Annoying Dish Network Problem

[kevpriest]

I've had this problem all along, but it's ticked me off again this weekend and I thought I'd raise it here.

I use Dish Network as my television provider, controlling the box via a USB-UIRT. Everything works great.

Until, that is, Dish decides to add a channel to their lineup, which happens all the time. The problem is that Sage automatically adds this new channel to my lineup, even though I haven't actually purchased a subscription to this channel. Intelligent recording seems to like new channels, so it tries to record stuff from them. Dish throws up a dialog saying that I don't have access to that channel, and now Sage is stuck until I happen to notice that it's been recording a stupid dialog for three days (you can't change channels when the dialog is up). I rarely watch Live TV anymore, so it's usually been several days since the problem started and then I have to weed through all the bad recordings and see what we missed.

Is there anyway to prevent Sage from automatically adding new channels to my lineup? I would love it if I had to periodically go into Sage and "activate" the new channels (turn the button green) in the lineup.

Thanks,

KevPriest

[MixTracks]

I personally like that Sage automatically adds the new channels, otherwise, I would probably never know what changes are made. That way I can stay informed of the new channels, then remove them if I don't like, or pay for them.

[chrisc16]

I agree that some people might like having new channels added for the reason that MixTracks posted above. But hopefully it's an option that we can turn off? Because I have the same problem as KevPriest, where the satellite box gets stuck on the message and can't change channels. There's nothing worse than when my wife sits down to watch Gilmore Girls (or similar) and gets that screen... and we find the same on 15 other recordings of shows we wanted to watch. Really kills the WAF quickly.

-Chris

[kevpriest]

I can understanding wanting to see the new channels, but the way it currently works is I find out my recordings are stuck because Intelligent Recording tried to record something from Pashtun Shopping Network or the Fujian-Dialect Reality TV Network or whatever Dish has added this week. I'd be happy to review the list of new channels somewhere and decide if I want them, but learning about them because they blocked all my daughter's Dora the Explorer recordings isn't going to get me to sign up for the Urdu Horse Racing Network.

[MixTracks]

That would be a cool idea, like a message center where Sage tells you if any new channels have been added, and if you would like to add them or not.

[JUC]

It still doesn't make sense why Dish will only let you change the channel by pressing up/down---you can't change it by enterring #'s. This used to annoy me all the time...until i switched to DTV (which will let you enter new #'s from that screen)
JUC

[SHS]

Option 1: Disable Intelligent Recording
Option 2: Make a custom guide profiles on the dish box.

[Watter]

Originally Posted by JUC

It still doesn't make sense why Dish will only let you change the channel by pressing up/down---you can't change it by enterring #'s.

That's actually the core problem. There's no logical reason why switching channels via #'s is disabled from those system screens like that. It used to drive me nuts when I used Dish Network.

[chrisc16]

Originally Posted by SHS

Option 1: Disable Intelligent Recording
Option 2: Make a custom guide profiles on the dish box.

Option 1 would solve the problem, but IR is one of the primary reasons why I enjoy Sage so much.

Option 2 wouldn't change anything. Guide profiles on the satellite receiver do not affect Sage in any way.

A user-configurable software switch that controls whether new channels are automatically added to the guide would solve this problem best.

-Chris

[Wheemer]

I have this problem aswell... It is the fault of Zap2it. I use the Canadian plugin, so every so ofter I have to renew my zap2it subsciption. This usually involves some sort of survey. The last one I did suggested some changes they might do, I voted for the option to not add new channels automaitcally.

I don't know if those surveys do anything...

[kevpriest]

I don't think it's Zap2It's fault, as I don't mind that the channels are added as "available", it's that they're added as "active". When I set up Sage I have to manually go in and select which channels are active. If it would stay the way I set it up, all would be well. The problem is when new channels are added as "available", they're also added as "active". That's a Sage function, I believe.

[Crashless]

I used to have Dish and was severly annoyed by this problem. Basically the software kicks up an error saying you don't have a subscription and won't do anything else except 'guide' and 'up/down'. It sucks.

I never found a work around. Best thing I can advise is to really tame your IR. I go though at least once a week end clean out my upcoming recordings (and even additional airing if necessary).

[insomniac]

I believe the workaround would be to assign a key to the up or down command. I have not done this, but I have assigned a key to the dish "enter" command in the past when I was screwing around with purchasing ppv through sage.

I cannot imagine that it would be difficult. Any takers? Im kind of busy for the next few weeks to try it..


EDIT:

Guess I should elaborate...Using Opus's remote stuff + sendmessage is what I had in mind to execute this...
I.

Originally Posted by Crashless

I used to have Dish and was severly annoyed by this problem. Basically the software kicks up an error saying you don't have a subscription and won't do anything else except 'guide' and 'up/down'. It sucks.

I never found a work around. Best thing I can advise is to really tame your IR. I go though at least once a week end clean out my upcoming recordings (and even additional airing if necessary).

