722/622 Tuners Could be Smarter

datwell

Supporting Founder
Original poster
Supporting Founder
Jul 25, 2004
654
4
Falls Church, VA
As you can see from my signature, I have both a 622 and a 722 receiver. In spite of Dish's messed-up records, the 722 is the main unit.

When recording two consecutive shows on the same channel, the 722 often assigns a different tuner to each show. This makes no sense at all to me. A single tuner should be able to cover both even with timer overlaps. Dynamic reassignment of tuners could resolve any conflicts with events previously scheduled.

I would like to see Dish 1) resolve this issue and 2) bring out a new receiver with more tuners (OTA is not an option for me due to my location).


---Doug
 
As you can see from my signature, I have both a 622 and a 722 receiver. In spite of Dish's messed-up records, the 722 is the main unit.

When recording two consecutive shows on the same channel, the 722 often assigns a different tuner to each show. This makes no sense at all to me. A single tuner should be able to cover both even with timer overlaps. Dynamic reassignment of tuners could resolve any conflicts with events previously scheduled.

I would like to see Dish 1) resolve this issue and 2) bring out a new receiver with more tuners (OTA is not an option for me due to my location).


---Doug

If you don't have anything else scheduled to record on the other tuner, it uses the other (second) tuner for the same channel to maintain the padding specified. The default is 1 before and 3 minutes after iirc.
 
If you don't have anything else scheduled to record on the other tuner, it uses the other (second) tuner for the same channel to maintain the padding specified. The default is 1 before and 3 minutes after iirc.

Right. And if you don't watch the shows consecutively and delete one you can miss part of the start/finish of one since not everything starts and ends right on the hour.
 
Right. And if you don't watch the shows consecutively and delete one you can miss part of the start/finish of one since not everything starts and ends right on the hour.

Yes. And as President Kennedy remarked, " I think we can do bettah." (New England brogue)

I'm not throwing rocks - the Dish engineers are pretty sharp - I just think they can make the unit more efficient and still cover the padding interval too.


--Doug
 
Requires two tuners to do what you are asking. Can you record to two different vcr tapes at the same time on one vcr?

The signals in question are a digital data stream that's written to the internal hard drive. Zeroes and ones can be manipulated.


---Doug
 
I think what's being asked here is certainly possible. If you've got two consecutive programs recording on the same channel, the unit should be able to determine the overlap and keep it to one tuner. The only issue with this is what to do with the overlap. Should it exist at the end of the first program, or beginning of the second program? There's not really a good answer, and this is why it's handled across two tuners I assume. That being said, I'd prefer it to just use one tuner and place the overlap into one recording (or both if possible)
 
I think what's being asked here is certainly possible. If you've got two consecutive programs recording on the same channel, the unit should be able to determine the overlap and keep it to one tuner. The only issue with this is what to do with the overlap. Should it exist at the end of the first program, or beginning of the second program? There's not really a good answer, and this is why it's handled across two tuners I assume. That being said, I'd prefer it to just use one tuner and place the overlap into one recording (or both if possible)

I have a 722. It operates in duel mode. We currently have tuner 2 set as the primary tuner for recording. If I set up consecutive shows on the same channel to record it stays on tuner 2. As a matter of fact it always stays on tuner 2 unless we want to record 2 shows at the same time then one will default to tuner 1.
The issue the OP is experiencing may be caused by the default pre run and over run times. I keep mine set at 0-0. Yes sometimes we miss a bit of the end of a show but it usually, from our perspective, isn't that critical. Others may have a different opinion.
I would suggest manually adjusting the overrun time to 0 for the first show when recording 2 shows in succession on the same channel. I think that might take care of this issue....

Good Luck

Ross
 
I use BeyondTV to record OTA and it works exactly the same way Dish does. If I remember right, when I tried W7 Media Center it also did the same. All of them will stay on the same tuner if all tuners are in use recording shows. Don't know if it's technological or just something that was developed and everyone just copied it. Anyway, I actually prefer the way it works now, but maybe they could make it optional and please everyone.
 
The biggest problem would be that the software has no idea when the one show ends and the other one starts. There needs to be some encoding from the source (network/channel) that Dish could make this use of.

I'd rather have the two tuner overlap. No mistakes, like cutting off one show early and having to start the next one to finish the first.
 
Right. And if you don't watch the shows consecutively and delete one you can miss part of the start/finish of one since not everything starts and ends right on the hour.

The real problem is the source networks with respect to their notion of time. The way to solve this problem is generally to ensure their notion of time is synchronized to authoritative time services (e.g., GPS, atomic clock in Boulder, CO, etc). I can't possibly imagine these days this would be a big deal to do especially considering that NTP has been around for a very long time...

Yeah, this problem bothers the heck out of me too!
 
The biggest problem would be that the software has no idea when the one show ends and the other one starts. There needs to be some encoding from the source (network/channel) that Dish could make this use of.

Why not just use the guide times and add the padding to them? Isn't that what is done today?

