Cannot schedule future recording on 722!

[haertig]

What gives? I cannot get my 722 to record an event that starts 30 minutes from now by going to guide, highlighting the program, and hitting <select>. I've done this thousands of times in the past, but it won't work now. I did a soft reboot but it still won't schedule.

This is on the "VS" HD channel (AV's vs. Detroit Hockey game). I can't say that I've ever tried recording this particular channel before and I'm not currently at the DVR to test if other channels are affected.

Has anyone else experienced this problem?

 

[haertig]

Wait - I think I figured it out. There were three other recordings scheduled for later tonight (two on sat tuners, one on OTA tuner) that would eventually conflict with this hockey game I wanted to record. I guess I've never run into that situation before. It would be nice if the 722 would have a notification telling you that there are no more tuners to schedule a recording on, but it doesn't. It just silently ignores your pushing the <select> button. Or that's what it appears to be doing. I'll do more testing of this theory when I don't have so many recordings scheduled. I'll put in some dummy schedules for testing.

 

[Pepper]

that's weird, usually you'd get a big popup that asks how to resolve the conflict.

 

[haertig]

That's what I would have expected, but it did not happen.

I found a conflicting timer that I was willing to give up, told it to "skip", and then I was able to record the hockey game.

After the hockey game was over, I went back and tried to "restore" the timer I had skipped. No go. It was still 15 minutes until that timer was due to fire. I believe that the 722 extends sports recordings in case they run into overtime. This one didn't, so it should have been possible to restore the one I skipped. I tried and tried to restore it, but it kept saying there was a conflict. There was not conflict. I have two sat tuners an only one was scheduled for use. Weird behavior.

Then I had the bright idea to try to confuse the 722 out of its confusion by attempting to confuse it worse than it already was. This tactic has been know to work on brain-dead software. And in my case here, it DID work!

All along I had been in single mode on the 722. So I switched it to dual mode. no particular reason for this, except to try to confuse the 722. So while I had it in dual mode I went up to the second TV and attempted to restore my skipped even from there. Alas, it still told me that I had a conflicting timer (which I did not). I went back downstairs and pulled up the upcoming recording screen and lo and behold, my timer had been restored! Evidently the dual mode switch had confused the 722 into submission. Even though it told me it couldn't restore the timer, it did!

We'll have to see what the 722 actually does. I'll check the recording after it should be finished.

 

[DishSubLA]

It may have something to do with the OTA tuner timer. I have found that the 722 does not properly resolve nor warn of conflicts that involve the OTA tuner. For example, yesterday the 722 allowed me to program 2 events starting at the same time using the OTA timer: an IMPOSSIBLE task for the 722 as we all know there is only 1 OTA tuner, yet there it was on the Daily Schedule. I have experienced similar bugs very recently when the OTA tuner is involved.

One more oddball OTA timer example: I believe I had the OTA as background and it was delayed as I swapped between that tuner and a sat tuner for the news. When it came time for the OTA to fire for Nightline, there was no red light, and the Daily Schedule and DVR list indicated no recording in progress, but when I would try to access the OTA, I would get message saying that doing so would stop recording of the OTA. I responded to stop recording, but it would not allow me to view the OTA. This went on and on until Nightline ended--really the timer ended--and while all access was restored to normal, Nightline was never recorded.

There was even another anomaly when dealing with OTA tuner, but I can't remember the details of it now. However, I would say that problems relating to timers when the OTA's are involved are about only 10% percent of the time. The problems seem to occur when there is a conflict of two timers trying to use the OTA.

It is my belief there is a real bug here, and I hope Dish fixes it.

 

[mike123abc]

There is a bug with the 622 resolving the OTA tuner too some times. I usually make 2 timers one OTA and one on satellite. Usually I will get the satellite one if the OTA fails, but it will show it as having done the OTA.

 

[BobMurdoch]

When weird things start happening, do a reboot.....

It's the safest way to make sure you don't miss recording anything important to you...

 

[haertig]

When weird things start happening, do a reboot.....

Yeah, if I didn't know better I'd swear these DVR's were based on Windows. But I know they're Linux. In this case I don't think it's the OS though - it's the Dish application. Unfortunately there is no way to kill/restart the app other than rebooting the whole OS.