# Am I the only one to run out of timers already?



## Bogey62 (Dec 1, 2002)

I make extensive use of the Dish Pass feature to keep a look out for many old movies that I want to archive. Between 60+ movies I want to search for each week and the timers for our normal shows, I've hit the max 96 timers!

Come on, Dish, give me at least 120 or so...


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## tomcrown1 (Jan 16, 2006)

Bogey62 said:


> I make extensive use of the Dish Pass feature to keep a look out for many old movies that I want to archive. Between 60+ movies I want to search for each week and the timers for our normal shows, I've hit the max 96 timers!
> 
> Come on, Dish, give me at least 120 or so...


In order for Dish to do so you will need a bigger hard drive. I do not know if someone tried to put a bigger drive in the VIP622 and got it to work. I did this on the old Webtv Dish Player


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

I believe you are Bogey.. and know I fully understand your request for USB keyboard support.  I would add it to the Feature request list to keep some exposure on it.. Nice to know the limit though I doubt I would hit it. I don't think a bigger hard drive is the answer to maximum number of timers.


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## Bill R (Dec 20, 2002)

tomcrown1 said:


> In order for Dish to do so you will need a bigger hard drive.


Timers are a software function not a hardware function so putting in a bigger hard drive would not change the number of timers.

DISH _could_ change the software to increase the number of timers but I'm guessing that they set the numbers to what it is based on what most customers will use. There are always exceptions to the rule and Bogey is an example of that.


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## Bogey62 (Dec 1, 2002)

Ron Barry said:


> Nice to know the limit though I doubt I would hit it. I don't think a bigger hard drive is the answer to maximum number of timers.


I don't see any connection between hard drive size and number of timers. It's merely an arbitrary number the programmers assigned to this feature. 1,000 timers take up little more space than 96, methinks. After all, a timer or Dish Pass is merely a search string stored in the machine. You don't need another 100 GBs just because you want to store some simple search strings.


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## Stutz342 (Sep 29, 2004)

Bogey62 said:


> I've hit the max 96 timers!
> Come on, Dish, give me at least 120 or so...


I completely agree! 96 timers is nowhere near enough for some of us, myself included!

Also, 288 events is too few, even for the 96 timers! I set up timers for some cable networks that repeat the same show dozens of times per week. 288 events (including skips) fills up, causing me to entirely miss some events!

I think we need about 150 timers and 750 event slots.


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## Bogey62 (Dec 1, 2002)

Stutz342 said:


> I completely agree! 96 timers is nowhere near enough for some of us, myself included!
> 
> Also, 288 events is too few, even for the 96 timers! I set up timers for some cable networks that repeat the same show dozens of times per week. 288 events (including skips) fills up, causing me to entirely miss some events!
> 
> I think we need about 150 timers and 750 event slots.


I didn't even think about there being a limit on the event slots -- I could be missing recordings already! Does it warn you when you've hit the event limit or did you notice and count this issue on your own?

The VIP-622 is the flagship unit and as such it MUST cater to those of us who dare to use it to its fullest extent.


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## Chop-Chop (Mar 8, 2006)

Bogey62 said:


> I make extensive use of the Dish Pass feature to keep a look out for many old movies that I want to archive. ..


How do you archive with the 622?


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## Bogey62 (Dec 1, 2002)

Chop-Chop said:


> How do you archive with the 622?


SVHS or DVD (via the computer). Granted, either scenario involves on S-Video as a source, but it's better than nothing.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Bogey62 said:


> I don't see any connection between hard drive size and number of timers. It's merely an arbitrary number the programmers assigned to this feature. 1,000 timers take up little more space than 96, methinks. After all, a timer or Dish Pass is merely a search string stored in the machine. You don't need another 100 GBs just because you want to store some simple search strings.


Well then we are in agreement.  I was not the one claiming it to be disk size based. As for Dish pass being merely a search string. I highly doubt it. I am sure there is more behind that string than just the string, but I could be wrong.

I also agree with you that that the 96 number might be an artificial ceiling. Though it could be size based depending on where this information lives. Definitely a worthy feature request in my book.


