# Timer Limit on 622?



## RobR7 (Jan 23, 2006)

I ran into an error about hitting some sort of limit with the number of timers set on my 622. The number of timers I had listed were 21... I find it hard to believe there is a hard limit for only 21 timers. I never ran into this on my HD Tivo. Any ideas?


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

The limit doesn't come into play with the number of timers defined, but with the number of events created by those timers. All events are counted, including duplicates, so I could potentially see hitting the limit if you set all 21 timers up to be all episode timers for shows that repeat a lot, or if you set up a lot of not very specific dish passes.


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## RobR7 (Jan 23, 2006)

Pretty sure it's the kid shows... we're building up a large library on tap. As not to drive ourselves nuts with the same episodes over and over again. :sure: I'll go ahead and trim from DishPass to specific DVR time/dates. Bummer though, I still wonder what the technical limit is  and why is it even there.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

If memory serves me..

It is in the mid to upper mid to upper 96 for timers and in the 200's for timer events. One think you can do is don't you Dish Pass for your kid shows and also keep only last X shows. I do the same thng but only keep the last 3 recorded show for each timer. Don't think that will help with the timer events but it will keep the drive maintenance easier.

Here is a thread on the topic that will provide more info.
http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=55101&highlight=Timer+Maximum


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## BobaBird (Mar 31, 2002)

Maximum of 96 timers finding a maximum of 288 possible events, whichever comes first.


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## MarcusInMD (Jan 7, 2005)

I just hit my limit today too and I only had 33 timers setup. This bites.


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## RobR7 (Jan 23, 2006)

So 288 is the magic number to avoid. I still don't get why technically but at least I know what to work against.

So here's my follow-up question... and its a newbie question...

To get the number down, do I...

Set up a Pass and limit it to a channel

or

Set up a DVR Timer to only record new.

If I can some how get one of these to do both requirements, I'll be happy... otherwise I don't see how.


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## CABill (Mar 20, 2005)

Ignoring a case like doing a Pass for CSI on channel X (which also finds CSI NY and a "New" DVR event for CSI on channel X (name is EXACT match there), they would both have the same number of events. It doesn't matter that you pick New instead of All episodes though. It is still the same number of events - the number of matches in the EPG. Those matches may say "not a new episode" or "duplicate event", but the same number of the 288 are used up. When you setup a Pass or Timer, you can see the number of events my scrolling through its list of matches.


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## RobR7 (Jan 23, 2006)

I can lock a DVR event to a channel also?


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## CABill (Mar 20, 2005)

Actually, you cannot NOT lock a DVR timer to a channel. A DVR timer will record a show with the exact same name you have selected on the channel you have selected. Only a DishPASS will match across multiple channels (unless restricted to a specific channel).


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## RobR7 (Jan 23, 2006)

Well, I must've agitated the 622 or something cause I cleaned out some recordings and redid some timers... now a bunch of shows give me an error 7 when I try to play them. Oh boy I'm I really starting to miss my TiVo. Can we start a petition just to ask E* to pay off Tivo and get it over with?


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## Montyward (Aug 16, 2006)

After seeing the limit was 288, I went into my to do list and noticed 166 events. In looking through those events, there were several shows that were not scheduled to record because it was labeled "Incorrect Event." One was something about Gene Simmons on A&E. I have never set anything up on A&E or particularly Gene Simmons. I'm wondering why this would populate the to do list, even though it says it will skip. I've noticed a few other shows that seem to be in the list that are net setup as Timers of DishPasses. Any thoughts?

Monty


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Monty - sounds like you need to change your UHF remote address. Your 622 may be recording things your neighbor is defining.


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## BobMurdoch (Apr 24, 2002)

Does it include repeats f shows that it doesn't record in the 288?

I keep hitting the limit and I think my wife's Good Eats shows on FOOD are the culprit... Tons of repeats are clogging up my schedule, ditto for the kiddies and some of their cartoons which repeat through the day...


