Auto-delete due to "Max Reached"?

[racerx-99]

Ok, I'm admittedly a Dish newbie, my history is with a Tivo Series 2 that I've had for years. I have a brand new 722K (with an OTA module installed), that I've had for about 2 days, so I'm still getting up to speed. It's hooked up to my internet through Dish's nifty new Dishcom powerline networking modules (which the tech setup on install). He also injected in the remote signals as well, as they weren't strong enough by themselves to reach from the other rooms. There's a whole bunch of signal combining going on in my setup!

I set up about 28 timers (mostly) and Dish Passes to be equivalent to the season passes on my old S2 Tivo. I set most of them up through Remote Access, since it was easier to type all the titles that way. Most of them are for "new episodes" only.

2 strange behaviors occurred after setup:

- Most of the 1st showing for each timer was *skipped* because it was supposedly a duplicate. Even though those episodes were clearly on their *original air date and time*, and this was a *brand new* 722. I manually restored each initial episode, and subsequent episodes seem to be fine AFAICT, but I'm naturally suspicious.

- Twice now, a show has recorded, and then auto-deleted due to "Max Reached" (as shown in History), when it was nowhere near the max episodes I set for the timer. For example, the Colbert Report recorded last night at 11:30-12:00 as it should, and it was the *first* episode of that show to record. I have the timer set for "New Episodes" with "Max Recordings" set to 10. At 12 pm (12 hours later) it auto-deleted with a message of "Max reached" WTF!?

Can anyone shed any light? Am I misunderstanding something?

 

[lakebum431]

I'm not sure what is going on with your specific question as the max should work. But coming from a Tivo something that you should know is that a Dish Pass is not the same thing as a Season Pass that you are used to. The Dish Pass only looks on the one channel you set it on. I personally don't use the Dish Pass for any of my timers. And I'm hard pressed to think of any time that one is the best option.

 

[gdarwin]

I have set up Dish Pass for "Soundstage". It would find programs on PBS and PLDIA all the time. Two different channels.

 

[n0qcu]

I'm not sure what is going on with your specific question as the max should work. But coming from a Tivo something that you should know is that a Dish Pass is not the same thing as a Season Pass that you are used to. The Dish Pass only looks on the one channel you set it on. I personally don't use the Dish Pass for any of my timers. And I'm hard pressed to think of any time that one is the best option.

The default for DISHpass is to search all channels. You can set it to search only one or only HD if you want.
The best use of DISHpass is if you don,t know what channel a movie for example will be on or if you want to record all shows ith a specific actor.

What I might do is set an HD DISHpass for Avatar then whatever HD premium channel shows it, it will record.

 

[boba]

Is your hard drive full of HDTV recordings? The storage capacity is much smaller than TiVo SD.

 

[racerx-99]

I'm not sure what is going on with your specific question as the max should work. But coming from a Tivo something that you should know is that a Dish Pass is not the same thing as a Season Pass that you are used to. The Dish Pass only looks on the one channel you set it on. I personally don't use the Dish Pass for any of my timers. And I'm hard pressed to think of any time that one is the best option.

Well, as was mentioned elsewhere, it sure seemed that the dish pass would look over multiple channels. It seemed equivalent to a Tivo Wish List to me. I did see the options to limit the dish pass to a particular channel or to HD only, though I did not choose them.

The main reason I used it for some entries was for shows that are not currently airing (like Rescue Me). As there is no episode for me to select and record, the next best thing I could think of was to set a Dish Pass for it.

 

[racerx-99]

Is your hard drive full of HDTV recordings? The storage capacity is much smaller than TiVo SD.

No, I've only just started recording shows, there are 54 hours of HD space remaining. And actually, the 722 is bigger than my old 80 hour Tivo, depending on how much HD vs. SD I record. But I appreciate the advice!

 

[KKlare]

While there is a limit of 96 timers of any kind, dish pass or fixed day/date, there is also a limit on the total number of shows in this weeks queue. The number is like 250 or 500, examine it in Menu+7 or DVR thrice. It is easy with passes of frequently repeated shows to exceed that limit and get a max-shows-exceed message. Certainly before the disk is filled or even the timer list. Be specific for the shows you want and limiting it to channel or HD etc., where applicable, can help.
BTW, it is possible to exceed the 96 timers with Dish Remote Access but come the daily reset it will be truncated to 96, now.
-Ken

 

[racerx-99]

While there is a limit of 96 timers of any kind, dish pass or fixed day/date, there is also a limit on the total number of shows in this weeks queue. The number is like 250 or 500, examine it in Menu+7 or DVR thrice. It is easy with passes of frequently repeated shows to exceed that limit and get a max-shows-exceed message. Certainly before the disk is filled or even the timer list. Be specific for the shows you want and limiting it to channel or HD etc., where applicable, can help.
BTW, it is possible to exceed the 96 timers with Dish Remote Access but come the daily reset it will be truncated to 96, now.
-Ken

Hmm, that woud prevent it from *recording*, not cause it to be deleted, right? Also, I've checked and there are only 89 scheduled recording right now, with 27 timers, no conflicts and 95 skipped (duplicates or "not a new episode").

But that's a good heads up, I'll make sure to limit those dish passes down to a specific channel.

 

[racerx-99]

- Twice now, a show has recorded, and then auto-deleted due to "Max Reached" (as shown in History), when it was nowhere near the max episodes I set for the timer. For example, the Colbert Report recorded last night at 11:30-12:00 as it should, and it was the *first* episode of that show to record. I have the timer set for "New Episodes" with "Max Recordings" set to 10. At 12 pm (12 hours later) it auto-deleted with a message of "Max reached" WTF!?