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## Bill R (Dec 20, 2002)

Bogey62 said:


> I don't see any connection between hard drive size and number of timers. It's merely an arbitrary number the programmers assigned to this feature.


It is true that hard disk size and the number of timers have nothing to do with each other. However, what you likely don't know is that timers use shared memory that the system MUST be able to "see" at all times. The programmers likely allociated the timers based on ALL the requirements that shared memory _may_ require. Not knowing about the "internals" of the 622 does not allow us to determine how easy it would be to change the number of timers.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Bogey62 said:


> I don't see any connection between hard drive size and number of timers. It's merely an arbitrary number the programmers assigned to this feature. 1,000 timers take up little more space than 96, methinks. After all, a timer or Dish Pass is merely a search string stored in the machine. You don't need another 100 GBs just because you want to store some simple search strings.


Let's imagine what would happen if all of your requests were satisfied. The hard drive is big enough to handle about 150 SD movies and if you throw in an HD movie or two, that drops by 12 SD movies per HD feature. This does not take into account any serial or manual timers that might come along.

There may or may not be some technical reason for this limit, but it wouldn't hurt to let Dish know that you think it is too low.


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## Stutz342 (Sep 29, 2004)

Bogey62 said:


> I didn't even think about there being a limit on the event slots -- I could be missing recordings already! Does it warn you when you've hit the event limit or did you notice and count this issue on your own?


It will stop you from creating a timer if you have 96 timers OR 288 events. However, if it runs out of events when it gets more guide data, you won't know it!

I figured this out when I was creating timers and it wasn't finding everything. Again, this cropps up on shows that are repeated lots of times.


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## Bogey62 (Dec 1, 2002)

Stutz342 said:


> It will stop you from creating a timer if you have 96 timers OR 288 events. However, if it runs out of events when it gets more guide data, you won't know it!
> 
> I figured this out when I was creating timers and it wasn't finding everything. Again, this cropps up on shows that are repeated lots of times.


AFAIC, this is a serious shortcoming on the flagship DVR from Dish.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Well Bogey... given that you are the only one to butt up against the timer limitation on the board, I am not sure how serious of a shortcoming the 96 timers are. You are definitely not the average user. I think time will tell how serious this limitation is. 

As to the 288 events limitation, this one sounds more critical because you don't really know if an event gets missed. Stutz... There is nothing in the history that indicates the timer was skipped because it ran out of slots? 

Time will tell how many people on here run into these limits, but my guess is that it will be a small percentage. If Dish can increase them, that would be nice but also I could see increases in this limits possible slowing down certain operations since there is more slots to manage. Maybe the impact would be minimal, but hard to tell from the outside. 

Excellent find guys... and some great info!!! So how long did it take to create that many timers???

Any guess... Excellent finds


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## voripteth (Oct 25, 2005)

I agree that there should be no practical limit on the number of timers. One of the things that I discovered when I ran into the limit was that recording shows that repeat often each count as an event even if they aren't recorded. When I changed these shows to weekly events it signficantly reduced the number of events and allowed me to record more.


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## Bogey62 (Dec 1, 2002)

Ron Barry said:


> Excellent find guys... and some great info!!! So how long did it take to create that many timers???
> 
> Any guess... Excellent finds


Here's how I did it in one day. 

With my 721 I had 66 search strings setup that I looked for every Saturday. This was a tedious process, to say the least.

The reason I have so many searches is because I love Humphrey Bogart movies and am attempting to get all of his movies on DVD via the Dish. The problem is, so many of his early movies gave him 4th, 5th, or much lower billing on the film. So, I can't just search on "Bogart". I literally have to type in the exact film title I am looking for. This also shows another limitation of the search function with its 16/17 character limit. I would say that 40% of my search strings exceed the limit set by Dish on the 622. You might say, "no big deal because the partial search string will still find what I'm looking for", but it will assuredly turn up many matches I don't want because I can't use the "exact match" option on the searches.

Now with the wonderful Dish Pass I can cut down on the number of manual searches I do each week by about 80%, but now I have hit the wall on timers because each Dish Pass search is considered a timer. I have deleted some less important searches, but I'm right up against the wall with only 2-3 timers to spare.