--Doug
 
I have a 722. It operates in duel mode. We currently have tuner 2 set as the primary tuner for recording. If I set up consecutive shows on the same channel to record it stays on tuner 2. As a matter of fact it always stays on tuner 2 unless we want to record 2 shows at the same time then one will default to tuner 1.
The issue the OP is experiencing may be caused by the default pre run and over run times. I keep mine set at 0-0. Yes sometimes we miss a bit of the end of a show but it usually, from our perspective, isn't that critical. Others may have a different opinion.
I would suggest manually adjusting the overrun time to 0 for the first show when recording 2 shows in succession on the same channel. I think that might take care of this issue....

Good Luck

Ross

Unfortunately you don't always know when two shows will be recorded back-to-back, so this would require you to do this on your own and adjust the overrun time in those situations. What I'm suggesting is the software can detect when this situation occurs and automatically adjust the overlap so the recordings occur on one tuner. It's definitely possible, it's just no software does it that I know of.
 
When recording two consecutive shows on the same channel, the 722 often assigns a different tuner to each show. This makes no sense at all to me. A single tuner should be able to cover both even with timer overlaps. Dynamic reassignment of tuners could resolve any conflicts with events previously scheduled.



---Doug

If your 722 is using both tuners you are LUCKY, normal operation is to use the same tuner dropping any padding between the shows.
Normally the only way to get the 722 to use two tuners for back to back shows on the same channel is to extend the padding to more that the default times.
 
If your 722 is using both tuners you are LUCKY, normal operation is to use the same tuner dropping any padding between the shows.
Normally the only way to get the 722 to use two tuners for back to back shows on the same channel is to extend the padding to more that the default times.

And this was introduced a few years ago in a software update and it pissed a lot of people off.

It used to work as you say you wish it did sadly enough.
 
It's simple. The receiver can record 2 shows back to back no matter what the pad is and accomplish it seamlessly on 1 tuner. So you have your shows set to start recording 3 min early and 3 min late. It starts recording and at then end of 1 show simply copy the last 3 min and paste it to the beginning of the next and the first 3 min of the second show and paste it to the end of the 1st show. The CPU and memory should be able to handle this. Then it won't matter what the padding is.

This has caused problems for me in the past.

Oh and while we're at it stop dumping the live buffer on channels that are being recorded when you're a few min behind live tv. This really irritates me.
 
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The default is 3 minutes late ending for recordings. 3 minutes or more late ending will cause the DVR to assign the other tuner to record the following show on the same channel. This is why I change the default to less than 3 minutes late. Then it will behave as you've described in the OP. However, if there is a recording scheduled on the same channel immediately following the first recording on the same channel, then, even if set to 1 or 2 minutes late, the first recording will end at 0 minutes late and begin recording the following show on the same channel at 0 minutes early, using the same tuner.

For some channel, such as MTV, 2 minutes early and 3 minutes is the ONLY way to guarantee that one will record the entire program as MTV is notorious for starting shows even 3 minutes early or starting 3 minutes late, but the 2 minutes early and 3 minutes late works 99% of the time, but the cost is that when recording programs back-to-back it requires both tuners that to record both shows" tuner 2 committed to 3 minutes late in all circumstances (not committed at 1 or 2 minutes late; it will use the same tuner 2), and Tuner 1 start for the 2nd following program. They overlap by recording some of the previous recording.

Change the defaults to 0 minutes late and 0 minutes early. You can still change those settings for each individual timer if necessary, but 0 and 0 will be the automatic default requiring no adjustments when creating timers.

None of this would be a problem is more channels stuck to the scheduled air times. They can do this if they want, right up to the very second. They all did this for decades, but now there is the pressure to use the trick of ending a show late to immediately go right into the next show on the same channel to prevent people from turning the channel, and then causing people to miss a few minutes of another show on a another channel, and, perhaps, deciding to stay tuned to that network since the missed the beginning of the show they wanted to tune to,

This trick was first used by Ted Turner who cleverly started (and subsequently ended) all his shows by 5 minutes of the hour and half-hour; AND IT WORKED!!!!

Most homes DO NOT have DVR's and are still viewing TV in the linear experience where these tricks do work to a fair degree, and since they are still the majority, it is those the networks go after. It becomes a big problem for those who use DVR's. Contrary to myth, the programmer have no dislike of the DVR, as DVR recordings are counted as a program viewed by the ratings systems. The prgrammers don't see it as a problem because they know that DVR's have end late features, not because they don't like DVR's.

Jimmy Kimmel once aired the final moments of his TiVo recording of the Bachelor to show how pissed he was that ABC ran the Bacelor longer than scheduled and just when they were about to reveal who was staying, the TiVo end recording prompt popped-up. It was funny and the first time anybody in show business brought this subject up, although Kimmel seemed a bit more pissed at TiVO, but all DVR's can fall victim to the lies of the programmers.
 
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not quite.
3 minutes late (& 1 minute early) is always dropped allowing back to back recordings to use the same tuner.
It has ALWAYS worked that way on the 942/622/722/722k/922.
 

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