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Friday, August 1st, 2025

Limitation on number of simultanious recordings/viewings...

We have a satellite-based hr44-500 with three Genies. We are only allowed to record + watch a maximum of two shows. If we wish to record two different channels simultaniously, and watch a third channel, we get the "must cancel one recording or change to one of the channels being recorded" message. I thought there was a maximum of five seperate simultanious recordings/viewings allowed. What's happening here? How to fix?

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ACE - Expert

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21.3K Messages

5 days ago

The HR44 is the Genie and has only 5 tuners and can only stream to 3 minis clients at a time, the only time you can record 5 show at the same time is if you are watching one or more of the recording channels or are watching recorded programs. 

You can try a red button reset of all the boxes starting with the HR44 to fix the only two problem.

ACE - Expert

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23.2K Messages

5 days ago

HR44 is the Genie. The other boxes (such as C31) are Mini Genie Clients.

Genie has 5 tuners. Clients have NO tuners of their own.

Since the Genie has the Picture in Picture (PiP) feature, it reserves 2 tuners to itself. That leaves 3 tuners for up to 3 Clients.

Anything recording uses 1 tuner of course.

That means you have tuners in use. In case more are counted in use in error, try a full refresh of the system. Verify coax is finger tight to each box. Red button reset the HR44. Once it is back up do the same for each Mini Genie, one at a time. You can also log into your account on their website and under equipment refresh the service authorizations to the HR44.

If that doesn't work, you can also power cycle. This is unplugging power from all boxes for a couple minutes. Then just like the red button reset, plug in starting with HR44 and when booted up then each Mini Genie. Unlike the red button, this dumps the memory cache which means the guide data will need to load in from the satellite again (and download On Demand info if you are internet connected).

One of the big reasons I prefer regular HDDVRs over Mini Genies. With each having 2 tuners, I don't have to worry about conflicts. And if there is ever an issue with the Genie, the HDDVRs are just fine as they don't depend on it to function.

ACE - Expert

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37.1K Messages

4 days ago

One thing that could be happening is if you turn off the TV connected to a Genie Client, it may not automatically stop streaming the content and continue to use the tuner on the HR44 even though nobody is watching.  The red button reset of all your equipment would clear that up until it happens again.


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