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## Bogey62 (Dec 1, 2002)

voripteth said:


> I agree that there should be no practical limit on the number of timers. One of the things that I discovered when I ran into the limit was that recording shows that repeat often each count as an event even if they aren't recorded. When I changed these shows to weekly events it signficantly reduced the number of events and allowed me to record more.


As the end-users, we shouldn't have to find workarounds to these limitations. They should be addressed by Dish. After all, those of us who are early adopters of the 622 are most likely the "power users" and are going to use the unit to its max potential -- at least that's my mindset.

Heck, the 90 measly hours that the 721 gave me was regularly maxed out.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

That is a lot of remote work typing all those films in. I understand your points and definitely with merit. Not sure however how many people are using the 622 or even the 942 in the capacity you are. 

I could see myself having some movies I am interested in and creating Dish Passes to find them. I seriously doubt I would use any where near the numbers you are talking bout. 

As to limitations.. I am sure you would agree that everything has to have limits. Special a constrained system like a DVR. The 64K question is where these limits based on design limitations or arbitrary. 

I definitely agree that the early users are going to be power users and that they are most likely the ones to run up against the limitation you have. Question that comes to my mind would be .... is it feasable to increase these limits and provide the same level of performance for the average user? This is the trade off that I am sure Dish would discuss and would be the determing factor of increases these values. 

Great input Bogey on your thread.. Constructive and excellent suggestion. As a developer, sometimes what looks simple on the outside is actually a monumental task. 

Hopefully someone at Dish or a Beta user sees this thread and feeds it back to the engeering group for further discussion.


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## Bogey62 (Dec 1, 2002)

Ron Barry said:


> That is a lot of remote work typing all those films in. I understand your points and definitely with merit.


Yes, the USB keyboard support on the 721 was a blessing.



> As to limitations.. I am sure you would agree that everything has to have limits. Special a constrained system like a DVR. The 64K question is where these limits based on design limitations or arbitrary.


Exactly. This is what I'd love to know.



> Great input Bogey on your thread.. Constructive and excellent suggestion.


Thank you. 



> Hopefully someone at Dish or a Beta user sees this thread and feeds it back to the engeering group for further discussion.


I sent these suggestions to Dish via their web site. I hope someone will read them.


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## Stutz342 (Sep 29, 2004)

Ron Barry said:


> There is nothing in the history that indicates the timer was skipped because it ran out of slots?


Unfortunately, no, because it doesn't even create the event.

If they're not going to increase the number of event slotss, they could do a better job of using the ones they have by implementing one of three tweaks I've come up with:

Tweak 1: When the 622 is generating events based on a timer, rather than just stop searching the guide as soon as the slots are full, keep searching, and any event found that is sooner than the currently-farthest-in-the-future event should be created by deleting the farthest-out one to make room. Repeat as necessary. That way it will always have the next 288 events listed, and if that's not enough for everthing, the missing ones will be late in the schedule, and would get picked up when the event creating process repeats on later guide downloads. No events would ever fail to record, they just wouldn't be marked in the guide out the full 8-9 days. (That is, unless a user was able to make timers for 288 events in one day!)

Tweak 2: Create events in order of the Timer's priorities so if something's going to get missed, it will at least be one I set to a lower priority.

Tweak 3: Allow the user to specify how many days in the future each timer should create events for. That way I could let network timers search the whole guide because they'll only make an event or two, but I could set timers for things like MythBusters and Monster Garage that repeat a dozen times a week to only look a day or two out to keep them from filling the slots.

As a former programmer, I don't really understand why it wasn't set up to do 1 and 2 already!


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## Stutz342 (Sep 29, 2004)

Stutz342 said:


> As a former programmer, I don't really understand why it wasn't set up to do 1 and 2 already!


And another thing! Why isn't priority used to select which timer's event gets recorded when there's a duplicate? I want to set timers for both OTA HD and SAT SD and be able to trust that the higher priority one will get preference, making the lower priority SD timer get skipped as a duplicate. Only if the higher priority one gets skipped due to tuner conflict (with some other even-higher priority timer) would the SD timer be used.

