Spontaneous random infomercial recordings?

[Dee_Ann]

Ok, this probably sounds weird but has anyone's tuner just randomly recorded infomercials for no reason at all?

My vip211k has been. I absolutely DESPISE all infomercials, I refuse to watch them no matter what snake oil or pie in the sky they are peddling.
There is no way I would ever record one. But my tuner has been recording them all by itself at different times of the day and night, different channels, different products, none related.

Is Dish Network making this happen? Or is there a bug in the tuner?

Just a few minutes ago I found my tuner recording one and I hadn't touched it or the remote all day. All day long I had been watching my FTA tuner. When I switched over to my Dish tuner, there it is, again, recording an infomercial.
Or I think they are better described as Deceptomercials. Or Scammercials.

I also thought about what the potential causes of this could be. Like a scheduled recording that was pre-empted by an scammercial. Nope.
I don't record stuff during the daytime. In this case, it was recording on a local OTA ATSC channel. I don't ever record anything, ever, from OTA ATSC. I have never created any timers to record anything or any series or any shows on any OTA channels.


What I find odd is that the several times it's done this, it wasn't just random TV shows, it was always scammercials. THAT, is fishy..

Is it just me?

 

[TheKrell]

No, it's not just you. We all get these from time to time. I despise them too.

 

[dare2be]

?

The only "infomercials" I ever get recorded that I don't initiate are the 2-6 minute Dish ads that are aired in the wee hours (2-4am) of the morning...and then that is only maybe once a week or two...

 

[Yespage]

Do you have any timers in your scheduler? It could be possible that there is a term you have in a timer that could be snagging these infomercials. I'm presuming you mean actual informercials, not merely the short few minute advertisements Dish puts on there.

 

[dare2be]

What I find odd is that the several times it's done this, it wasn't just random TV shows, it was always scammercials. THAT, is fishy..

Is it just me?

Look in your Scheduled Events list (or whatever it's called on the Hopper), see if any upcoming infomercials are in the list, and then go into the timer for that event to see if there is a rogue setting that is causing the timer to pick up the infomercial.

 

[Dee_Ann]

Actual, full length 30-60 minute infomercials that show up in the guide clearly labeled as an infomercial.

I do have timers to record series like Auction Hunters, Storage wars, etc.. I found a show I like and pressed search. It shows me a list of all the shows it found. I select one then while viewing the description of the show I create a timer for that show.
Some shows I have it set to record all episodes, like Auction Hunters. Some things, I set to record only new episodes of shows. ALL the recording timers are for satellite channels only. No recordings are ever for OTA channels.
I do have timers created to simply change channels to various OTA channels throughout the day but that's all, they change the channel, not record.

This random recording doesn't happen very often so I don't believe it's a timer I have else it would happen every day. I've gone through a triple checked all my timers to be sure none are goofy.

As for little clips of promos by Dish, I have never seen that happen. Yet.

What I do find though, is after the 40 minute disk check, system updates and guide download routine every flippin morning, it goes to a screen that informs me the unit is powered down, which it clearly is not. It can't display messages on my screen if there's no power flowing through it. It's fully powered up and they aren't fooling me.

There are however, little marquee messages float around the screen in screen saver style telling me the unit is powered down and also trying to entice me to purchase PPV movies (which I have no interest in)...

What I am wondering though, is what happens if I actually have something I want to record? Will these unwanted recordings interfere with the things I DO want to record?
They are most certainly interfering with things I want to watch.

As I've mentioned, I have timers set so that all day long it auto-tunes to channels for my favorite shows that I want to watch. Judge Joe Brown, Judge Judy, People's Court, The View, The Talk, Hawaii 5.0, etc..
I just want to auto-tune and watch those things, not record them. So these recordings do prevent my timers for auto-tuning things. It's annoying but not the end of the world.
I have to go through and delete them as well but still not the end...

I just think it's a little rude for this sort of thing to be going on.

Seriously, I deeply despise all commercials. I block them on the internet, I mute them on the TV and skip through them with the DVR. They're repetitive, intrusive, annoying and many times they are offensive and always misleading. I don't want people trying to sway me to exchange my money for garbage. I don't like angry lawyers barking at me, I don't like aggressive men hollering at me to buy a truck. I am sick of people with faux British and Australian accents trying to peddle insurance, vacuum cleaners and exercise bikes.

I only wish there were a way to banish commercials from my TV as well as I've banished them from my internet browsing. Even something as simple as a device that detects and auto-mutes and un-mutes the TV during commercials, that I would pay for, at any price. But then the profiteers would find a way to circumvent it and continue their intrusion into my life.


