4 overlapping shows, on 2 different channels, at same time slots.

[Dimitri S.]

Hi Folks:
I want to record 2 back-to-back (PTAT) shows on NBC, and 2 back-to-back (non-PTAT) shows on Comedy Central, with 3-minute padding at the end of each show, during the same time slots.

How will the Hopper would handle the following scenario?:

Comedy Central
The Daily Show...........[8:00 - 8:33 PM]
............................................................[?]
Colbert Report..................................[8:30 - 9:03 PM]

Primetime Anytime (NBC)
30 Rock.........................[8:00 - 8:33 PM]
............................................................[?]
Parks & Rec.......................................[8:30 - 9:03 PM]
.................................................................................[?]
The Office...............................................................[9:00 - 9:33 PM]

How will the Hopper handle the red 3-minute overlapping segments?

When all's said and done, I wish to see the following on my DVR:
[8:00 PM - 8:33 PM] The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
[8:00 PM - 8:33 PM] 30 Rock (NBC)
[8:30 PM - 9:03 PM] Colbert Report (Comedy Central)
[8:30 PM - 9:03 PM] Parks & Rec (NBC)
[9:00 PM - 9:33 PM] The Office (NBC)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Dimitri

 

[lilexecutioner]

Hi Folks:
I want to record 2 back-to-back (PTAT) shows on NBC, and 2 back-to-back (non-PTAT) shows on Comedy Central, with 3-minute padding at the end of each show, during the same time slots.

How will the Hopper would handle the following scenario?:

Comedy Central
The Daily Show...........[8:00 - 8:33 PM]
............................................................[?]
Colbert Report..................................[8:30 - 9:03 PM]

Primetime Anytime (NBC)
30 Rock.........................[8:00 - 8:33 PM]
............................................................[?]
Parks & Rec.......................................[8:30 - 9:03 PM]
.................................................................................[?]
The Office...............................................................[9:00 - 9:33 PM]

How will the Hopper handle the red 3-minute overlapping segments?

When all's said and done, I wish to see the following on my DVR:
[8:00 PM - 8:33 PM] The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
[8:00 PM - 8:33 PM] 30 Rock (NBC)
[8:30 PM - 9:03 PM] Colbert Report (Comedy Central)
[8:30 PM - 9:03 PM] Parks & Rec (NBC)
[9:00 PM - 9:33 PM] The Office (NBC)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Dimitri

From what I saw last night on primetime anytime it recorded 4 channels at once on the 1 tuner! So your scenario will play put exactly as you stated and all the shows will be on the box. However the shows on NBC will be under PTAT and the others will be under dvr.

 

[Dimitri S.]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but are you saying that it'll place some of these shows, in a completely separate folder (PTAT) from all my other shows, even though I've *explicitly* pre-chosen to record ALL of them? That seems counter-intuitive.

If I've *explicitly* chosen to record an episode of The Office (with 3 minute padding), I expect to find it, along with the rest of my *explicitly* recorded shows. Just because the Hopper thought it's more efficient, to use the PTAT transponder in some instance, that shouldn't change where a user expects to find the shows he's explicitly chosen to record (and keep).

Can you confirm that I've understood you correctly?

 

[WheelieMan711]

In my understanding, if you have a timer set for a PTAT show it will still only use one tuner but it will "save" it to your main DVR folder. This way you can keep it for more than the eight days for PTAT, but still have two open tuners to record other shows.

 

[blackjackmark]

From what I saw last night on primetime anytime it recorded 4 channels at once on the 1 tuner! So your scenario will play put exactly as you stated and all the shows will be on the box. However the shows on NBC will be under PTAT and the others will be under dvr.

Actually the PTAT shows that have a timer set for them are located in both folders.

 

[blackjackmark]

Hi Folks:
I want to record 2 back-to-back (PTAT) shows on NBC, and 2 back-to-back (non-PTAT) shows on Comedy Central, with 3-minute padding at the end of each show, during the same time slots.

How will the Hopper would handle the following scenario?:

Comedy Central
The Daily Show...........[8:00 - 8:33 PM]
............................................................[?]
Colbert Report..................................[8:30 - 9:03 PM]

Primetime Anytime (NBC)
30 Rock.........................[8:00 - 8:33 PM]
............................................................[?]
Parks & Rec.......................................[8:30 - 9:03 PM]
.................................................................................[?]
The Office...............................................................[9:00 - 9:33 PM]

How will the Hopper handle the red 3-minute overlapping segments?

When all's said and done, I wish to see the following on my DVR:
[8:00 PM - 8:33 PM] The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
[8:00 PM - 8:33 PM] 30 Rock (NBC)
[8:30 PM - 9:03 PM] Colbert Report (Comedy Central)
[8:30 PM - 9:03 PM] Parks & Rec (NBC)
[9:00 PM - 9:33 PM] The Office (NBC)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Dimitri

You shouldn't have any problems. PTAT will still use only one tuner, even though the shows on NBC overlap. It just segments the data as your Timers asked it to do. See this post for my experience tonight on a similar matter.

The two non-PTAT recordings will then use both available tuners for that 3 minutes that overlap. So during that three minutes, you cannot watch live programming. If you were to set another no PTAT timer that would start at 8:30, I believe it will ignore the 3 minute end buffer on The Daily Show and start the Colbert Report at 8:30, since they're both on the same channel.

 

[Dimitri S.]

