HD DVR Recording Frustration - Prioritizer vs. To Do list

975 Views 4 Replies 3 Participants Last post by maui2k8, Jul 30, 2008

maui2k8

Discussion Starter · Jul 29, 2008

Last week I made the switch from Time Warner Cable to DirecTV and for the most part so far so good. That said, there is one thing I am not sure about in relation to recording series on the HR21-100. Here is an example of what I would like to do and was wondering if I just need to do this manually or am I missing something about recording a series...

Example show my Wife would like to see: Jon and Kate plus 8
Time: 10 PM every Wednesday as to not have to watch one of the two shows recording at one time I am trying to set the record to the second showing so no other shows are being recorded at the same time.
Show Type: New Episodes

The problem is that the Series recording does not seem to pick up the time slots I want it to use every week and if I pick up both first run and repeats I end up with like 30 shows scheduled to record!

Also, there are some shows that appear in the prioritizer as None Scheduled, but then I look at the To Do List and some recordings are there with the series icon next to them? Dirty Jobs is one such example as is Challenge on the Food Network HD. I have reset the box several times also and waited a day to see if that fixes things - but to no avail.

Is there a way to know which shows DirecTV views as first run? Also, I have this situation with many other shows where I only want to record one show at a time during prime time so we can change channels if we want to. Shows such as Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, American Chopper I would like to record the second showing on the night of new episodes...

Any tips or help on how to get the most out of the HD DVD is appreciated and I have looked over the boards quite a bit and it does look like there is a fair amount of frustration over the DVR capabilities of the HD DVD...

Thanks!

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Doug Brott

· #2 · Jul 29, 2008

You should be able to set Jon & Kate + 8 to a lower priority than your other recordings. Then if there is a conflict, the later recording will be used. However if there is not a conflict, the earlier recording will be recorded and this might interfere with you Live TV surfing .. If the latter happens often, you may simply have to use a manual recording.

I understand your pain, and in my case (being in California) I invariably get the first recording which is earlier than normal prime time shows. There is, unfortunately, no way to set up time blocks for either recording or to not allow recordings. Your best bet is to just record all the shows you like and watch them all from the DVR .. and delete the show after you've watched it .. but, we all watch TV differently, so it's hard to give you the perfect answer.

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Stuart Sweet

· #3 · Jul 29, 2008

:welcome_s to DBSTalk!

It sounds like one solution for you would be to set manual recordings for those particular time slots. I understand that it wouldn't record only first runs at that point but you would get the time slots you want.

In some cases it can take several hours for the prioritizer and to do list to sync up, and I wonder if that's what you're seeing. Usually it's pretty quick but during the initial setup phase, when you're entering in a lot of stuff, it's not uncommon for the prioritizer and to do list to take a minute to catch up.

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maui2k8

Discussion Starter · #4 · Jul 29, 2008

Thanks for the replies! I have waited up to 24 hours after setting series recordings and my prioritizer just does not seem to match the To Do List of shows... For example, I have Mythbusters on the To Do List with the series recording icon, but Not Scheduled on the Prioritizer. This was the same after rebooting and waiting 24 hours more... Maybe manual recording is the only way to go, but the frustrating part of that is it shows Manual Recording in the To Do List as opposed to the show name... I have used ReplayTV for a few years and even though they are no longer making the DVRs, they seemed to have their act together better than DirecTV seems to.

That said, I am still much happier with DirecTV than Time Warner Cable!

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maui2k8

Discussion Starter · #5 · Jul 30, 2008

Problem solved by formatting the hard drives on both of my HR21-100 receivers... Seems odd I would have to do that less than a week from becoming a DirecTV customer, but maybe somehow with my deleting then re-recording of programs the internal database or whatever stores the shows you have selected got corrupted or the guide was messed up. Either way all is well now - I just hope that things do not get all jacked up again any time soon...

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