Again, I think it should have been done that way from the start.

The 942 was the same way as the 622, and I was always filling it's timers and events, too. (I posted on it way back when, but there were other, more pressing bugs to be worked on.)


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## DP1 (Sep 16, 2002)

Bogey62 said:


> As the end-users, we shouldn't have to find workarounds to these limitations. They should be addressed by Dish. After all, those of us who are early adopters of the 622 are most likely the "power users" and are going to use the unit to its max potential -- at least that's my mindset.


 Are you one of those guys that ends up using all your effects settings on your a/v receiver too.. like Stadium, Concert Hall, Recording Studio, whatever? I always wondered who those guys were. 

Nah but seriously, I hear what you're saying although I'm the exception to the rule where I tend to just use my DVR's as glorified VCR's. I'll never use the search thingy.. or set timers for stuff I "might" wanna watch someday. I already know what I wanna watch and set timers for give or take a show here and there.

Besides I only ever tune to like 20 channels including Locals and it's not like I wanna watch near everything on those channels anyway.


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## liferules (Aug 14, 2005)

Stutz342 said:


> I want to set timers for both OTA HD and SAT SD and be able to trust that the higher priority one will get preference, making the lower priority SD timer get skipped as a duplicate.


Yeah, that one really bothers me. I think its a software glitch that really needs to be fixed...


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## abricko (Mar 1, 2006)

I only had 47 timers set when it complained about having too many, i don't use dish pass... am i looking at the wrong number?


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## Bogey62 (Dec 1, 2002)

abricko said:


> I only had 47 timers set when it complained about having too many, i don't use dish pass... am i looking at the wrong number?


I am using a combination of regular timers and Dish Pass --the grand total is 96 max.


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## liferules (Aug 14, 2005)

abricko said:


> I only had 47 timers set when it complained about having too many, i don't use dish pass... am i looking at the wrong number?


You may have instead capped out on events rather than timers. If there are many occurrences of each timer (such as "news" where there may be 100 future events for a single timer...you would max out the 288 event limit...


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## Stutz342 (Sep 29, 2004)

liferules said:


> ...you would max out the 288 event limit...


...and you won't know it unloss you "Show Skip" on the Daily Schedule screen. That's where you're limited to 288 events.

WE NEED MORE!


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## abricko (Mar 1, 2006)

yeah, some of the shows it decides to skip are wrong (and i'm glad they get skipped) i just don't understand how it chooses to even evaluate, probably because if you choose anything but new or all episodes you end up with it looking at that time slot for that show and it's not there so it chooses to skip it... they do need to add options for all episodes like record X number max per day, so that way if we want to record some syndicated show a few times a day (up to the overall limit) we can and it will not clog the dvr with recording tasks keeping it busy all day.


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## Joe Clark (Jan 10, 2006)

Chop-Chop said:


> How do you archive with the 622?


You can't archive high definition material with the 622, but I archive to computer on a modified Dish 211. The modification stores the HD transport stream file to the computer hard drive through a USB2 connection.

Here's an example of a program I just recorded this evening (Sunday night) from Universal HD. The Dish 211 sends tonight's high definition episode of Battlestar Galactica to my computer hard drive - total disk space used, about 9.3GB for the hour long show. I run the file through a program called HDTVtoMPEG2 (free for download) - total size with commercials edited out and null packets stripped, about 3.5GB. Total time on my computer to do all this, about 5-6 minutes.

The resulting program is identical in every respect, both video and audio, to the original broadcast. There is no recompresssion or reduction from HD to SD quality. This program then fits on a single layer DVD recordable (cost, about $.25). I can play back this show from the DVD in full quality on my home theater projector (Optoma H79), through a MyHD card in my computer.

This solution is not super cheap, but if you already have the computer with DVD burner and a Dish 211, it's not outrageously expensive, either. Dish 211 modification = $550 (Nextcom R5000 HD); MyHD card with DVI output = $275 ($200 without DVI). And the company is first rate - great support and they really listen to their customers. It's totally legal and it just plain works.


