Questions about timer limits on Hopper 3

[dwinnie]

I've done some searching and haven't been able to find an answer to this question anywhere, and the Dish CS rep I chatted with didn't have a clue what I was talking about, he kept on saying it has 16 tuners.

I have 2 Hoppers with Slings and I'm thinking about changing to just one of the H3 units, but I need to see if there's a limit to the number of timers allowed on the H3s. The previous Dish DVRs had a maximum number to timers you were allowed to setup (I think it was 95, but I could be wrong). I haven't run into a limit on the Hoppers I currently have, but we have 102 timers on one Hopper and 123 on the other. If I went to just one Hopper 3, I'd need to have 225+ timers setup for the one unit, would the Hopper 3 be able to handle this many timers?

 

[JSheridan]

I've done some searching and haven't been able to find an answer to this question anywhere, and the Dish CS rep I chatted with didn't have a clue what I was talking about, he kept on saying it has 16 tuners.

I have 2 Hoppers with Slings and I'm thinking about changing to just one of the H3 units, but I need to see if there's a limit to the number of timers allowed on the H3s. The previous Dish DVRs had a maximum number to timers you were allowed to setup (I think it was 95, but I could be wrong). I haven't run into a limit on the Hoppers I currently have, but we have 102 timers on one Hopper and 123 on the other. If I went to just one Hopper 3, I'd need to have 225+ timers setup for the one unit, would the Hopper 3 be able to handle this many timers?

AFAIK it will do up to 200 timers.

 

[dwinnie]

Thank you. I think we may be able to make that work for us, we'll just need to see how far we can trim programs that are no longer on and haven't been cleaned up.

 

[ChadT41]

Remember, you can only have 1 H3, and replace the other Hopper with a Joey.

 

[xfoneguy]

The system has a rather cryptic way of letting you know you've reached your "timer limit" (or at least this is true for me) ...... when I've hit the limit, any attempt to create a new timer causes a popup message that says something to the effect "timer creation failed - please try again later" (or something similar). It would be nice if the message stated the reason clearly rather than making it look like an error or bug. It took me a while to realize what was going on. I wasted a lot of time.

 

[dwinnie]

ChadT41, thanks, but I don't think I'll need a Joey if I decide to make the switch to the H3. It is good to know that only one H3 receiver is allowed on a network.

xfoneguy, I had some time late last night so I decided to try setting up a number of one-time 30 minute timers until I reached the limit on both my Hoppers. Since one of them is PrimeTime and a couple of channels and the other is the rest of the channels, I thought it might be possible that PT programming *might* only be treated as one timer, but I was wrong. Actually PT took up one additional timer slot for PT at the #1 spot, so that Hopper only allowed 199. When I got to the Hopper limit, I got an error message that said I've reached the maximum number of timers and I'd have to delete a timer before I'd be allowed to add any new timers. I'm not sure why you received your cryptic message, mine was pretty clear what the issue was, just like it was on the previous 722 receivers I had.

I figured we could get our timers below the H3 limit just by combing through the ones setup to delete old ones that are either no longer aired or ones we don't care about. My wife and I have very different viewing tastes for the most part and with so many programs only showing 6-10 episodes a year, the number of timers climbs up faster than you think if you're not watching them. For right now, I can't figure out any benefit we'd get from switching to the new H3 receiver other than it costing $15 less per month. I may reconsider this once the H3 has been out a while longer and all of the bugs have been worked out.

 

[ChadT41]

Just to clarify, without a Joey there, you would not have independent viewing at that location. Cannot have an H3 and an H2 together. Just making sure.

 

[Deadlocked]

Thank you. I think we may be able to make that work for us, we'll just need to see how far we can trim programs that are no longer on and haven't been cleaned up.

I also rotate timers. Once a show is off for the season I remove the timer.