As with everything else, I'm sure there's no way to stop or prevent this from happening. Just like the mandatory daily download/update/check thing.
If this is the way it is, I guess there's nothing more I can say or do about it.. Just another thing to learn to live with I guess..

 

[CK SatGuy]

Sounds like your receiver needs to be replaced if it keeps saying it's powered down and does random recordings.

 

[Jim S.]

What I do find though, is after the 40 minute disk check, system updates and guide download routine every flippin morning, it goes to a screen that informs me the unit is powered down, which it clearly is not. It can't display messages on my screen if there's no power flowing through it. It's fully powered up and they aren't fooling me.

There are however, little marquee messages float around the screen in screen saver style telling me the unit is powered down and also trying to entice me to purchase PPV movies (which I have no interest in)...

That's normal.

Recording things you don't tell it to record (aside from the 2-minute ads from Dish once a month or so) isn't normal -- I have no idea what TheKrell is talking about, unless he thought you were talking about those.

It's a long shot, but you may want to change your remote control address to something other than the default, in case somebody else has a Dish remote within range of your receiver. (Then again, I don't know if the 211 even uses an RF remote...)

 

[Tampa8]

I think we all thought you meant the few minute to maybe 10 minute downloads at night. For instance I record the FX show Justified, and get a 7 minute overview of it each week. I didn't ask for it, but I just delete it if I don't need to watch it.

That said, we don't get actual infomercials downloaded. It also does not take anywhere near 40 minutes for a Dish receiver to update. I tried to read carefully but I don't see where you say exactly what the infomercials are about. Tell us exactly the time and what infomercial, and what channel shows when you play it back.

 

[Dee_Ann]

It's not downloading infomercials, it's recording them from my OTA antenna input.


The long down time every morning, I detailed that in a different thread. I've never yet seen the tuner download 2 minute clips from the satellite. Yet.

Maybe the thing is searching the guide looking for keywords and that's triggering the recordings?
I would have thought that it would search the titles only and stay within the channels. Like if I create a timer to record only new episodes of American Chopper which only airs on Discovery channel, I would think it wouldn't check other channels for new episodes. I dunno... I guess ~something~ in the infomercial guide info is triggering this to happen.

I guess next time it happens I'll take a screen shot of the guide info for whatever is being recorded so I can figure out why this happens.
The few times it has, I just find it, get annoyed and cancel it without looking at anything.

Next time I'll pay more attention...


And my remotes, are IR but I converted them to UHF with a third party, after market doo-dad, it's a little battery thing with a transmitter built in. So it's extremely unlikely a neighbor has the same thing.

 

[Tampa8]

Depends. If you use the Dish Pass type timer it looks everywhere, otherwise the timer only looks at the channel you are searching. Check your timers, there must be one set on an OTA channel for a certain infomercial by mistake.

 

[KAB]

Deary, deary, Dee.

 

[Mr Tony]

Maybe the thing is searching the guide looking for keywords and that's triggering the recordings?
I would have thought that it would search the titles only and stay within the channels. Like if I create a timer to record only new episodes of American Chopper which only airs on Discovery channel, I would think it wouldn't check other channels for new episodes. I dunno... I guess ~something~ in the infomercial guide info is triggering this to happen.

DishPass searches all channels. I dont even know if the 211k has that option

But if you find a program and hit record then choose NEW or ALL it only searches that channel and no other channels for that program. Like as example when I had it record 2 1/2 men episodes off CBS (until I realized this season sucked) it didnt look at the episodes on FX or my local My Network station that shows the older episodes

 

[Mr Tony]

It's a long shot, but you may want to change your remote control address to something other than the default, in case somebody else has a Dish remote within range of your receiver. (Then again, I don't know if the 211 even uses an RF remote...)

it shouldn't be the default. She bought the 211k from me and I had it set for like 14. I know there was a thread when she ran into that issue. Other remotes wouldnt work and only the one I sent with it worked

 

[Joe Capitano]

Actual, full length 30-60 minute infomercials that show up in the guide clearly labeled as an infomercial.

But not by title in all cases. These days, they try to sucker you in with titles like "Over 55 with Joint Pain?", "Food Lovers Diet!", "Brazil Bum Bums!", "Best Pillow Ever!" and in the case of Time Life Music stuff like "Otis Redding, Al Green, Four Tops." Even more deceptively, titles of actual shows like "The Carol Burnet Show" and "The Dean Martin Show" - which are ads for DVD sets and not telecasts of the actual shows themselves. It's listed as Paid-Time Programming in the description, but not out front where it belongs.

 

[Mr Tony]

But not by title in all cases. These days, they try to sucker you in

actually Tribune allows you to put in the title

In 2008 Tribune Media Services and Gemstar-TV Guide/Rovi began to relax the guidelines for listing infomercials within their electronic program guide listings. Previously all infomercials were listed under the title "Paid Programming" (except for exceptions listed below), but now infomercial producers are allowed to submit a title and limited synopsis (phone numbers/websites to order a product/service seem to be disallowed) of the program's content to the listings providers.