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## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

You know, I watch TV as much as the next guy, but anyone who is filling up their events/timers should really get a life. I can't understand how anyone can have enough time to watch that much TV.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Well based on Bogeys post. He uses a lot of timers to as a means of keeping eyes out for certain content. He has personally plugged a lot of timers in just for this purpose and I plan on doing the same. No where near the level he does, but definitely a use case Dish must consider. 

Does the 622 have enough timer slots, personally I think for 95%+ of the use cases they do. If dish can increase these numbers, without signicantly sacrificing response time I think they should. 

One thing I have always said. Each one of use uses the DVR in a different way and we are all unique use cases for Dish to consider. This is one of the main reasons why I believe some users run into issues while others never see them. Bogey is definitely a power user and a excellent use case.

As to getting a life. We each have our interests and each of us chooses how to spend their free time. I don't understand why people do some of the activities they choose to do, but it is not my place to judge how they spend their free time. Heck I do a lot of video editing, picture taking, and slide show generation. Some would consider that a waste of time.


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## Andy Smith (Mar 1, 2006)

lujan said:


> You know, I watch TV as much as the next guy, but anyone who is filling up their events/timers should really get a life. I can't understand how anyone can have enough time to watch that much TV.


You must not have a family. My wife has her 10 timers, I have my 10 and the kids have more then that. What's killing us the event limit. It's very easy from what I can tell to reach that limit. We have maybe 30-40 Timers between all of us and the events are getting near maxed.

So I would like to see a better handle on events. Events that are skipped shouldn't count  .


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## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

Andy Smith said:


> You must not have a family. My wife has her 10 timers, I have my 10 and the kids have more then that. What's killing us the event limit. It's very easy from what I can tell to reach that limit. We have maybe 30-40 Timers between all of us and the events are getting near maxed.
> 
> So I would like to see a better handle on events. Events that are skipped shouldn't count  .


You're right, I'm single, but still you can only watch one show at a time even with a family unless you're in dual mode.


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## Bogey62 (Dec 1, 2002)

lujan said:


> You're right, I'm single, but still you can only watch one show at a time even with a family unless you're in dual mode.


As Ron said about me earlier (thanks, Ron). I use a ton with Dish Pass timers looking for obscure movies for my ever-growing collection. Yes, I regularly max out the paltry 96 timers, but 2/3 of those are Dish Passes that haven't found anything yet, but they still count in the total.

Between my Dish Passes, my regular shows, my wife's movies and shows, plus the stuff I tape for my elderly mother...


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

lujan said:


> You're right, I'm single, but still you can only watch one show at a time even with a family unless you're in dual mode.


True.. but the issues with timer limits is not an issue of how many shows you can watch at a time. It is an issue of how one configures their DVR to be their best buddy. Some tend to interact with it on a more frequent basis while others tend to give it a lot of tasks to do at once like Bogey does. One of the big benefits of NBR is the ability to do just what Bogey is doing. Tell their best buddy to keep an eye out for certain shows and record them when they locate them. Couple of examples I could see that could eat up those slots quickly.

Use Case: 
Someone interested in UFOs sets up a dish Pass for all programs with the word UFO in it and one for Alien in it.

Friends lover, want to record all episode of friends so he sets up an all episode timer for Friends.

As people become more familar with what NBR offers, people will go past the basic use of NBR as a way to record all Survivor shows to having it hunting for programs that meet there likes and dislikes. Orginally I thought Bogey was the exception but as this thread pans out, this limit might be more easily reached than I orginally thought.


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## airpolgas (Aug 13, 2002)

Forgive the ignorance, but what is the difference between timers and events?

If I set 1 timer for _Good Eats_, and it shows about 15 times for the week, does that mean I have 1 timer and 15 events?

How about the 288 event limit, can someone explain how that is reached? Once an event is "in the past," do you recover those back? Like if you currently have 288 events, then 3 of them have occured three hours ago, do you now have 285 events left?