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Yes the repeats count towards the 288 maximum.


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## Montyward (Aug 16, 2006)

Mark Lamutt said:


> Monty - sounds like you need to change your UHF remote address. Your 622 may be recording things your neighbor is defining.


It has yet to record anything I haven't asked it to, but it shows them in the to do list or guide with the "won't record" symbol through it. I'm just worried about these being in the list should I ever get to the timer/event limits. So far it hasn't been a problem.


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## grooves12 (Oct 27, 2005)

Everybody is talking about workarounds etc. like this is an acceptable course of action. This is a HUGE finctionality limitation and should be priority #1 for the Dish DVR software group.

Where do we e-mail/contact them where we KNOW they are hearing our complaints??


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## grooves12 (Oct 27, 2005)

email just sent to [email protected] regarding this issue, and I recommend anyone else experiencing the problem do the same. The only way it will get fixed is if they hear our complaints, and LOUDLY.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

grooves... Yes it is a functionality limitation, but I disagree it is HUGE and the reason is that based on all the posts I read a majority of people are not running into this one. Yes I would like them to increase the limits and hopefully that is an easy thing to do but the fact based on posts here that this limitation is not one that the majority of users are running into. At least that is the impression I get from the posts here. 

Yes I would love to see it increased but I would not consider this Priority #1 based on the posts here.


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## grooves12 (Oct 27, 2005)

Ron Barry said:


> grooves... Yes it is a functionality limitation, but I disagree it is HUGE and the reason is that based on all the posts I read a majority of people are not running into this one. Yes I would like them to increase the limits and hopefully that is an easy thing to do but the fact based on posts here that this limitation is not one that the majority of users are running into. At least that is the impression I get from the posts here.
> 
> Yes I would love to see it increased but I would not consider this Priority #1 based on the posts here.


I wouldn't have a problem with it, if it didn't COMPLETLY lock you out from making any more timers after a certain point. I think anything that makes a user change their actions or worsego in and delete certain things from recording is a HUGE limitation. People that are not experiencing the problem likely aren't recording cable shows that have several repeats. (Daily Show, Colbert Report, South Park, any sports talk show, etc.) Forcing these to Daily records is a workaround, but then you end up having worse types of conflicts, and miss recording you would otherwise get.

To me it is a shortsighted limitation, and something I never experienced with a Tivo box. It should be fixed right away. I only have 27 timers set up... yet at this point I have to delete things from recording if I want to record ANYTHING further. That is a rediculous limitation to me.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Well I have timers for Pokemon, Curious George, and a number of other kid shows that have a lot repeats. All boxes have limitations and if you go look at the post on the D* side of things you will see a similar issue. Yes it is a limitation, Yes I would like to see it raised, however, like I said based on the amount of post relating to this issue I would not consider it ridiculous at all. 

Like I said, I would like to see these limits increased because a number of poeple have ran into the ceiling. However, In srome cases by changing the type of timer used can help reduse the number of timer events and could help this situation. 

Once again.. I am arguing increasing the limit, just the priority.


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## normang (Nov 14, 2002)

It would be nice to know if there is a reasonable technical explanation for the limits, or whether someone just thought that the current limits seemed like numbers no one would ever hit. 

I can see a situation where if your recording 20 instances of ShowXYZ a day, because of a mis-configured timer, then you could easily run out of disk space depending on how close you were paying attention. Which is worse, filling up your disk or running low on timers because you've got one consuming all your events.


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## BobMurdoch (Apr 24, 2002)

The problem is with shows that have multiple repeats throughout the week, it won't record every instance *even when "all" is checked, but I believe it still counts towards the limit as it shows up on the schedule_


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## Rob Glasser (Feb 22, 2005)

BobMurdoch said:


> The problem is with shows that have multiple repeats throughout the week, it won't record every instance *even when "all" is checked, but I believe it still counts towards the limit as it shows up on the schedule_


That is my understanding as well, any 'event' listed in the schedule counts towards the event limit, it does not matter if it's set to skip or not.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Correct.. I thought about why this is the case and I do have my theories. Without knowing the details why this is the case, I would welcome both improvements in Timer event management and an increase in the limits if possible. 

