Dish "Hopper" - Page 4

Jadeworld is on 118.7... 148 doesn't exist anymore. It lost power and they blew it out into space...

Since you are in CA and (presumably) using the Dish western arc satellites, you should not need a wing dish. A 1000+ should do it all: (110/118/119/129).

I checked this morning and I currently get 110, 119, and 129. I guess they just need to swap out the dish for the one that adds 118. In my previous house I had a wing dish that was pointed at different times to 148 or 62.5. (I became a Dish HD subscriber when their two channels of HD were only on 62.5.)

The funny thing is they mounted the dish on my roof at a spot I can never see it from the ground.

Rick R

Yep. You need a 1000+.

Well they came out today and installed the 2 hoppers and 2 joeys. Thanks so much for the advice of two hoppers. I would have been seriously not happy with one hopper with only 3 tuners for my 4 TVs. They installed the 1000+ dish and my wife is happy with the Hong Kong channels. Plus she can watch them on any TV. She loves the hopper's capabilities.

The big problem is, as we suspected, the installer had no OTA module for the hopper. In fact he had never heard of it. He called his boss who also had never heard of it. He called the national service number and they identified it but said it was out of stock. He told me to call back to check when it is in stock. Does anyone have any knowledge as to when it is expected? Thanks so much.

Rick R

No but you are not alone, many people waiting on it. Demand must have been more than expected.

Rick, now that you have your Hoppers you can login to dish.com and then into your account. Go to products and then you'll be able to see the OTA module that is presently out of stock. When it is rte-supplied it will allow you to order one. I'll be watching myself and, if I can get this old brain to remember, I'll report back here.

Thanks, I found it. I will continue checking until I can order one.

Rick R

Good enough! I don't think it will be a very long time.

Glad you like the Hopper. I recently switched back to Dish myself. I find the Hopper system to be awesome. My only complaint is not being able to resume playback of recordings that are still in progress. This was the the case on my old 622 and 722 as well. At least Dish offers a super-fast FF to let me make my way back to where I had been.

-Ted

Got the OTA module and installed it. Actually I got two of them, one for each Hopper. I have to say that its OTA tuner is not the best. The Hopper gets lots of break up on channels that my TVs that are connected direct to an antenna do not.

Also a heads up to anyone that installs them. The instructions say to connect them and wait for the Hopper to ask you if you want to reboot. It never asked so I unplugged the hopper and plugged it in again and then it rebooted and then recognized the OTA module.

Rick R

My H did that as written in the manual. Perhaps, your is need to reboot anyway, they have common issue, very often RAM become corrupted (logically) and the box shows pretty weird behavior.
As to sensitivity of the tuner (see my post with tidbits at DBStalk) in Bay Area it's show good result, same as TR-50 aka DTVPAL DVR/CM7000-PAL.

Is your OTA module mounted horizontally or vertically. That seems to matter based on posts from other sites.

Perhaps you mistaken with Joye ? That box is overheating !

I'm using the OTA dongle - it has room temp.
I can post of a picture of internals - there are not much chips to generate real heat, not telling about overheating.

The instructions say to mount it firmly and not to let it hang. I did that and they are mounted flat with the vent holes up.

Rick R

The recommendation directed against damaging F-connector, not the quasi-overheating issue.

People at Satellite Guys have stated that they get better reception if the OTA module is horizontal or vertical, depending on their situation. If you are having reception issues, I recommend trying both orientations to see if that helps things.

-Ted

Ted,

These "guys' are just bunch of lam... ummm unexperiences people. Ask me about RF testing, professionally.
Well, back to the non-existing issue: as EE who is testing RF parameters of various consumer devices for living, I'll tell you: the claim is a placebo (and I'm using VERY polite definition for that). Forget it.

That claim, which I can't locate at the moment, was immediately refuted by a number of other OTA module users who leave it oriented every which way. Consensus is that the recommendation to leave it flat has nothing to do with reception or cooling, but as stress relief on the cables and connectors.

OK. Some people stated that. Others disagreed. In any case, I was just trying to help, and, since some had seen improvements, I thought it was worth mentioning.

-Ted

it's just a placebo effect

My hopper keeps turning itself off unless someone hits a key on the remote, is there any way to disable the auto-off setting?

Menu, Settings, Diagnostics, Updates, Disable....

That'll fix you right up.

Thanks....

You're welcome...

Hopper 2 [aka XiP913] coming to light ... Production FW S3.00 spooling for it. Perhaps at CES we will see it alive.

I got a few pictures from FCC - internal Sling added ( remember 922 ?) , WiFi adapter, 2 TB drive ...

I mentioned above that I was getting breakups using the OTA module. However it turns out I only get breakups when using the OTA module and displaying a banner page! Without the banner page the OTA is rock solid even on the weaker stations. However with the banner I get breakups on all stations a lot.

Rick R

Whole story doesn't sound appealing when you will try to procure the "nomination" of Hopper with Sling. I don't see it as something what is worth of the award. We already got half-baked 922 with same capabilities and what ?

"Best of..." awards don't mean jaw-dropping transcendence in some absolute sense, but rather that the product is just a bit better than the other toys at the convention. Note that DirecTV's new receiver was not at the show, so it wasn't considered.

The chipset in the new Hopper is 2X faster than the old Hopper, and among other qualifications, can transcode 2 HD streams simultaneously in real time. This allows for another new feature not available on the old Hopper: the Dish Transfer (to an iPad) app. All in all, I agree with the CNET editors; it's the best in show and should have won. It would have won had not the dunderheads at CBS overruled CNET editors. This casts the journalistic integrity of all their news divisions into question, and put the Dish Hopper in the news for days after CES ended. You can't buy Hopper advertising like that!
Edited by TheKrell - 1/15/13 at 2:20am