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## Rob Glasser (Feb 22, 2005)

airpolgas said:


> Forgive the ignorance, but what is the difference between timers and events?
> 
> If I set 1 timer for _Good Eats_, and it shows about 15 times for the week, does that mean I have 1 timer and 15 events?
> 
> How about the 288 event limit, can someone explain how that is reached? Once an event is "in the past," do you recover those back? Like if you currently have 288 events, then 3 of them have occured three hours ago, do you now have 285 events left?


Yes. My understanding is each scheduled or to be skippped recording is an event. And, you can not have more than 288 of them going forward at any given point. Yes, after those 3 occur you would have 285. Then, when your guide refreshes and you get more info into the future new events will pop up for your reoccuring timers.

Nice to see another Alton fan =)


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## airpolgas (Aug 13, 2002)

Thanks for the reply.

Alton: Science, food, and humor, what's not to like?!


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## jkinghome (Mar 16, 2006)

This is crazy -

Maxed out at 40 timers, 280 events and only had dish for 5 days.

Why should there be a limit anyway? Isn't the HD space limit enough?

Anyone compalined to Dish about this?


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## capnken (Apr 1, 2006)

Ron Barry said:


> Does the 622 have enough timer slots, personally I think for 95%+ of the use cases they do. If dish can increase these numbers, without signicantly sacrificing response time I think they should.
> 
> One thing I have always said. Each one of use uses the DVR in a different way and we are all unique use cases for Dish to consider. This is one of the main reasons why I believe some users run into issues while others never see them. Bogey is definitely a power user and a excellent use case.


Ron - As somebody who's bumped up on this problem with the 942 (see my post over there - forum won't let me post URLs yet), I don't see this as a "power-user" issue. I have 39 timers right now that have filled up more than my allocation of timer spots (is 288 a hard number?).

I think it does come when you do "all" searches for something that comes on a lot - say "Friends" in syndication. The box is smart enough to not record duplicates, but all those duplicates take up the slots of the 288.

If there's a hard limit on the number of things I can get in the schedule, Dish is doing a horrible job of communicating that and dealing with it in the software. I can (and will) look to create more "efficient" timers now, but I think this limit is definitely something an "average" user could bump up against.


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## voyagerbob (Jul 14, 2002)

I ran into the event limit at 46 timers. It took me all of two hours of having the box activated to hit the 288 event limit. I had only set half of the timers I needed. Now I have to go back and change most of them to be able to set the others. This SUCKS big time. They really need to up this to 999. Upping the timer limit to 250 is also needed. I love the receiver though. It has worked great the 10 hours I've played with it since I had it activated it last night. 

Voyagerbob


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## Stutz342 (Sep 29, 2004)

I also don't think it takes a power user. It does depend on how the unit gets used, which is why many people have no trouble, but even modest users will run into it.

A user that records mostly network shows that only show up in the guide once or twice a week will never hit the 288 event limit even with a full 96 timers. However, add to that 15-20 of the shows that repeat a dozen or more times a week and they'll start having problems.


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## jkinghome (Mar 16, 2006)

Stutz342 said:


> I also don't think it takes a power user.


Agreed, all it takes is a parent setting up timers for kids shows - does Dish realize how many duplicates and repeats there are of kids shows??? On my timer list, about 70% of my 288 limit is taken up by duplicates.


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## capnken (Apr 1, 2006)

Stutz342 said:


> A user that records mostly network shows that only show up in the guide once or twice a week will never hit the 288 event limit even with a full 96 timers. However, add to that 15-20 of the shows that repeat a dozen or more times a week and they'll start having problems.


Right. The tale of two timers:

1) Record new episodes of My Name is Earl on NBC - records 1 episode a week; takes up 2 of my 288 slots in the timers list.

2) Record new episodes of Good Eats on Food Network - records 1 episode a week; takes up 23 of my 288 slots in the timers list.

The "record new episodes" feature is great and a big improvement over my 501 and 721, especially with conflict resolution since if I need to skip the first time a new Good Eats comes on, it'll just catch it from the skipped list. But the 288 limit is rendering this functionality almost useless if I have to revert back to "record Good Eats at this time on this date" - which is what I'm having to do.