My guess is both of these desires are not easy to accomplish and are high risk enhancements.


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## jraudy (Dec 16, 2003)

Ron Barry said:


> grooves... Yes it is a functionality limitation, but I disagree it is HUGE and the reason is that based on all the posts I read a majority of people are not running into this one. Yes I would like them to increase the limits and hopefully that is an easy thing to do but the fact based on posts here that this limitation is not one that the majority of users are running into. At least that is the impression I get from the posts here.
> 
> Yes I would love to see it increased but I would not consider this Priority #1 based on the posts here.


I agree with you Ron based on what a have read in the forum. However, the following may raise the priority some. My example is: am a heavy billiards viewer but bombarded with reruns I don't want. As I see it, there is only one way to get new billiards shows that can appear on 4 different channels. Create a DVR timer for each channel. That eats up 4 timers! I am always near the 96 max so this is another plea for an increase allowed for the # of timers (and events).

Another example is seeking NEW shows that contain 'UFO'. Since this request could occur on numerous channels, I just have to 'bite the bullet' and be contented with the ones on the History Channel. Thsuly, a plea for the Dish Pass to include the NEW feature is near the top of my list.

I saw [email protected] as a viable address to get things done. Are there any other addresses you have had luck with. Thanks tons, Jim.


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## davethestalker (Sep 17, 2006)

My 722 has gone stupid in the past by saying I've reached my limit when I wanted to record something new (one time, series...does not matter). But, this inconvenience has not happened in a couple of months. 

Today, I went to set a timer to record the Bear's game and I got the message that I have reached the limit So, I deleted a timer. Went back to set the game timer and got the stupid message again. Did a hard reboot, went to set the timer and still got the message. So, I deleted another....and another...and how many more of my shows do I have do terminate to satisfy the inane timer limit?

I have timers set for all year round, I should not be forced to remove timers based on seasonal programming. There should be NO limit on timers.

Now, after uplugging the unit, I was able to set the timer.

This is a bug and needs to be fixed. 

When I had my Homezone, I had around 90 timers and it never so much as quivered.


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

davethestalker said:


> My 722 has gone stupid in the past by saying I've reached my limit when I wanted to record something new (one time, series...does not matter). But, this inconvenience has not happened in a couple of months.
> 
> Today, I went to set a timer to record the Bear's game and I got the message that I have reached the limit So, I deleted a timer. Went back to set the game timer and got the stupid message again. Did a hard reboot, went to set the timer and still got the message. So, I deleted another....and another...and how many more of my shows do I have do terminate to satisfy the inane timer limit?
> 
> ...


If I remember correctly, the timer limit is around 255. How many do you have set?


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## davethestalker (Sep 17, 2006)

75 (now 73)


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

davethestalker said:


> 75 (now 73)


Recurring timers will generate more timer events. For instance, I have a single timer set for The First 48; It has generated 12 timer events. This may be what's happening to you. I don't know of a way to see how many "events" have been scheduled without checking each timer. Have you added a timer recently that has generated many events?


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## davethestalker (Sep 17, 2006)

The last modifications done to my timers prior to this was with a M-F timer (EPSN's PTI). Last night I checked the schedule to make sure it was set, and (as I've posted before) the timer was blank (no episodes scheduled). I had to do "the trick" (see this thread edit the timer frequency and then set it back to the original - new to all, then all back to new) to get episodes to populate.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

The limits are 96 on Timers and 288 on timer events based on the sticky link I just looked at.