"Best Pillow Ever!"

Hey now...I work for them and it pays the bills
(seriously...I do)

 

[Tampa8]

it shouldn't be the default. She bought the 211k from me

Dee we found the problem. You got the receiver from Iceberg, he obviously had his receiver set to record infomercials..... Did he try to sell you any Ginsu products?

 

[Dee_Ann]

Oh no no... Iceberg has clean hands in this..
He reset everything back to factory settings. The thing looked brand new and unused. He took exceptional care of it..

I'm thinking, or was thinking, that ether it was Dish causing it to happen for some reason. But then after reading some of the things you guys have thrown out, I'm beginning to believe it's probably happening because of some snaky snake underhanded trickery the deceptomercial people are playing with the guide info. Some key words maybe that trigger the machine to record things.

I do see that in the menus there is an option called Dish Pass. I have no idea what it is, I don't mess with it, I don't understand it and have left it alone.

The way I set timers is as follows.

I'm browsing through the guide and I see a listing for Auction Hunters. If the show is not play yet, if it's still in the future, I can press select and it takes me to a screen to create a timer.
I can select type: DVR, Auto tune, Reminder, Ext (I don't know what reminder or ext are, never tried them yet, I only use DVR and Auto-tune)
and Frequency: All Episodes, New Episodes, Once, Weekly, Daily, Mon-Fri.

There's priority, options, Dish Pass, and buttons to bail out or get help. I don't know about the Dish Pass thing, never used it..

That's how I make timers. I've also had to make some manual timers because some OTA sub-channels just show up as "Digital Service" and there is no guide info for them.
I've made manual timers for some of them to auto-tune to shows that come on during the day.

I have quite a few of my timers allocated to auto-tuning various daytime OTA shows, actually I auto-tune shows all day from 6am to 7pm then from 10pm to 6am. There are recurring shows that I like to watch every day but NOT record them.
I could manually tune them but I'm lazy and I think it's neat to have it auto-tune. I've been using auto-tune on my Home Theater PC for a few years to tune in OTA and FTA shows.

One thing that gives me fits is the priority settings. But that's a different issue from this.

I guess the thing to do is just go through and delete all my timers and make new ones and be careful to notice what each one's settings are.

I guess one or more of them is not right and maybe that's why this happens.

One other thing that just occurred to me, networks pre-empting shows. Maybe that messes with things too. Even though I set a time to auto-tune to the evening news, last week they were airing flippin basketball all week and even the local evening news was pre-empted! I was livid! But I also noticed that it didn't auto-tune to those channels as I would have thought it would. Rather than the timer blindly tuning to channel 40 every weeknight at 6pm, it seemed to check the guide to see if the news was actually listed. That wasn't a problem for me at all because it did not tune to the stupid basketball games, thankfully! So rather than tune to the channel, it stayed on the last channel it auto-tuned and I was sitting there going "Huh.. Why didn't it switch to the news?" so then I manually changed channels and discovered the dumb sports stuff. So I guess when you make a timer from the guide it checks the guide every single time before it tunes or records. Apparently manual timers are "dumb timers" or "blind timers" and those are really handy to have. Actually not having those would be the pits..

All in all, the tuner is pretty much idiot proof but I'm finding new ways to break things and disprove that theory, every day..
Maybe I should check on Youtube for videos on how to use this thing..

 

[Mr Tony]

I do see that in the menus there is an option called Dish Pass. I have no idea what it is, I don't mess with it, I don't understand it and have left it alone.

Dish Pass allows you to type in key words and it will search all channels for shows that match up. I posted an example in post 13 but you can have it search for really anything. The way you are doing timers it only looks for programs on THAT channel

So I guess when you make a timer from the guide it checks the guide every single time before it tunes or records. Apparently manual timers are "dumb timers" or "blind timers" and those are really handy to have.

correct. If its set for a show it makes sure that show is on. So if your local news maybe did it an hour earlier those days (like my local CBS did....they did their 6:00 news at 5:00 because of the bouncey ball) the timer would have fired. Manual timers are like VCR timers. They go at a set time and dont give a rats patoot what program you're recording. They just record from 5:00-5:30 as example.

 

[Corrado]

I have had my 211 with EHD since last July and have never had it decide to record some irrelevant program on it's own. Unless I messed up setting to timer to record all. Like last week when I setup to record a Top Gear episode where they shot a segment at a local airport. I somehow recorded all the BBC-A and History Channel Top Gear shows airing that day before I caught it.