So why is the limit 288 timers? I'm going to suggest upping that limit to Dish, but is there some practical reason it needs to be just 288? Or do you figure they (like some super users here) didn't anticipate the result of multiple airings of programs on cable channels?


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## jkinghome (Mar 16, 2006)

I sent an e-mail to Dish regarding this issue.

To their credit, I got an e-mail back very quickly to say that someone wanted to talk to me about this and other issues I had with the 622.

They called me at work today and discussed the 288 event issue. She was very nice.

While she seemed to understand the issue, she said "that's just the limitation of the box, just delete some timers", I told her that it really doesn't make a lot of sense to have this limit and that 60% of my 288 are not even recording events but duplicates. She understood but couldn't do anything. I told her I came from DirecTivo and had no limitation on my "season passes".

I told her that I am not a "power user" but a regular guy putting some kids shows and a few primetime shows and I am having to deal with this limitation by deleting timers that I really want to keep. I asked her to pass this issue on to the developers, and she said that she would.

I URGE others to inform Dish of his crazy limitation that is stopping us use this box properly.

THANKS!


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## omarh (Jul 3, 2006)

This is the only post I found that talks about timers and hitting the max. 
I actually hit the max at 20 timers...and I thought to myslef holy cow, only 20 timers?? what? but now that I've read this thread, I realize it must be the events that's maxed out...not the timers.
By the way, is there a difference in the count when you do a DISH pass vs. a DVR timer?? I can't see any different...the # of timers seems to be the same regardless...though I imagine the events will greatly increase if you do a DISH pass because it will search other channels for the same show.


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## Bogey62 (Dec 1, 2002)

omarh said:


> This is the only post I found that talks about timers and hitting the max.
> I actually hit the max at 20 timers...and I thought to myslef holy cow, only 20 timers?? what? but now that I've read this thread, I realize it must be the events that's maxed out...not the timers.
> By the way, is there a difference in the count when you do a DISH pass vs. a DVR timer?? I can't see any different...the # of timers seems to be the same regardless...though I imagine the events will greatly increase if you do a DISH pass because it will search other channels for the same show.


Look at my posts, I hit the timer limit in the first week of owning a 622 back in March.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

omarh said:


> This is the only post I found that talks about timers and hitting the max.
> I actually hit the max at 20 timers...and I thought to myslef holy cow, only 20 timers?? what? but now that I've read this thread, I realize it must be the events that's maxed out...not the timers.
> By the way, is there a difference in the count when you do a DISH pass vs. a DVR timer?? I can't see any different...the # of timers seems to be the same regardless...though I imagine the events will greatly increase if you do a DISH pass because it will search other channels for the same show.


Yes. Since the DIsh Pass is accross all channels then you most likely will result in having more timer events for a given Dish Pass vs. an All episode or new episode timer. Also a new episode timer will most likely have less timer events than a all episode timers.

I personally have not hit the wall with either timers or timer events, but some as Bogey indicated hit it quickly. There are techniques that you can use that can minimize your timer events. Example... Using a new episode timer rather than a Dish pass for recording your weekly shows.


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## jkinghome (Mar 16, 2006)

Ron Barry said:


> There are techniques that you can use that can minimize your timer events. Example... Using a new episode timer rather than a Dish pass for recording your weekly shows.


Actually this is incorrect - it doesn't matter if you choose "new episodes" when setting up a timer - if there are re-runs or duplicate events, these get counted in as an event each time. This is the problem - they really shouldn't be counted as an event as they are set NOT to record.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Actually when I replied I was thinking about the example of using CSI for Dish pass vs. using all episodes for CSI. 

Thanks for correcting me on my other all episode/new episode example. I never actually checked to see if they were included and assumed with New they would not be.... Hmmm I would personally consider that a bug since it should not add it if it does not meet the basic criteria. But there might be a reason they have to keep them. 

thanks for the correct jkinghome.


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## wwfmike (Jul 17, 2006)

I'm glad I found this thread. I had noticed a lot of my timers weren't showing up and I didn't know why. I have 56 timers. I had The Simple Life set as record new episodes and I checked it after reading this thread and it said 48 events!!! I changed it to a weekly recording. We definately need a higher event ceiling.


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