# Questions about the Dish passes (via website) on 922



## mpoyner (Aug 17, 2006)

I understand that it can be done through the web, and in fact it is easy to do there. But I'm disappointed with the way the 922 (and other Dish DVRs) handles DishPasses.

Here's a great real-world example that is extremely frustrating for me:

I want to record all Maryland Terrapins basketball games (but this would apply to ANY team, in ANY sport). My options are these:

1. I can record every "College Basketball" recording on every channel. This won't work, because it will record some and not others (since there are games on multiple channels almost every day), and there is no way to tell it that the priority is Maryland. I'll end up with random bball recordings, possibly every once in a while getting one of Maryland (but that would be pure luck, if I did).

2. I can record everything for the word "Maryland" in the "Info". This won't work, because there are way too many programs that show up with that word (especially in my area), and there is no way to give priority to only the ones that are basketball games. So, if I put "Maryland" recordings high in my Timers priority list, they will be recording multiple episodes of various things with word Maryland in them, superseding my Timer season recordings of "30 Rock", "Fringe", "Mad Men", etc. On the other hand, if I put the "Maryland" recording low in the list, then I will most likely miss all primetime games.

3. If I could put in "Maryland" and "basketball" into the DishPass, that would get rid of the problems noted in option number two. HOWEVER, because you can't search both "Title" and "Info" at the same time, it will never record anything. Because the word "basketball" appears in the "College Basketball" title of most games shown on TV, the folks writing up the descriptions don't bother to put "basketball" into the description. Therefore, no games show up when one does a DishPass for "Maryland basketball".

4. Here's the one that's really bewildering to me: You can search by drilling down through themes like Sports > Basketball > and then keyword "Maryland". This is awesome, and is much like other DVRs. But, if the search is capable of working that way, then why in the world can't we set up that search and its results as a DishPass??? (This is the way that it works on DirecTV DVRs, as well as many others.)

*SOLUTIONS:*

1. Allow recordings to be set up that search both "Title" AND "Info". Currently, you must set up a pass based on "Title", or "Info" only. Not on "Both". This seems needlessly restrictive. Is there a good reason to not have "Info" search both titles and show descriptions? Or, at the very least, give us the "Both" option that I mentioned above?

2. This would be the BEST solution, IMO: Allow recordings by drilling down through themes like Sports > Basketball > and then keyword "Maryland". The results would be set up as a DishPass.

These aren't issues that anyone using a modern DVR (especially one with the bells and whistles -and price tag- of a 922) should have to deal with. This is SO MUCH easier on DirecTV boxes (and other DVRs), that it's really kind of embarassing for Dish.

So far, I pretty much love everything else about Dish, besides a few other minor quibbles with their UI choices. But this one is a HUGE issue for me, and anyone else trying to follow their sports teams. I'm going to have to deal with this for baseball games, college football, pro football, pro basketball, pro hockey, etc. (Luckily, "Manchester United" is unique enough that I don't have as many problems with recording their soccer games.) I'm sure most others who follow sports will have similar issues. You have a "next-gen" DVR that can't record in ways that lesser DVRs have been doing for years.

Please understand, although my tone may seem to be putting down the programmers, I don't mean it that way. But without understanding their reasons, it IS frustrating that things which seem to be simple and established as norms in the realm of DVR UI functionality are being ignored in this case.


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## mpoyner (Aug 17, 2006)

BTW, if anyone knows of ways to do this that I am missing, please let me know. It's certainly possible that I've overlooked something. It wouldn't be the first time that I typed a diatribe about something on these boards, only to have someone point out to me that I was entirely wrong in my assumptions. :grin:


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## tampa8 (Mar 30, 2002)

Sounds like you should have Direct TV as you like their receivers so much better.

First, priority will always be a problem depending on how many other programs you record.
Second, if you are using Dishpass, make one timer "At Maryland" and make one timer "Maryland At". That is how I do it for Uconn. That would get most all of them... Go through the schedule at times and skip anything that made it through that isn't the game.

Or, use a regular timer, using Maryland, then sports, then basketball. That will get you about nine days.


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## [email protected] Network (Jan 6, 2011)

I really like Tampa8's method, but I agree that the DVR functionality can use a tune-up as well. I will forward this over to the platform manager and see what he can do. My concern here is that, with all things considered, we do have to be careful how the DVR functions work as they may infringe on current patents. Honestly, I have no idea what the deal is there but maybe the platform guru can offer some enlightenment.


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## mpoyner (Aug 17, 2006)

tampa8 said:


> Sounds like you should have Direct TV as you like their receivers so much better.


I don't like Dtvs DVRs better. In most ways, I like Dish's DVRs better. However, this is one BIG issue where the Dtv ones are way better. Dish is already behind Dtv in sports, and this just adds to that perception (fair or not).

I don't think I was over the top in my assessment, but if I was, I apologize. My intention was not to be that way. In fact, I edited my post a few times through, to take out some of my frustration so that it didn't sound like I was a ranting lunatic that we often see in these forums.

I do appreciate your idea about "Maryland at" or "at Maryland". I hadn't thought of that. Does that seem to pick up all of the recordings? I'll give it a try.


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## mpoyner (Aug 17, 2006)

[email protected] Network said:


> I really like Tampa8's method, but I agree that the DVR functionality can use a tune-up as well. I will forward this over to the platform manager and see what he can do. My concern here is that, with all things considered, we do have to be careful how the DVR functions work as they may infringe on current patents. Honestly, I have no idea what the deal is there but maybe the platform guru can offer some enlightenment.