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[dwinnie]

Thanks ChadT41, I assumed that one of each wouldn't work. Right now I run each Hopper into my Denon receiver that has multiple zones and then distribute the signal throughout the house. I've had it wired that way a long time before Joey's came into the picture, so it works for me.

Deadlocked, I've done that before and there have been programs I've missed half of the next season because I forgot about it and it was on a channel I didn't regularly watch. However, I still think there's a lot of old ones we currently have that we could get rid of, I'm just not sure that there's a good enough reason to change at this time. I do like the USB 3.0, but then I'd only have one (active) EHD instead of the current two 2 TB EHDs.

 

[Bobby]

You could put both existing EHDs on a single Hopper3...

 

[xfoneguy]

ChadT41, thanks, but I don't think I'll need a Joey if I decide to make the switch to the H3. It is good to know that only one H3 receiver is allowed on a network.

xfoneguy, I had some time late last night so I decided to try setting up a number of one-time 30 minute timers until I reached the limit on both my Hoppers. Since one of them is PrimeTime and a couple of channels and the other is the rest of the channels, I thought it might be possible that PT programming *might* only be treated as one timer, but I was wrong. Actually PT took up one additional timer slot for PT at the #1 spot, so that Hopper only allowed 199. When I got to the Hopper limit, I got an error message that said I've reached the maximum number of timers and I'd have to delete a timer before I'd be allowed to add any new timers. I'm not sure why you received your cryptic message, mine was pretty clear what the issue was, just like it was on the previous 722 receivers I had.

I figured we could get our timers below the H3 limit just by combing through the ones setup to delete old ones that are either no longer aired or ones we don't care about. My wife and I have very different viewing tastes for the most part and with so many programs only showing 6-10 episodes a year, the number of timers climbs up faster than you think if you're not watching them. For right now, I can't figure out any benefit we'd get from switching to the new H3 receiver other than it costing $15 less per month. I may reconsider this once the H3 has been out a while longer and all of the bugs have been worked out.

Thanks for the info DWinnie - I don't know why I'm getting the weird message when I reach my limit but it has happened several times now. I discovered it by accident one day and now when I see it, I always check my timers. I delete a few and then I am able to create new ones, so I'm assuming this to be the problem. I guess it could be coincidental but it seems like it's happened too many times for that....... another thing I discovered concerning my "Timer Limits" was something interesting..... I was "cleaning house" and noticed a number of my movies showed in the "record" column, "New and Reruns" instead of "Record: Once" ... I wondered why. Digging further, I found that if I selected a movie from the Program Guide, and then clicked on "Record This", the popup off to the right showed "Recording Series", etc. As long as I use ANY other way of recording a movie, it's fine. It is only when I use the program guide, and "open" the movie, then select "Record This" that this occurs.
Thanks again for your research. Onward and upward!

(I was watching TV while typing this dialog and here we go again! My wife caught another unsolicited, recording-splitting 1AM reboot! GRRRRR!!!)

 

[xfoneguy]

I just had the "timer creation failed ......" popup again. I've proved to myself now that anytime I hit 199 timers, this happens. (time for some housecleaning!). I deleted one timer, created a new one - no popup. Tried to create another - boom! "Timer creation failed.....". It would sure make a lot more sense if the message just said something like "number of available timers exceeded".

 

[Deadlocked]

Thanks ChadT41, I assumed that one of each wouldn't work. Right now I run each Hopper into my Denon receiver that has multiple zones and then distribute the signal throughout the house. I've had it wired that way a long time before Joey's came into the picture, so it works for me.

Deadlocked, I've done that before and there have been programs I've missed half of the next season because I forgot about it and it was on a channel I didn't regularly watch. However, I still think there's a lot of old ones we currently have that we could get rid of, I'm just not sure that there's a good enough reason to change at this time. I do like the USB 3.0, but then I'd only have one (active) EHD instead of the current two 2 TB EHDs.

Make a spreadsheet like I do and check places like futioncritic for season premiere dates regularly


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