You should be able to do it with the manual recording too (though I don't remember if I explicitly tested this). You'll need to press enter after typing the channel number. You won't see anything happen until you press enter.
My testing of the manual recording function is somewhat inconsistent.
I want to record a specific time on a specific channel, once a week on a specific day, no matter what the show name is at that time.
Can I do that; how?
If I enter a name in the NAME field, is the program searching for that name, or is it just used to identify that recording?
How does the DATE field affect a weekly recording?