Ok, I have a 2-part theory for this, maybe someone can confirm.

First, I think perhaps the definition of "Max Recordings" might be different from what I thought. Does a "Max recordings" setting of "N" on a Timer mean that the oldest recording on that timer will be deleted after "N' recordings, or after "N+1"? If the former (which is different than Tivo), then that would explain why I seem to be seeing a max recordings of "N-1" for any given timer.

Second, I think there may be a bug in how it reads "10" max recordings. It may be taking that as "1" instead. That would explain (in combination with the above) why a timer with a "Max recordings" of "10" would have its first recording autodeleted due to "Max Reached".

The only other thing I could possibly think of is if Max recordings was referring to the number of recordings on the DVR, not in the timer, which would make no sense. I hope that's not the case.

 

[slick1ru2]

I'm not sure what is going on with your specific question as the max should work. But coming from a Tivo something that you should know is that a Dish Pass is not the same thing as a Season Pass that you are used to. The Dish Pass only looks on the one channel you set it on. I personally don't use the Dish Pass for any of my timers. And I'm hard pressed to think of any time that one is the best option.

I use Dish Pass only a couple of times too. Like when SyFy and History were going to both have a same titled show on at the same time, UFO Hunters. And if I know a show will eventually come on a certain channel and I missed it.

 

[KKlare]

Note that if the maximum number of show is exceeded the oldest is tossed first.
Protected shows are not included in the max count IIRC and AFAIK the show is added before the deletion and it may not delete a partial/corrupted show.

Shows restored from EHD are protected whether they were or were not protected before, possibly so they will not be the oldest and first to be deleted. This also prevent restoring so much that some of those are deleted by new restores--that would take a long time with a big disk.
-Ken

 

[DishSubLA]

While there is a limit of 96 timers of any kind, dish pass or fixed day/date, there is also a limit on the total number of shows in this weeks queue. The number is like 250 or 500, examine it in Menu+7 or DVR thrice. It is easy with passes of frequently repeated shows to exceed that limit and get a max-shows-exceed message. Certainly before the disk is filled or even the timer list. Be specific for the shows you want and limiting it to channel or HD etc., where applicable, can help.
BTW, it is possible to exceed the 96 timers with Dish Remote Access but come the daily reset it will be truncated to 96, now.
-Ken

The Events Timer list is closer to 370, I think, and yes, I the Timer list is 96, still, me thinks.

 

[DishSubLA]

Hmm, that woud prevent it from *recording*, not cause it to be deleted, right? Also, I've checked and there are only 89 scheduled recording right now, with 27 timers, no conflicts and 95 skipped (duplicates or "not a new episode").

But that's a good heads up, I'll make sure to limit those dish passes down to a specific channel.

Make certain you view your Events list (timers scheduled to record) on the Daily Schedule screen in the SHOW SKIPPED mode to see the REAL number of event in the memory.

However, you are correct, this would only prevent the event from being recorded until the time passes for an event in memory, so if it is the recording being deleted from your DVR list, then that is another problem.

If all is as it should be, you should call Dish Tech support and you may have to have it RMA'd.

 

[DishSubLA]

I use Dish Pass only a couple of times too. Like when SyFy and History were going to both have a same titled show on at the same time, UFO Hunters. And if I know a show will eventually come on a certain channel and I missed it.

Oh, yes I have a " UFO " DishPass, myself, dare I miss any show having to do with UFO's in the INFO portion.

 

[KKlare]

Yes, that "370" or however many events it is for the (press DVR 3 times or Menu+7) 8-day event list includes the "skipped" ones. So it is not hard to exceed that for shows with a lot of repeats and get a message. But I'm not trying to find out, thanks. I would hate to lose some timers/events because I did try.

I just wish it would keep my changes to event timers. It does until the next "nightly" update. It keeps them when you look at the event but the value in the list reverts to the original description and that is used despite the changes still being there.
-Ken

 

[racerx-99]

Make certain you view your Events list (timers scheduled to record) on the Daily Schedule screen in the SHOW SKIPPED mode to see the REAL number of event in the memory.

However, you are correct, this would only prevent the event from being recorded until the time passes for an event in memory, so if it is the recording being deleted from your DVR list, then that is another problem.

If all is as it should be, you should call Dish Tech support and you may have to have it RMA'd.

Thanks, that's where I think I'm going to end up. I called Dish support 3 times last night and the last call ended up going towards an onsite tech visit and replacement (since it's only 3 days old). However, the 3rd call got disconnected AGAIN (all 3 calls ended up with me either being disconnected or sent back to the opening menu at some point), and the CSR *never* called me back, so I suppose I will have to do the exercise all over again.

At this point I've set all timers to "#" max recorded, and protected all of them except for the 3 or 4 that are basically rerun "fluff" that my wife likes to have just for distraction purposes. We'll see if that helps.

 

[DishSubLA]

For what it is worth, for the first time, last night I went to set a new timer using the guide and I noticed that at the bottom it was pre-set to "20 Maximum Recorded Events for this Timer," meaning it was PRE-set to erase my recordings (unprotected, it should be) at the 20th recording. I have always set my timers at "#" meaning no maximum. Somehow something (a software download?) altered my system settings. I suppose I will have to change the 20 to # and set it as default all over again.