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How does priority work?

608 views 5 replies 4 participants last post by  patmurphey 
#1 ·
Our Hopper 2 is set to record an early morning program every weekday. The timer has a priority 3 and begins 1 minute early. This morning that program didn't record. What happened? It appears another timer with priority 10 overrode it to record an episode of "Say Yes to the Dress" which is airing a marathon today on TLC. YUCK!

No one was awake at 5 AM to respond to the Allow or Deny screen. I assumed priority worked from 1 down to 10. Does it instead work from 10 down to 1? Or is priority just totally useless?
 
#2 ·
The priority should be in order, 1 overriding 2, etc. I usually check my timers each week so I can skip some programming (timer set for NASCAR to catch the races but the timers also record qualifying and practices - which I normally skip). Yesterday I had the opposite experience to you ... I had an "any channel" event near the bottom of my priority list that started recording a three day marathon. The recording conflict was one of my top ten priority recordings, so the DVR was set to skip several episodes of the marathon. I chose to skip the higher priority program (since the marathon was not repeating the episodes I would miss).

Marathons can cause havoc on the receivers. A couple of years ago I nearly missed a new Dr Who Christmas special because BBC America led up to the show with a multi-day marathon. Even though the older shows were automatically skipped, it crossed the "number of events" limit in the receiver. Fortunately by the day of the event I wanted the "number of events" had gone down to the point where the show I wanted did record.

BTW: When I set the "all channels" recording for the marathon I am recording this weekend I did not expect a marathon. By the end of the weekend I am going to have 40 hours of shows to watch! I was hoping some network would put the show on once a day. :)

I assume someone in your home set the priority 10 event that interfered with your recording? :D
 
#3 ·
One thing I would like to add to James' - the priorities normally only affect if there are not going to be enough free tuners (and in the case of a marathon -you would need 2 tuners for the marathon). You could also modify the marathon timer by deleting the 1 min prior / 3 Minutes after.

So, if this is going to be an ongoing issue - you might want to consider how best to get additional tuners -
1. Replace one Joey with a Super Joey (adds 2 sat tuners)
2. replace a Joey or add another Hopper/ Hopper2
3. replace your Hopper 2 with a Hopper 3.

#3 would be the most effective, as a Hopper 3 has 16 sat tuners, and you can add an USB OTA module for 2 OTA tuners (the OTA module could also be added to your Hopper 2).
 
#5 ·
Thank you. This helps. SO also commented that the game show she was watching live suddenly changed channel to the marathon. I'm going to change that timer to eliminate the 1 minute early and two minute after. If I can limit marathon events to one tuner they will be less of a problem.
 
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