Convert from Dish to DirecTV

[Rose]

I've got some new DirecTV HR21's, and have upgraded from older dish DVR 501's. I've got a few questions, and haven't seen much to help me. This is my first post, if I'm making a mistake, please kindly let me know.

I used to watch programs flip from channel to channel on my old Dish Network DVR per my programming, and liked it. Is there any way to tell the HR21 it should follow the programmed tuner with the highest priority program to be recorded?

I tried recording some series, but found the same program repeated over and over through the day. The Daily Show, Colbert Report, Chris Matthews, and others record all day and all night even when I request first showing only. Is this a bug, a feature, or is there a better way to handle the situation. With Dish Network DVR's, I would request a program channel and time to record then specify daily, M-F, weekly or once. If the program matched the channel and time it'd record, if not, it wouldn't. This worked very well for things like the Daily Show and Colbert Report which only run 4 days. What is the best way to do this with DirecTV's HR21?

[harsh]

Set up the recording similar to the way you did it on the 501: based on day (or days) and time. Using name based recording on shows that happen many times a day is asking for trouble. This is but one of the sins of syndication.

[TomCat]

Well, first of all, those shows are not syndicated. They are technically first-run cable. Syndication refers to the production company making individual ad hoc deals with individual stations in multiple markets.

The reason they are problematic is because DVRs err on the side of caution. IOW, if there is no info regarding whether a program is a repeat or not, it assumes it is a new showing, and records it. This is preferable to it not recording it, should it indeed be a first showing.

TDS and Colbert are notorious for this. There is no crystal ball in the DVR that can determine if the show is new or not if the info is generic, so it records them all. The power to control this is only in the hands of the network itself (pay an intern to key in the proper info in a timely fashion, ferchrissakes!) But it's pretty simple to delete them, if a slight nuisance. Some just set a manual recording for M-TH at the start time, instead.

As far as having the video follow the tuner, sorry, that's not possible. The "progress" of having multiple tuners kind of shot that down for good.