500PVR recording

[bthom70]

The last straw finally landed on my back.
90% of the time I use the Dish Program guide to record prgrams I miss the last 2-3 minutes. Ok Maybe only 1 min.
I dont want to manually change the record end times each and every time I record.
3 different things I recorded this week from Showtime had the last few minutes missing. I refuse to place the blame solely on Showtime, Dish should do a better job of enabling the Program guide to be more fluid and adjust itself.
I emailed Dish and await a canned answer. I missed the ending of Jerimiah of 2 different episodes.

Brian
Danbury CT

[MediaMills]

Showtime isn't the only ones. I had to set an 8:00pm to 9:05pm timer on HBO to record Six Feet Under because HBO could never start the program on time. NBC is getting bad about this as well because several times this last season I missed the very beginning of The West Wing because NBC started the show as far as two minutes early. Sometimes I would miss the last bit of Friends because they sold an extra commercial in an expensive time slot and they ran the show over on purpose.

I have checked the clock on my receivers with NIST timesync and it's within a few seconds. The EPG cannot be flexible because it is for all intents and purpose a spreadsheet and the information is fixed. Dish doesn't update the information dynamically. The networks need to stick to their times. If you were programming a VCR to record (either manually or using VCRPlus or something similar) you would have the same problem. You're looking for intelligence in a $200 machine.

[Jacob S]

Nick at night is VERY bad about this having programs start and end 10-15 minutes early/late. I think they do this on purpose so by the time you go and watch a show and finish it that you will continue watching another show on the channel since all the other channels are in the middle of a show, I think its a hook just like TBS starting a show 5 minutes late like they do/used to do.

[DarrellP]

Heads up: SciFi always starts early and I always forget to start 1 minute early. I record Stargate and Farscape on Friday nights and always miss the start of Stargate.

AMC is also very bad, they start early a lot.

[bthom70]

This stinks that we cant use our PVR's as they were intended to be. I want the 1 button recording to work 100% of the time.
But now we're stuck with having to guess at the end time and record more useless drivel of stuff we do not want.

.02cents

[HTguy]

Yeah, but the problem is due to the service providers, not E*.

I admit it's a bit of a hassle but I have learned to edit almost all recording events I create from the EPG or Search function.

There is nothing more irritating than watching a show all the way thru only to miss the ending!

[Mark Holtz]

This isn't a problem with either Dish Networks or DirecTVs PVRs. The schedules they get are mostly from the same sources that supply the listings to the papers (I believe Tribune). It has gotten SO bad that during the last two Survivors & CSI, I set up the timer to start at 6:59pm and end at 9:05 PM just to avoid overruns. (The Sacrametno CBS station airs it's prime time programming one hour early). The back-to-back timer bug had nothing to do with it.

I wonder if the FCC can do anything about it.

[Karl Foster]

Directv PVR automatically start recording 1 min early and end 5 minutes later. If a program starts at 7:00 my UTV will start recording at 6:59 and end at 8:05 - unless the tuner needs to be used right at 8:00 to start recording something else. I thought the E* PVR did the same thing. I find our locals to be the worst for starting programs early.

[Tony S]

Originally posted by karl_f
... I thought the E* PVR did the same thing...
With the 501 you can set it to start 1 min early, but you have to manually edit the timer to change the end time. According to Scott's review, you can change both the starting and ending times with the 721.

[Jacob S]

Maybe this is a tactic more channels are going to use to fight PVR usage so you wont edit out commercials.

[DarrellP]

Originally posted by HTguy
There is nothing more irritating than watching a show all the way thru only to miss the ending!
Last night I was watching an old classic from the 40's "Cat People" off of TCM and it stopped with I have no idea how many minutes left. It's time was 1:15 but the movie started about 10 minutes into that. I was PISSED.