# Timer/Dish Pass Strategy



## sac99 (Jul 16, 2006)

Hi All--

I just took the plunge from D* to E*. I'm digging my new 622, but I do miss the simplicity of TiVo. I wanted to get some feedback/opinions on how to best setup my Timers/Dish Passes to avoid conflicts particularly as it related to recording HD material OTA and the sat. 

Here in Houston not all of my networks are available in HD over the SAT. For programs on these networks, I plan to set a timer on the OTA channel. Easy enough. 

But what about programs that I can record either OTA or on the SAT? Should I create a timer for both the OTA and the Sat tuner? If so, how would I prioritize them? I would prefer that a show record OTA because this is a better picture, however it seems if I set the OTA priority higher this would create conflicts.

For example, say Show A and B are on at the same time. Both are available OTA, but only Show A is available in HD on the sat. If my timers are prioritized like this

ShowA-OTA
ShowA-Sat
ShowB

Show B is never going to record. I thought I could set a DishPass for Show A, but then I end up possibly recording the same program 3x--OTA, sat HD, sat SD.

So it seems like prioritizing the multi-option programs to record from sat first is the better option.

ShowA-Sat
ShowA-OTA
ShowB

But now this also means ShowA will always record off the Sat. So in the cases where Show B isn't on or a rerun, I'm still 'burning' a sat tuner when I don't have to be.

It also looks like setting a timer for ShowB on the SAT-SD station would make for a good backup if all else fails.

What happens when I set a timer for the *-00 "mapped" locals. Will this always "point" back to the Sat? It would be nice if I could just set a timer for the "mapped" channel and let dish decide whether to record it from OTA or sat.

So, I guess I'm just curious what other peoples' strategy here is. It seems it's going to take a lot of manual intervention to make sure what I want to record, gets recorded.


Thanks in advance--


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

OK, I think you're making this more complicated than it needs to be. If a show is in HD only on the sat local, and not the OTA local (which I have a hard time visualizing, as the sat HD locals come from the local OTA station), why would you want to bother with an OTA timer for it to begin with? In other words, why set 2 timers to record the same show? That's where the conflict is coming in I think - the 622 skips the 2nd one because it's a duplicate event, not because of a timer conflict.

I guess I'm not getting what exactly you're asking here.


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## ChuckA (Feb 7, 2006)

As Mark said, there is no reason to set a sat and an OTA timer for the same show unless it's something you dearly don't want to miss getting a copy of. Pick one or the other, not both, then SHOWB is not a problem.

I run in dual mode and have TV2 set as the default timer so normally the first timer in a time slot will be scheduled on TV2. If there is a second program in that time slot and it is available on both sat and OTA I will usually set the timer for OTA so my TV1 sat tuner is available for whatever I might want to watch live. This is because some things are only available on sat, not OTA but the major channels I get on OTA are also available on HD sat locals.

Then, when I am watching live, if I don't like the way the timers are setup I can still go in a delete them and reset them the way the situation fits at that point in time. Sometimes you can come up with interesting situations and it takes a few minutes to determine the best timer configuration. It drives my wife nuts when she can't make things work and I can come up with a way to do it deleting her timers and resetting them in a different configuration. Having three tuners available can be fun at times.


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## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

Yes, every time that I've tried to do one timer event from OTA and another for the same show off of satellite, the 622 is smart enough to know they're the same show and puts a line over the second one so that it doesn't get recorded.


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## Rob Glasser (Feb 22, 2005)

lujan said:


> Yes, every time that I've tried to do one timer event from OTA and another for the same show off of satellite, the 622 is smart enough to know they're the same show and puts a line over the second one so that it doesn't get recorded.


However, if you ever do want both you can go into one of the skipped ones and restore it. At that point it lets you either restore that one event or restore all duplicates for that timer.

I have used this on occasion to record both an HD OTA version and SD Sat version of the same show. This has been helpful when the HD OTA version has been on a channel that was known for being flakey with its HD content. This way if the station had problems I always had my SD version to back me up.


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## sac99 (Jul 16, 2006)

Mark Lamutt said:


> OK, I think you're making this more complicated than it needs to be. If a show is in HD only on the sat local, and not the OTA local (which I have a hard time visualizing, as the sat HD locals come from the local OTA station), why would you want to bother with an OTA timer for it to begin with? In other words, why set 2 timers to record the same show? That's where the conflict is coming in I think - the 622 skips the 2nd one because it's a duplicate event, not because of a timer conflict.
> 
> I guess I'm not getting what exactly you're asking here.


