erm well what can I say, I am a total noob, I edited the file and ftp it back to my box, I then fired up the auto timer screen, I noticed that "Match Timespan" was set to 15 minutes before and after, which is exactly what I expected to see after my edits, the problem was as soon as I clicked ok I got the blue screen of death and my box died, and thats when I realised my problem, I am using OPENATV and I assume the above file is incompatible with OPENATV and that's why my box died, I assume the OPENATV version of the file is different? I have updated all my plugins so I have the latest version (I think)
Sorry for wasting everyone's time
******* UPDATE ******
ok, I am now sorted, I managed to ftp AutoTimerEditor.pyo from my box to my computer and then decompile it, It was indeed different to the one you posted a link to, however it did have the same "Timer Span" code as the one you posted, I manually changed it and re uploaded it and all is good now.
thanks for pointing me in the right direction.