Thanks for the clarification. So, that's perfectly acceptable. All the above shows will record appropriately (with 3-minute padding at the end of each one), and will use 2 tuners, except for the 3 minutes (8:30 - 8:33 PM) where a 3rd tuner will be used to record the non-PTAT overlapping time (between the end of The Daily Show and start of The Colbert Report).

 

[blackjackmark]

Thanks for the clarification. So, that's perfectly acceptable. All the above shows will record appropriately (with 3-minute padding at the end of each one), and will use 2 tuners, except for the 3 minutes (8:30 - 8:33 PM) where a 3rd tuner will be used to record the non-PTAT overlapping time (between the end of The Daily Show and start of The Colbert Report).

I think you've got it, but just to clarify further:
Tuner #1-PTAT
Tuner #2-The Daily Show from 8:00-8:33
Tuner #3 The Colbert REport from 8:30-9:00 (or 8:29-9:00 if you set it to start 1 minute before)


The Hopper only has three tuners. One is used for PTAT, leaving two. So in your example, everything will record exactly as you spelled out.

However, if you have a third program set to record a non-PTAT program, you will NOT get the extended three minutes on The Daily Show. It will use ONE tuner for both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, whcih will give you The Daily Show from 8:00-8:30, and then The Colbert Report from 8:30-9:00, then the 3rd tuner is used for the third program. (and then you get the annoying gap between the two shows that used the same tuner, where one ends, and the next recording doesn't start immediately, but you lose probably 10 seconds while it swiotcheds timers.)

So then it would look like this:
Tuner #1-PTAT
Tuner #2-The Daily Show from 8:00-8:30
Tuner #2 The Colbert Report from 8:30-9:00 (since it's on the same channel as The Daily Show)
Tuner #3-Other non-PTAT program.

 

[Dimitri S.]

Thanks for the further clarification.

It's too bad that overlapping shows (when they occur on the same, non-PTAT, channel) can't use the same tuner and have the Hopper append and prepend the 3-minute overlap to both shows, as it writes them to the hard drive, without using an extra tuner for those 3 minutes.

But, it's a minor quibble. I'm perfectly content with using 3 tuners, so long as the padded times are honored, for all shows, in my original scenario.

 

[blackjackmark]

Thanks for the further clarification.

It's too bad that overlapping shows (when they occur on the same, non-PTAT, channel) can't use the same tuner and have the Hopper append and prepend the 3-minute overlap to both shows, as it writes them to the hard drive, without using an extra tuner for those 3 minutes.

But, it's a minor quibble. I'm perfectly content with using 3 tuners, so long as the padded times are honored, for all shows, in my original scenario.

Yeah, that would be nice. It's obviously possible because that's essentially what it's doing during the PTAT time. I had a timer for the Amazing Race with a 60 minute buffer, and it recorded the 120 minutes for it, as well as recorded a 60 minute window for The Good Wife, all while using only the PTAT timer Of course they're all screwed up because of basketball overrun, but I think you get the picture.

 

[Dimitri S.]

I agree. It's strictly a software limitation (and a trivial one, at that).

The data stream is already coming in, from tuner #1.
The software is already appending tuner #1's data stream (for the padded 3 minutes), into the 1st show's video file, on the hard drive.
Instead of using tuner #2, on the exact same channel, to create a new video file for the 2nd show, just use tuner #1's existing data stream, and duplicate it into the 2nd show's video file.

It's dead simple. We're talking 3 lines of code. And, as you pointed out, the Hopper is ALREADY doing this, for the PTAT tuner. So the algorithm to handle this is ALREADY part of the software. Dish just has to do a software update, to flip the switch, and allow the other 2 tuners to also use that same-channel logic.

 

[BearHuntr]

What we do for the Daily Show/Colbert Report is just set one timer for the Daily show with a 30 minute run late M-F. They are always in sync when it comes to new versus reruns.

 

[Dimitri S.]

But doing that won't guarantee both shows always get recorded. For example, what happens when John Stewart goes on vacation? The rerun episode of The Daily Show won't get recorded (and, thus, the new The Colbert Report won't be recorded).
Also, even when both are recorded, I'd have to pad the end time of The Daily Show for 1 hour. (Since it's not possible, to my knowledge, to choose a custom end time like 33 minutes. Thus, I'm forced to record The Colbert Report AND the show after that, and needlessly tying up the receiver for an additional 27 minutes).

 

[BearHuntr]

But doing that won't guarantee both shows always get recorded. For example, what happens when John Stewart goes on vacation? The rerun episode of The Daily Show won't get recorded (and, thus, the new The Colbert Report won't be recorded).
Also, even when both are recorded, I'd have to pad the end time of The Daily Show for 1 hour. (Since it's not possible, to my knowledge, to choose a custom end time like 33 minutes. Thus, I'm forced to record The Colbert Report AND the show after that, and needlessly tying up the receiver for an additional 27 minutes).

I have never seen Colbert be new when Daily show is a rerun, like I said, they are always in sync. I've never had to pad the end of Colbert past the 30 minutes after Daily Show as it doesn't run late for me. Never missed the end of Colbert. Just letting you know what works for us.

 

[Dimitri S.]

Just a couple weeks ago, The Colbert Report broadcast reruns for an entire week (Colbert's mother was very ill) while The Daily Show broadcast new episodes. This could have easily happened the other way around, causing The Colbert Report to not be recorded. Regarding the overrun, it happens to me all the time on DirecTV, but hopefully this won't be an issue for Dish and the Hopper. Anyway, I totally appreciate and thank you for your suggestion. It's certainly a 99.9% solution.