There are a number of discussions on this topic its limits. There is a link in the FAQ Sticky for discussions on why this is and possible way to get around it. My gut tells me for 95% of the people using 722 this is not an issue at all. I am a heavy user and I am at 30 timers and around 130 timer events. 

As for a bug... It is possible there is some issues around the limits that might be bugs.. But the limits are not bugs in themselves but are device limitations that all products have in some form or the other. Having experienced when the increased the limits a while back, I would say there appears to be a tie to operation performance and the limits and personally I like the snappiness and would had to trade it off for increased limits of events and timers. If it can be done without taking a performance hit I am all for it. 

In my experience, most people that that run into this timer limit have a lot of timers on stations like the comedy channel where this is a ton of repeat shows. My suggestion is to use M-F timers for shows that have a ton of repeats on them and set the timer to the slot that does the regular shows. M-F timers will move up to 4 hours in each direction if a shows gets bumped a little so it should catch those odd times that the show get moved. For shows with a ton of repeats this will drop you count quickly.

Best advice I can give to keep timer reliability is to keep your timer events around the 200 to 225 range max. That gives for expansion from week to week and a bit of headroom. 

I would like to see some enhancements to reduce the timer event counts for some times (Mapped down for example) and hopefully those tweaks will happen.


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

Ron Barry said:


> I am a heavy user and I am at 30 timers and around 130 timer events.


Other than checking each timer individually, how can one tell how many events are scheduled at any one time? I've got 74 timers set. Some are obsolete so I guess I need to do some house cleaning.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

If you hit the DVR menu twice you get the daily schedule. On the lower right hand corner you will see the timer event count.


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## davethestalker (Sep 17, 2006)

Ron, can you send the posts from this thread over to your "Timer Limit on 622" thread?

Why are events that are skipped even considered, wouldn't excluding those from the list help prevent things like this from happening?


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Sure.. I moved it over. 

As why the events are even considered. I am not sure and have wondered that myself. The conclusion I came to was that there necessary to keep things straight, but then why show them. Well I think it is to allow people to be able to quickly move/manage when a show will be recorded when someone wants to. I have used that list at least once or twice a month since I have gotten my 622/722. Comes in real handy when one has a conflict. 

What I do see in the list that I think can be optimized out (Also on searches) is the map downs if I recall correctly.


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## BobaBird (Mar 31, 2002)

Ron, the timer events limit was raised to 576 in the L401 update.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

You know what.. 288 I knew it did not feel right but did not have the time to go take a look. Thanks BobaBird for catching my wrong info. Yes... 576 is right and so I would update the numbers to 500 timer events to give some head room. I Think I mentioned early to Dave that being at 555 was pretty close and might be partially causing things to get missed.


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## BobaBird (Mar 31, 2002)

Bob is a fine name, but not mine. You must have signatures turned off.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Nope.. just trying to do multiple things at once and not doing any of them well.  Sorry about that Charles.


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

Ron Barry said:


> If you hit the DVR menu twice you get the daily schedule. On the lower right hand corner you will see the timer event count.


I noticed that about five minutes after I sent the post. I just never paid any attention to it.
Thanks.


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## davethestalker (Sep 17, 2006)

Sure I can see how upcoming events being in a log are good, 'cuz, that's the recording schedule. But, I think more importantly, are events "in the past" still counted in this total? if so, these fulfilled events are hogging up way too many precious slots. I have been trying to find an option to "Clear Log", and their ain't one; there needs to be.

Just like any sort of logging software on your PC that may be guarding you, it has a history log of blocked items. I went a year with one of these guarding tools accumulating items. I found myself running out of hard drive space and searching I went. I found a history log file around 15GB!!!!

So, yeah, if this history log in our DVRs is causing issues like timers not populating or limits being forced abnormally, this issue needs to be dealt with promptly. With the ability to use multiple external hard drives, they [Dish] are encouraging us to record a LOT OF STUFF.