Yes, I guess I ramble a bit. Although it is kind of hard to explain. What I meant, is of the 6 major networks, all have OTA HD broadcasts; all have SD carried on Dish; only 3 have HD carried on Dish.

Here is what I'm looking to achieve.
If a show is in HD, first try to record OTA. If that tuner is busy, then record HD sat.
If a show is only in SD, first try to record SD from sat, then try OTA.

I would prefer to record HD OTA because the quality is better, but I would prefer SD only shows to be recording from Sat to maximize storage capacity.

In the first example consider Show A and B are both shown in HD at the same time. However, I only receive Show B in HD over-the-air. Show A has higher priority.

Option 1-
Create 2 timers. One for ShowA-OTA, one for ShowB-OTA
Result-
Whenever ShowA is on ShowB will not record

Option 2-
Create 2 timers. One for ShowA-SatHD, one for ShowB-OTA
Result-
Both will record provided the two satellite tuners aren't already busy. I can live with this, but in the case where ShowB isn't on or is a rerun, I would prefer ShowA to record OTA for both quality and to free up both Sat tuners for other programs.

Option 2-
Create 3 timers. ShowA-OTA, ShowA-SatHD, ShowB- OTA
Result-
My thought is that only Show A-OTA records. ShowA-SatHD doesn't record because it is a duplicate and ShowB-OTA doesn't record because the OTA tuner is busy. 622 isn't smart enough to schedule the lower-priority ShowA-SatHD to free up the OTA tuner for ShowB.

Option 3-
Create 3 timers. ShowA-SatHD, ShowA-OTA, ShowB-OTA
Result-
Same as Option 1.

Option 4-
Create 4 timers. ShowA-OTA, ShowA-SatHD, ShowB-OTA, ShowB-SatSD
Result-
Show A will record OTA and Show B will record on SatSD. Not the desired result as I should be able to record both in HD.

Add a 3rd program into the mix and a few shows that are only in SD, etc and now my head is spinning.

Yes, there are enough tuners to successfully resolve conflicts even if it means having to watch something in SD. However, I travel a lot and don't want to/can't 'babysit' the scheduling nor keep track of all the network schedule shifting that goes on during a season. Incidentally, are there any "remote recording" services available?

So, I guess I'm looking to see what other people do in this situation. I would also love a thorough explanation of the 622's conflict resolution and scheduling algorithms. For instance--Are the satellite tuners and OTA tuner conflicts resolved indepentenly of one another. The results aboce are my speculation on how things work. I'd love if someone could confirm or explain otherwise.

Thanks all.


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## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

Rob Glasser said:


> However, if you ever do want both you can go into one of the skipped ones and restore it. At that point it lets you either restore that one event or restore all duplicates for that timer.
> 
> I have used this on occasion to record both an HD OTA version and SD Sat version of the same show. This has been helpful when the HD OTA version has been on a channel that was known for being flakey with its HD content. This way if the station had problems I always had my SD version to back me up.


That's good to know, I've never tried restoring it.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

sac99 said:


> Yes, I guess I ramble a bit. Although it is kind of hard to explain. What I meant, is of the 6 major networks, all have OTA HD broadcasts; all have SD carried on Dish; only 3 have HD carried on Dish.
> 
> Here is what I'm looking to achieve.
> If a show is in HD, first try to record OTA. If that tuner is busy, then record HD sat.
> ...


I think you're looking for functionality that the 622 doesn't have. There's no current method of prioritizing the OTA tuner over the SAT tuner inside of a timer event for a given show. Sounds like a good idea, but I think it's one that you can do manually with a little planning. Unfortunately, none of the Dish timer types are that intelligent. Maybe they could made to be more intelligent sometime down the road, so I'll throw in the feature request for it.

OTA tuner conflicts are separate from SAT tuner conflicts, but show duplication "conflicts" are not separate between the tuners. Think about the Dish timers like this - Dish Pass events will record all non-duplicate instances of a show across all channels and across all days, up to the point that there are tuner conflicts. NEW and ALL timers will record all non-duplicate instances of a show on one channel only across all days. Does that help?


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

What is the best way to restrict the number of shows recording multiple number of times. eg. I do a NBR timer event with Dish Pass so it records new shows perpetually. However, I see a huge number of replications in the list, some of them crossed out. I did this with an OTA network show and the NBR set up a sechedule that recorded the same program several times, on several channels both Off air locals as well as these sat bounced locals I now pay for. 

