On my mx-850, my Main page On key is a macro that turns everything on and sets up my lights for TV viewing... the last thing in my macro is to put my Tivo unit onto channel 204 (CNN Headline news) which is where I ussually start out to unfortunetely see what blew up, who killed who...

One problem I have sometimes, is my Tivo unit is already recording something, so when the 2 0 4 command is sent, a Tivo "Are you sure you want to stop recording and change the channel...? " message appears.

So, is there any way of getting around this or a way of finding out ahead of time wether the Tivo unit is already recording before issueing the channel change?

No, that would need 2 way communication with the TiVo and the remote.
You can however, reduce the chance that you have the problem by turning off automatic recording of TiVo Suggestions, if you haven't done so already. Go to Messages & Setup>Settings>Recording>TiVo Suggestions and select "No, don't record TiVo Suggestions".

There are other ways (tricks) to get around "two way communications" to accomplish this. I just haven't thought of this for this particular problem. For example, to make sure your monitor is on a TV channel, just hit the channel Up button once. Now you didn't know where it was before, but now you know it is on the TV channel input.

I'm looking to do somehting similar with Tivo, there mus t be a way, cause there is a will!! ;-)

PS- I don't use suggestions. But I do have a lot recording.

The only ways to tell if TiVo is recording something is when the Record LED is on, or if you turn it on and recognize a show that you are recording. The other way around your problem would be to turn on the system without the channel changing string in the TV On Macro, then use the favorites pages to go to CNN when you know you're not recording. Since it sounds like you might have a set list of channels that you scroll through, you could set them up in the order that you want to check them out.

[quote]You can however, reduce the chance that you have the problem by turning off automatic recording of TiVo Suggestions[/quote]

Actually, if a suggestion is recording and you try changing the channel, the TiVo doesn't stop you -- it just changes the channel and cancels the recording.

There's really no good reason NOT to have suggestions on, and I don't understand why people turn them off.

Fez,
"Why we turn off suggestions?" Simple, cause then I end up with 200 recordings of junk in my "Now playing list", and it takes me forever to find the items I REALLY want to watch. ;-)

I did somthing like this with my cable set up. It worked because the channel that I wanted was 27 I believe, and it was tuneable on the television tuner.
I could split my cable signal to both the tv and the cable box/tivo connection. My macro switched video modes and turned on the weather channel on the TV tuner everytime it was turned on.
It would not disturb tivo if it was recording.

I had a button set up to watch Tivo on the LCD Screen to return the video mode to the Tivo connection and activate the Tivo controls.

This may not work if your desired channel is digital and requires the cable box for reception or if you are on sattelite.

ccarrara,

One solution is to set up a manual daily recording for CNN on your Tivo every morning right before you usually get up. This way Tivo will change to CNN and stay there until you change it. However, then you will have to delete the recording every day....

Also, there really is no need to turn off suggestions...you don't have to look through them to see the recordings you have set up, all suggestions are at the bottom of the Now Playing list. I couldn't live without suggestions, if nothing else they give you a good idea of how much space left you have on you Tivo, which is invaluable IMO.