GutBomb said:
isn't the issue with american idol that it still is time based recording and not name based? it will record whatever is on fox on tuesday at 7 PM. not every occurence of american idol. since american idol is also on wednesdays wouldn't you also have to set up a timer to record the wednesday edition?
No GutBomb, the 522 now IS name based for the timers. You can still set timers by day/time/chan. if you really want to. They call that a "manual timer" now.
But when you set up a "Dish Pass" for American Idol for example, it will record every American Idol in the guide for the next eight days. It will of course skip duplicate episodes (it will just record one of the duplicates for you), and it will also skip any episode that's already been recorded onto the hard drive.
With Dish Passes you can also limit the channel you want it to follow for you. For example, I've Dish Passed the new NBC mini-series named Revelations. BUT, since NBC (General Electric) also owns CNBC, USA Network, Bravo Channel, and the Sci-Fi Channel, they are running the same episodes on ALL five channels. Since I don't need to clutter my Daily Schedule or timers with all the skipped duplicates, I've made the Dish Pass to just follow on one of the five channels.
If you set a Dish Pass for American Idol, it will record any instance of the program for you (provide it does not fall into a category I mentioned already...duplicate, etc) that shows up in the guide. If the day changes, start times changes, end time changes, or if they cancel (or ADD) a episode, it will adjust timer for you all on its own.
A few weeks back, totally unknown to me, a program I Dish Pass on ABC named Lost had changed end time from 8:00pm to 8:05pm. I don't know why they made this one episode 5 minutes longer but they did. If this was the old time based days, I would have missed the last 2 minutes of the show (5 minutes extra minus the 3 minutes end-buffer). The Dish Pass caught it and adjusted the end time for me. When it works right, it is a thing of beauty.