A Way To Prevent The Scheduler From Recording Rebroadcast Episodes??? Fix It Dish!

[hemway]

I know that if you set up a recording scheduler to record only 'new episodes', the Dish scheduler will also record old episodes of a program if the episode date is not in the mm-dd-yy format it understands and uses in it's compare. Every time I've seen this happen is when the episode date is a year (i.e. 1998).

My wife records 'The O'Reilly Factor' every night at 6pm (we're in AZ) but when Fox rebroadcasts the show at 9pm, the scheduler records it again because the episode date is 1998. The 'The Daily Show' is another one of the shows this happens to and I'm sure there are others.

Is there a way to disable this Dish 'feature', or as I would call it, 'annoyance'?

I know someone out there will blame it on the bad schedule information Dish gets from the Tribune but if Dish is supposed to have the best DVR and recording system, why can't they fix this or give the customer the option to decide what they want the DVR to do. If they can't do that, why don't they get a more reliable schedule source?

 

[probinson]

Set a manual timer?

 

[lakebum431]

This is a much better alternative than missing potentially new programs...

 

[Jim5506]

My Tivo also records both episodes of O'Reilly even though it is set got first run only. It's a problem with the way the program provider is coding the episodes. I just went into the Season Pass Manager and nixed the late shows manually. No other solution right now.

 

[whatchel1]

I know that if you set up a recording scheduler to record only 'new episodes', the Dish scheduler will also record old episodes of a program if the episode date is not in the mm-dd-yy format it understands and uses in it's compare. Every time I've seen this happen is when the episode date is a year (i.e. 1998).

My wife records 'The O'Reilly Factor' every night at 6pm (we're in AZ) but when Fox rebroadcasts the show at 9pm, the scheduler records it again because the episode date is 1998. The 'The Daily Show' is another one of the shows this happens to and I'm sure there are others.

Is there a way to disable this Dish 'feature', or as I would call it, 'annoyance'?

I know someone out there will blame it on the bad schedule information Dish gets from the Tribune but if Dish is supposed to have the best DVR and recording system, why can't they fix this or give the customer the option to decide what they want the DVR to do. If they can't do that, why don't they get a more reliable schedule source?

Big deal this has been discussed to death over the years. It's better than missing epi's. Set it for Mon-Fri instead of new. FIXED.

 

[Tampa8]

As alluded to, this is intentional to avoid missing potentially new episodes. Setting a manual timer is one way. Setting a Weekday timer at that time is another. Going through the schedule of programs to be recorded, and skipping the later one is another. For O'Reilly it is unlikely to be aired often at another time, so I would go with the weekday at 6PM timer. In fact, I would not use "new episode" for that program as virtually any of his shows at that time will be new. The rare time it isn't, just erase it. As an example, I use the weekday timer for "PTI" and "Around The Horn" for that reason.

There ya go, fixed.

 

[DishSubLA]

hemway, I feel your pain, and despite what others say, this is a VERY BIG PIA because the timer can rack up as many as 12 or more events (especially on MTV or Big Time Rush on Nick or even brand new programs that the DVR insists on recording all future instances) that are repeats that should NOT be recorded. Now, multiply that for at least 5 more timers, and you have my experience of having to skip--a VERY SLOW process on the 722--each and every one of those repeats, and NO, I don't have the room on the HDD to absorb all those false recordings. The 722K skips events almost instantly, so not such a pain there. The additional problem is that if one does not manually SKIP all those false events, that the false recordings often have priority on the list which means that some other shows, even NEW ones, will NOT record and those shows may not repeat either at all or more than once or twice. Fan boys, do you get it? This problem/bug does INDEED cause one to MISS recordings rather than NOT miss them as some have stated. Your situation, fan boys, is obviously different, but ours is causing real problems. So, please, if you are doing fine with this bug and have nothing to add other than telling people to deal with it and essentially say that because it is not a problem for you, therefore, it aint no problem for anybody, kindly MUTE and MOVE ON, and leave those of us who are dealing with this legitimate PIA with use the forum for its discussion.