Thanks TonyT. I appreciate that Dish is perusing the forums here. It really can be a fruitful enterprise for both sides. I think that when DirecTV started doing that here, they seemed to really appreciate our feedback, and it seems like you do too. You don't know how great it is to see corporations who actually seem to care what customers opinions are (no matter how irritable we can get. :grin


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## mpoyner (Aug 17, 2006)

Also, TonyT, I can see how some of this could be patent issues, like you said.

Especially the part about choosing themes like: Sports > Basketball > "keyword".

If I recall correctly, that's a Tivo staple. (But Dtv does it also. Not sure how they are getting away with it, except that they may still have agreements with Tivo even though they no longer use their boxes.)

If there was some way that Dish could implement that without stepping on Tivo toes, that would be fantastic. It's the best solution for something like this (and probably for a lot of other types of recordings).


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## [email protected] Network (Jan 6, 2011)

Irritable? Never happens! BTW, I am running experiments on the 922 here at the moment to see if I can manage to find a better way then Tampa8's to setup series timers for sporting events. Its doubtful because his seems to be awesome as an "unofficially official" way to make it work. I really like his and it makes sense. I won't complain because hey, playing with the receiver is a trip and I'm getting my edumacation on. I am also running tests on the number of events the receiver keeps in storage before deleting them. In fact, I am pretty sure every one of my DVR's is experimenting with something ATM (on both EA and WA) just to see if I can mimic issues or find fixes. I need a room like this at my house.


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## mpoyner (Aug 17, 2006)

When using "Maryland at" or "at Maryland", should I choose "Info" or "Exact Info"?

Thanks!


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## mpoyner (Aug 17, 2006)

I did think of some times where appending "at" before or after won't always work, or rather I'm not sure if it will work.

ACC tourney time, NCAA tourney time, or other tournaments they sometimes have at the beginning of seasons. I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think they will be listed "at Maryland", or vice versa.


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## RasputinAXP (Jan 23, 2008)

Maryland vs.?


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## mpoyner (Aug 17, 2006)

Yeah, that's definitely a possibility. I'll look into it when the tourneys start.

Since setting up both a "at Maryland" and "Maryland at" as DishPasses, now when I look in my schedule of upcoming recordings, there is usually two recordings (from different channels) set to record for each of the upcoming games. This tells me that the "at Maryland" and the "Maryland at" are both being picked up for any recordings that have those two words in them in any order, right?

I have it set up to record "Exact Info", but I guess maybe that's not working correctly on the 922. I don't know. That might be another thing that you want to test out, TonyT.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

One of the issues here is that for whatever reason Dish decided to NOT implement DishPass timers on the 922.

The fact that we can still do them via Dish Remote Access is, I think, an accident rather than intended use.

When I have spoken to Dish... they don't seem that concerned that we can't do DishPass timers directly.

All that said... there are definitely some things lacking in DishPass that could stand to be addressed to make it a much more useful feature.

Honestly, I have all but stopped using it myself because it causes me as much grief as it helps me catch recordings.


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## mpoyner (Aug 17, 2006)

Stewart Vernon said:


> One of the issues here is that for whatever reason Dish decided to NOT implement DishPass timers on the 922.
> 
> The fact that we can still do them via Dish Remote Access is, I think, an accident rather than intended use.
> 
> ...


You know, I was wondering that myself (whether they intended for us to not use them at all). It does seem odd that they intentionally took them out of the software, but at least it's still available on the site, by design or not.

I can't imagine a DVR with no recording capability, except for recurring titles or manually setting up every single recording for a certain keyword. If I have to remember to manually remember to set up every single recording for my favorite teams, favorite directors, favorite actors, then that's a big failure for a DVR.

TonyT, maybe you can shed some light on this. Is it now Dish's philosophy to go away from these types of automated recordings of keywords and themes? Or was this just an accidental oversight (not including DishPasses)? Or is this related to the issues that have been ongoing with Tivo patent cases?

I would love to sit in on some user panels, or test beta software, etc., for Dish, if the programmers are at all interested in that? The forums on this site have a pretty healthy number of folks that are beta testers for DirecTV and their boxes. (Actually, if it wasn't for us, their boxes, which are still slow and buggy, would be HORRIBLE today. We user-tested the software through many iterations over a year or two, when the HR-20 series first came out and they're not perfect, but they are much better than they would have been.)

Maybe this is something that Dish would be interested in, also?


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

It is worth noting too that DishPass isn't the only thing missing from the 922.

They also took away the ability to manually set a timer based on time alone.

You can't, for example, set a timer to record from 8-9pm regardless of programming.

You can only set a timer from the EPG for a specific program coming on at that time.

I've ran into issues with this... like, I have a weekly timer for House on Mondays... but last week Human Target aired on Monday in that timeslot. The DVR rightfully was going to skip it... BUT as it happens I wanted to record Human Target.

The problem? Well... you can't set another timer overlapping the same slot... because it will skip that too. You can try manually unskipping, but that doesn't always stick. The only 100% reliable method was to delete my recurring timer for House... set a one-time timer for Human Target... then after it had recorded... re-define my House timer the following Monday.

Of course you have to wait until you have next Monday's data in the 9-day EPG before you can re-define that timer.

A DishPass timer would be a workaround for some of the above... and a manual 8-9pm timer would have been a workaround for both scenarios.

I'm not really clear how much was taken out because of lack of customer use and how much comes from the TiVo lawsuit. We won't discuss that here, as there is another thread for that... but it is in the back of my mind to wonder if some of what is missing from the 922 is a result of trying to stay away from those problems going forward.


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