The second request is how to do a search for shows with key words. I'm familiar with the HDTIVO where I enter a key word, one letter at a time. With the TIVO, I get a list of shows that gets smaller and smaller as I enter more letters of the Key word. eg I want to record any program about Hurricanes. I type in H and get a huge list of all shows with key words beginning with H, then I type in U and get the list narrowed. This continues until I get a small list I can scan through and select the show and channel I want. I haven't figured out how to do this on the 622. Is it possible? 

When I tried the Key words on the 622 I have to type the whole word in and then let it build a schedule for all these shows, It's huge. Now I have to go in and delete the unwanted ones manually one at a time. It takes forever. Am I doing it right or is there a much better way?


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## SaltiDawg (Aug 30, 2004)

DonLandis said:


> What is the best way to restrict the number of shows recording multiple number of times. eg. I do a NBR timer event with Dish Pass so it records new shows perpetually. ...


I don't think this is a good use of the Dish Pass timer. Why not use a timer ythat records "New" shows? Those timers will skip all of the repeats during the summer and go back to work when the new season arrives in September.

I use a Dish Pass in two situations.

I wish to start recording of a show that does not appear in the Guide at all. I may see a Promo for a new show this Fall and I would set a Dish Pass. The first time I record the new Show I will delete that Dish Pass timer and create a "New" timer.

The second case is when I want to record many different possible shows that have something in common. I have a Dish Pass set to fire on the director "John Ford" when found in the Guide text.


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## sac99 (Jul 16, 2006)

Mark Lamutt said:


> I think you're looking for functionality that the 622 doesn't have. There's no current method of prioritizing the OTA tuner over the SAT tuner inside of a timer event for a given show. Sounds like a good idea, but I think it's one that you can do manually with a little planning. Unfortunately, none of the Dish timer types are that intelligent. Maybe they could made to be more intelligent sometime down the road, so I'll throw in the feature request for it.
> 
> OTA tuner conflicts are separate from SAT tuner conflicts, but show duplication "conflicts" are not separate between the tuners. Think about the Dish timers like this - Dish Pass events will record all non-duplicate instances of a show across all channels and across all days, up to the point that there are tuner conflicts. NEW and ALL timers will record all non-duplicate instances of a show on one channel only across all days. Does that help?


Thanks. That confirms my suspicions. I guess what I was looking for was to see if anyone had developed a "system" (combination of multiple timers and priorities) to sort of simulate what I'm looking for.

What I need is a TiVo ARWL. I thought Dish Pass would have been equivalent, but when I set up a Title Dish Pass, it recorded the same show 3 times. OTA, SatHD, and SatSD. Perhaps because they were on at the same time, it didn't get counted as a duplicate. Of course it would also help to be able to set "new only" flag on Dish Passes too, but I see that's already a much-requested feature.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Agreed about limiting Dish Pass to NEW only, sac99. I've never been a fan with the logic behind the Dish pass.

Don - I wish the 622 (or any other Dish receiver) could seatch like the Tivo does.


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Mark- Yes, if I didn't know better, well... I'll try the "New" only setting. Maybe that is where I'm doing it wrong. Still learning this.


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## KKlare (Sep 24, 2004)

DonLandis said:


> ...
> The second request is how to do a search for shows with key words. ...
> When I tried the Key words on the 622 I have to type the whole word in and then let it build a schedule for all these shows, It's huge. Now I have to go in and delete the unwanted ones manually one at a time. It takes forever. Am I doing it right or is there a much better way?


Note that you can use a space before and/or after the entry to limit your search to words/phrases beginning and/or ending with that pattern. Of course, if the match is the whole title then use the whole match feature.

I was expecting a longer history list like the 921, but it is just as fast to enter only a few letters and let the search bring up just the category (usually movie/all) that I want. The search is so fast (compared to searching all/all on the 921 with no categories) that entering the few letters takes longer than the search.


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## KKlare (Sep 24, 2004)

Wish they would provide a way to quickly go from pattern entry to search. Now you have to go up through whole and title/info, then left to done, then right to search and press it. Maybe they could go left or right from the pattern to a search button (ideal) or at least, to the done button.
-Ken


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

I tried the suggestion on "New" only and that worked. Took me awhile to find it but my specific question on this now is why is "New" grayed out on most of my Dish Pass listings. I can't get to that page in the menus. In a list of 10 schedules I could only do NEW on 2 of them. The others were grayed out. One for example, was "NCIS" to date it has recorded 4 instances of every episode. I'm about had it with this and ready to just not use NBR on the 622. Stuff like this fills the hard drive fast and then I have to go in and spend lots of time deleting these redundant recordings. NCIS is not unique but it is a show that will be on lots of channels I get so thats why I end up with so many redundancies. If I was allowed to do "New" on that maybe it would work better. Any idea what I'm doing wrong or why it is grayed out in some cases?