It would be nice to have a firmware patch.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

You bring up a interesting point. Not sure if the already triggered events are still counted but my guess would be not. Do a search on Timer Limit and you will also see some other very interesting threads. I am always interested when people hit this limit and what they use case is to get there. I am always blown away by this fact because I am so far from it. 

Clearing the log brings up duplicate show issues since the history is used to help determine a duplicate show .

Might find this interesting. Appears 3 out of 4 power users that answered were not close to the limit. 10% were close and the rest were hitting the limit.

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=103301&highlight=Limit+Timer

I would still suggest going through a few timers and see if you got any that are taking a huge amount of timer events and that can be moved to a weekly type. That might help your situation. They may increase the limits again, but I am sure they will only do it if the performance hit is negligible and also I am not seeing a lot of people hitting the issue based on the threads I read here. Got a lot more posts on it when the limit was 288.


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## jpk (Nov 5, 2008)

"I would not consider this Priority #1 based on the posts here."

If this is what's causing my ViP612 to crash, it's priority #1. If the device isn't reliable nothing else matters.


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## SaltiDawg (Aug 30, 2004)

jpk said:


> "I would not consider this Priority #1 based on the posts here."
> 
> If this is what's causing my ViP612 to crash, it's priority #1. If the device isn't reliable nothing else matters.


You've responded to a post from 12 months ago? lol Since this thread started the number of allowed timer events has been increased like two-fold.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

jpk said:


> "I would not consider this Priority #1 based on the posts here."
> 
> If this is what's causing my ViP612 to crash, it's priority #1. If the device isn't reliable nothing else matters.


I would consider the severity Critical for sure if it was the case. Box crashing is always a Sev #1 in my book. But priority and severity are two separate things in software development (or they should be).

Depends what perspective you look at.. Of course from your perspective it is #1 priority because you are feeling the pain. However, from a Dish perspective they have to take a much more global look. If you have 100,000 boxes and small percentage of customers are running into this issue then depending on your other items on the plate would determine the priority order. Also added into the equation is the risk involved in the fix, if it can be reproduced easily, and if there is a work around available. Temporarily decreasing the types of timers used or the # of timers would be a reasonable workaround. Of course since I don't work for Dish this is my opinion based experience working at other software companies.

What is your mix of timer events and timers? Do you have a lot of Dish Passes? Is there a reason you think your issue is related?


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

SaltiDawg said:


> You've responded to a post from 12 months ago? lol Since this thread started the number of allowed timer events has been increased like two-fold.


Actually Salti, this thread is after the timer increase. But it is a bit old. Last I remember the guy was going to try reducing his timer count and see if his issues when away but never heard back if they did.


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## SaltiDawg (Aug 30, 2004)

Ron Barry said:


> Actually Salti, this thread is after the timer increase. But it is a bit old. Last I remember the guy was going to try reducing his timer count and see if his issues when away but never heard back if they did.


OK Ron, but sixteen months ago in *this* thread *you* said, "It is in the mid to upper mid to upper 96 for timers and in the 200's for timer events."


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## tnsprin (Mar 16, 2003)

SaltiDawg said:


> OK Ron, but sixteen months ago in *this* thread *you* said, "It is in the mid to upper mid to upper 96 for timers and in the 200's for timer events."


And the total number events were at least doubled again since then.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

SaltiDawg said:


> OK Ron, but sixteen months ago in *this* thread *you* said, "It is in the mid to upper mid to upper 96 for timers and in the 200's for timer events."


My apologize Salti, I totally got this thread confused with another one that is a bit more recent.. You are correct. The current limit is 576 timer events and 96 timers.


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## BobaBird (Mar 31, 2002)

At the risk of re-creating a thread in the thread itself... oh, just see post #37.

_EDIT: not a reply to Ron, just typed at the same time_


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Ok... To avoid confusion and bringing something from the dead which we obviously have done..  I am going to close this thread up. If there is a new topic or you want to discuss something related, just open another thread so we can start fresh.


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