Why wasn't my DVR working the way I think it's supposed to? Plus bonus TV question!

Factual Questions
1

Usually I’m pretty good with technology and such, but last night my DishNetowrk DVR got the best of me.

The scenario:

The receiver box has two tuners (actually, maybe three…see below). This means I can do one of several things:

  1. Watch one show.
  2. Watch one show, and have a Picture-in-Picture of another show.
  3. Record one show.
  4. Record one show, watch another.
  5. Record two shows, watching either NOTHING (ie, TV is off, but receiver is on,) or I can watch one of the two being recorded.

The problem came with #5. Two shows were set to record at the same time that night, one I set up (Tosh.0) one my roomamte (Auction Hunters.)

I was already watching Comedy Central before the recordings were set to start, (10 PM) so I figured they’d start and I could just keep watching Comedy Central, and both would record. But when the recordings started, it automatically switched me over to Auction Hunters. I trid to switch back to Comedy Central, but I got the mesage saying to watch something else, I had to cancel the recording of Auction Hunters…bwa?

I know that if I wanted to watch a third thing that wasn’t Tosh.0 or Auction Hunters, I would have to cancel, but not if I wanted to watch one of those two. And I double checked the DVR thingy, and it was correct, both Tosh.0 and Auction Hunters were currently recording, but the only thing it woulsd let me watch was Auction Hunters. I eventuall canceled that, because my roommate said go ahead, he didn’t watch that show much anyway.

So I did and I could switch it back to Tosh. Then I figured that since I was watching Tosh, I had no need to record it, so I tried to cancel that to start recording Auction Hunters…but I couldn’t. I was in the DVR menu (good God, talk about a badly designed POS UI,) and there was no way to cancel the current recording. I hit the ‘stop’ button…nothing. Eventually, navigating through too many sub-menus, there does exist an option to “skip” a given recording, but that was greyed out…I had used that option on a recording before, but I guess it only works if you use it before the recording starts…nothing I did would stop the current recording.

The only thing that I think might make a difference is that our receiver has a “out” slot that sends a signal to the other two TVs (the ones in my roommate and I’s bedrooms.) He might have been watching TV in his room…I’m not sure how the receiver works in that regard. I know we DON’T have receivers in our room, just a coax that was split from the main receiver. But I don’t think those TVs have any effect on the main receiver (the posbile third tuner?)…and again, when all this started, both shows WERE recording, so it’s not like his TV was “using” one of the tuners and Auction Hunters was using the other…both were available and recording, I just couldn’t watch either of them, just Auction Hunters.

So…

  1. Why could I only watch Auction Hunters while it was DVRing, and not Auction Hunters OR Tosh?
  2. Why couldn’t I cancel Tosh?

And, as a bonus, when I watch TV in my room off of the “split” cable. I don’t know if split is the right word, it was all set up by DishNetwork and I have my own remote that communicates wirelessly with the main box to change the channel my TV gets. I keep my TV on channel 73 and the box a floor below changes what I get. But there is always this high-pitched noise. I don’t think it’s a ground-loop buzz, because I know what that sounds like and this is a little higher-pitched than that…plus, it’s a coax that has that metal-mesh stuff built into the cable, so sholdn’t it be immune to ground-loop?

2

It’s been a while since I had Dish and they may have changed things on newer receivers.
Their are two tuners and two TVs. You record one show on tuner1 and another on tuner2. I believe that while they are being recorded, you have to be watching TV1 to see tuner1 or TV2 to see tuner2.
The noise is probably associated with the wiring or TV on tuner2.

3

I have no idea about Dish Networks DVR, but with other company’s DVR’s DirecTv, Tivo, or local cable company…normally you have two tuners and are able to:

Record 2 different channels, and watch either one of them while they are recording, or even watch something else that was previously recorded.

You should call Dishnetwork with your particular question.

4

FYI, for the TiVo, there’s a remote button that switches between the two tuners.

As noted above, there may be a similar feature on your box where you have to actually tell the unit to switch to the other tuner (the one that’s recording the show you want to watch as it’s recording).

Of course, your mileage may vary depending on how DishNetwork is setup and the model of the DVR.

5

But there’s no reason you shouldn’t have been able to watch one of the 2 shows recording. I’m assuming Tosh is on Comedy Central, which is why you though it wouldn’t take a tuner away from you. Did you try watching Tosh from the DVR recordings menu, instead of direct tuning? That’s scenario 6 that should always work as well:

  1. Record 2 shows, and watch an already existing recording.

e.g. If you’re recording Show1 & Show2 right now, you should be able to watch Show0 that you recorded yesterday - the recording functions and playback functions are completely separate events in a DVR.

There’s no technical reason you shouldn’t be able to tune to a channel that’s currently recording, so if you can’t, I’d chalk that up to bad logic in the DVR software. Definitely try going through the DVR recordings menu next time - in my case 6 above, Show1 and Show0 can definitely be the same show.

My in-laws have Dish DVR, and I agree the UI is a piece of crap. It wouldn’t surpise me a bit if the logic is crap as well.

6

There are two tuners. Normally we have it set that tuner 1 shows on TV1 and tuner 2 shows on TV2, but there is a button on the receiver that can change it so that both TV’s are showing the same tuner. I think that if you switched that, you would be able to watch either show on TV1, but I am not completely sure of that.

The other option was to allow it to record for a few minutes, then start watching the show on TV2 from the recording.