's games are already there), and I just got a second PVR this week, in part so I can better handle all the games. And also so I can tape the WUSA game as well. Can't believe I missed last week's wild 5-4 game! Anyway, one quibble is that, for some reason, I can't edit the timers. I guess because it's a PPV event. For instance, two weeks ago, when all the games were staggered by an hour. I taped the Revs-Dallas game, but at halftime, I wanted to tape some of the other game that was on at that time. I managed to do it but it was a real struggle.
I manage to edit my PVR for the Shootout, but only if I manually set up a timer event: That is, I don't select from the on-screen guide the Shootout match I want to record (Dish blocks out 3 hours for MLS games). Rather, I just set the timer for channel 464, 7:30-9:45 PM (for example; I normally record 2:15 for MLS games).
Yes, I tried that, but for some reason, not all of the PPV channels were included in the channel list! Argh. It was truly a pain. Believe me. Let's just say I had to do a lot of clock-watching and manually stopping and starting recordings while carefully trying to avoid looking at the screen and accidentally seeing the score.
I don't have Direct Tivo, but you don't need to do this manually on the regular stand alone Tivo units. You can still choose season pass and then change the option of the season pass to run 30 minutes longer. That way you don't have to set up a manual record for every channel. Is Direct Tivo different in the flexibility of the season pass? Andy
It's not that the Tivo program time length in the Shootout is set at 2 hours, it's that it's set at 6 hours. You can always just use the Season Pass, but you'll have 3.5 - 4 hours of nothing on that recording after the game is over.