[TheThumper]

insomniac,
Can I ask how to accomplished the following that you stated?
"but I have assigned a key to the dish "enter" command"

I am assuming that you could press a key and the IR would transmit a signal to satellite reciever to "Enter".

The reason I ask is I would like to find a way to hit a key and get the IR transmitter to turn off my TV. In SageTV I found a way to teach it a new command so I have taught SageTV to that and I can test it using the "test" function in the Remote setup, but I haven't figured out how to map a keystroke to this newly learned IR command.

Any help is appreciated....

[aberson]

Originally Posted by Crashless

I used to have Dish and was severly annoyed by this problem. Basically the software kicks up an error saying you don't have a subscription and won't do anything else except 'guide' and 'up/down'. It sucks.

I never found a work around. Best thing I can advise is to really tame your IR. I go though at least once a week end clean out my upcoming recordings (and even additional airing if necessary).

I have 2 questions about this thread:

1. How are people controlling the Dish box? EXETuner and something?

2. Does the error box go away if you do successfully change channels by hitting up? Does it go away if you hit "enter"?

I wrote a perl script that accepts commands from the EXETuner plugin and sends those commands to WinLIRC. WinLIRC accepts those commands and sends them as IR to any external box. My plan was to use this for Dish Network, but my install isn't until next week. I'm calling the program sage-lirc, see this post, and if interested please download from www.dumbengineer.com/sage-lirc

Anyway, the script could be EASILY modified so that before it blasts out the channel number to the dish box, it first transmits "enter" or "up" or whatever it would take to get rid of the error message... so while you still may record an hour of nothing, at least the recordings after that hour wouldn't get messed up. Of course, it would have to send this command every single time it tried to change the channel, so it would have to be a command that caused no harm the rest of the time.

Adam

[Crashless]

I just used my USB-UIRT and the built-in Sage support for it.

I would be happy to test it, but I just sent my STBs back to them.

[aberson]

Originally Posted by aberson

1. How are people controlling the Dish box? EXETuner and something?

ok, I see it now - there's builtin support for USB-UIRT and that's what the OP is using.

I don't see any quick solution for using the USB-UIRT with LIRC, but it's possible it would work... especially maybe with a USB-serial driver that maps the USB-UIRT to a COM port? I'm not familiar with the USB-UIRT.

Alternatively, you could build the IR transmitter that works with WinLIRC. It's literally 3 components: Diode, Resistor, IR LED - connected to an rs232 serial port. Even buying retail at Radio Shack that's less than $10 worth of stuff - including the rs232 cable to mount it to.

Adam

[insomniac]

in order to get out of the error screen in dish, you need to give an up or down command.

Originally Posted by aberson

2. Does the error box go away if you do successfully change channels by hitting up? Does it go away if you hit "enter"?

I

[Crashless]

Originally Posted by insomniac

in order to get out of the error screen in dish, you need to give an up or down command.

Channel up or down that is.

[insomniac]

ok..so I just got a few minutes free time to take a look into this annoying issue and found a few ir files that I was working with. For some reason, where I could train my USBUIRT to my dish remotes before, I cannot now...odd.

Below are the commands for some of the dish commands:

Guide 0000 0048 0001 0011 0017 0163 0017 00a3 0016 0062 0017 00a3 0016 0062 0017 00a3 0016 00a3 0017 00a3 0017 00a3 0016 00a3 0017 00a3 0016 00a3 0017 00a3 0016 00a3 0017 00a3 0017 00a3 0016 00a3 0017 0163
Cancel 0000 0048 0001 0011 0017 0163 0017 00a3 0016 0062 0017 00a3 0016 00a3 0017 0061 0016 00a3 0017 00a3 0016 00a3 0017 00a3 0017 00a3 0016 00a3 0017 00a3 0016 00a3 0017 00a3 0016 00a3 0017 00a3 0017 0163
Recall 0000 0048 0001 0011 0017 0162 0017 00a2 0016 0061 0017 0061 0016 00a2 0017 0061 0016 0061 0017 00a2 0016 00a2 0017 00a3 0016 00a3 0017 00a2 0016 00a3 0017 00a2 0017 00a2 0016 00a3 0017 00a2 0017 0162
OK 0000 0048 0001 0011 0017 0163 0017 00a3 0016 0062 0017 00a3 0016 00a3 0017 00a3 0016 00a3 0017 00a3 0017 00a3 0016 00a3 0017 00a3 0016 00a3 0017 00a3 0016 00a3 0017 00a3 0017 00a3 0016 00a3 0017 0163
Menu 0000 0048 0001 0011 0017 0163 0017 00a3 0016 00a3 0017 0061 0016 00a3 0017 0061 0016 0062 0017 00a3 0016 00a3 0017 00a3 0017 00a2 0017 00a3 0017 00a3 0016 00a3 0017 00a3 0016 00a3 0017 00a3 0017 0163


Can someone please post the channel up and channel down commands for me so I can start experimenting with some solutions?

thx,

I.