The point is, this is not what was sold to us about being able to record NEW episodes and the wonders of Dish DVR's. The machine is not operating as advertised and it seems Dish is doing nothing about it. I would hope that if Dish is trying to correct this, whoever is at fault Dish is still the responsible party to its customers, please let us know.

hemway, contrary to earlier posts, a manual timers, in many cases, does NOT help because since it is set to record only that one instance, often the DVR will NOT record it because of priority, even among other manual timers. Or that show has permanently changed days and times. Now, you are missing recordings despite the insincere "advice" of others. We still need the timer to search for subsequent airings and to record when the program returns with a new episode unexpectedly and at a different day and time (Big Time Rush does this, just as one example), so a manual timer is worth poopie, to say it nicely .

This really needs to be fixed. The only real solution I have--that actually helps you rather than dismiss you as some previous posts--and still allows the great flexibility of the timers to catch shows when they move day and time or can't record the first instance because of priority is to manually check your timers every few days and SKIP those that are repeats. Be aware that sometimes, the DVR will UNSKIP that instance the next day, so keep an eye on the Daily Schedule. I have gotten used to always checking Daily Schedule every day. If you have a "K," then it goes fast. If you don't, the SKIP process takes FOREVER! Hang in there.

 

[KAB]

hemwayIf you have a "K," then it goes fast. If you don't, the SKIP process takes FOREVER!

Huh?? Not here.

 

[Jim S.]

Skip takes forever on my 622.

 

[rjruby]

Skip takes forever on my 622.

What's "forever"?

 

[MikeD-C05]

Mon-Friday is the way to fix timers for shows like ORiley or in my case Keith Olberman. As for Comedy Central shows like Southpark I set up for weekly to catch the show ,when it is new each week. It isn't a great fix ,but I do catch only one of the shows and I don't miss new ones.

 

[ESPNSTI]

This happens because the guide info doesn't have information on what specific episode it is and the DVR records it just in case it is new, as mentioned before.
Aside from using the daily/mon-fri/weekly timer options, one way to fix it would be to change the software and add a preference option to the timers that let's you choose if you want to record these types of episodes or not.
This would be something along the lines of "Consider unknown episodes as new" or something of that nature.
I'm sure it may have happened before, but I can't remember any time one of these "unknown" episodes actually ended up being a new one on my timers.
Personally, instead of using daily/mon-fri/weekly timers, I use new and just manually skip these events, but then again I don't have a lot of them.
On the 622 it does take a long time to skip, but I think that is highly dependent on how many times/events you have.

 

[lakebum431]

Skip takes forever on my 622.

I have a 622, a 722k and a 922 and see no material difference in the time it takes to "skip" episodes on any of them.

 

[hemway]

Thanks everyone for your input bu I agree with DishSubLA 110%. This is a problem with a simple date compare. At least give us the option of deciding if we want to record 'new episodes' or not if the date is bad. I think I'm on my third DVR model and they have had the same problem with all of them.

Where's those Dish folks when you need them?

 

[Jim S.]

What's "forever"?

Long enough to make me wonder if it's actually received the command. Maybe around 5 seconds? (And before anyone says "that's not long", it is when you consider the speed a modern computer runs at -- at least any computer that I can stand using -- plus as someone else said, with some shows you can end up with a LOT of episodes to skip.)

 

[ESPNSTI]

I just timed a few skips on my 622, and it's about 8 seconds per skip at the moment, but I think it's longer if it actually has to do some "work" such as restoring another event that was skipped by priority as a result of this skip.

 

[lakebum431]

That's the thing, it isn't just "skipping" it is checking all other timers to see if that skip changes what needs to be recorded when. I don't think 5 or 8 seconds is unreasonable at all. If you have timers that are requiring you to skip that many items each day or week then, as previously suggested, you should probably change the type of timer you are using for that event.

 

[ESPNSTI]

Certainly, 5 or 8 seconds isn't outrageous, but it could be better.
The hard way to fix that would be to optimize scheduling for performance, which would be a bit dangerous for stability, so I wouldn't recommend that.
An easier way would be to add asynchronous skipping and possibly add the ability to select multiple events to skip, so you don't have to wait for it to finish.
The easiest fix would be to make sure there are less (or no) events to skip in the first place.