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Don,

Using a DishPASS event to define timers doesn't let you select to record only NEW epsiodes. My suggestion would be to delete the DishPASS event you have set up to record NCIS, and then define the timer from the guide on the channel you want to record from as a NEW timer.

Of the 40 or so timer events I have defined on my 622, only 2 of them are DishPASS events, and I only have those because they're for programs that aren't currently airing.


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## Rob Glasser (Feb 22, 2005)

Mark Lamutt said:


> Don,
> 
> Using a DishPASS event to define timers doesn't let you select to record only NEW epsiodes. My suggestion would be to delete the DishPASS event you have set up to record NCIS, and then define the timer from the guide on the channel you want to record from as a NEW timer.
> 
> Of the 40 or so timer events I have defined on my 622, only 2 of them are DishPASS events, and I only have those because they're for programs that aren't currently airing.


I second that. I have 3 scenarios I use DISH Pass for.

1. To record any show that may have an actor in it that I want to see. i.e. I have one that searches descriptions for anything with Alton Brown in it so I'll catch any specials or talk shows he is on.

2. To record a show that is not yet in the guide, i.e. weeks off in the future.

3. To record a show that is less than half an hour. i.e. Robot Chicken on Comedy Central. Since it's only 15 minutes and the guide is in 30 minute increments regular timers get confused and record the wrong content.

Now, if only the 'New' option was added for DISH Pass timers it would be even better. I mentioned this to them as a nice feature enhancement as well.

Other than that I almost always use 'New' timer types.


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## LtMunst (Aug 24, 2005)

Mark Lamutt said:


> Using a DishPASS event to define timers doesn't let you select to record only NEW epsiodes. My suggestion would be to delete the DishPASS event you have set up to record NCIS, and then define the timer from the guide on the channel you want to record from as a NEW timer.
> 
> Of the 40 or so timer events I have defined on my 622, only 2 of them are DishPASS events, and I only have those because they're for programs that aren't currently airing.


I think DishPass is most confusing to former Tivo users. On Tivo, the Season Pass was used to do what a standard DVR timer does on the Dish receiver. DishPass is actually an equivalent to the Tivo Wishlist timer.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

I basically do what Rob and Mark do. One other reason I would use DishPass is if I want to contain a limited set of shows on a on going basis. Example: If I was interested in shows about ghost or hauntings and I wanted to keep an eye out for them. I create a DishPass with a limit to the number of shows recorded. That way I don't fill up my drive and I always having something with that particular topic recorded. 

For all my shows that I want to watch on a weekly basis, I use either the New or All episode timer and it seems to do a good job at catching what I am looking for.


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## sac99 (Jul 16, 2006)

LtMunst said:


> I think DishPass is most confusing to former Tivo users. On Tivo, the Season Pass was used to do what a standard DVR timer does on the Dish receiver. DishPass is actually an equivalent to the Tivo Wishlist timer.


Agreed. Out of all the 'non-infringing' words they could have chosen to describe this feature, they choose the one that would confuse the hell out of TiVo owners.


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Thanks for defining this. Yes, as a current TIVO user I didn't understand. Appreciate the list of conditions to use Dish Pass.


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## minesh1 (Nov 1, 2003)

Man, am I glad I found this thread. I am also a long-time TiVo owner, and new 622 owner, and I have been pulling my hair out trying to set up all the new season shows on the 622. I guess timers are like a Season Pass, and Dish Pass is like a TiVo wishlist.

Now I just need to figure out how to get it to prioritize the HD over SD broadcast of the same show, and getting it to record FOX-HD OTA, because we don't get it via Dish (yet). I think I'll re-read the posts above.


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## Rob Glasser (Feb 22, 2005)

minesh1 said:


> Now I just need to figure out how to get it to prioritize the HD over SD broadcast of the same show, and getting it to record FOX-HD OTA, because we don't get it via Dish (yet). I think I'll re-read the posts above.


Just make sure the instance you want the most is the highest priority. I do this for a few timers, works great.


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## ChuckA (Feb 7, 2006)

Just use the Guide to select the specific show you want and set an "All" or "New" timer for it. That timer will only record that show on that channel. The priority scheme only comes into play when there are conflicting timers for a time slot.


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