Dish Network Hopper Question

DanKirk wrote:
I currently have Dish Network at home, and have 3 TV's connected to 2 DVR's (a VIP722K and a VIP612).

I want to add a TV, and to upgrade to a whole-home DVR system, and am considering the Hopper. I spoke to a Dish rep, and they suggested that 2 Hoppers and 2 Joeys would be best for my set up.

I'd go for 3 Hoppers and one Joey -- that's 9 tuners or 11 when the Super Joey is released. A guy on the Satelliteguys.us forums has 4 Hoppers in his house (that's 12 tuners).

Anyway, you pay only $5 more per month for a Hopper, since a Hopper is $12/mon and a Joey is $7/mon. I went from 1 Hopper & 2 Joeys in my RV to 2 Hoppers & 1 Joey.

BTW, work with a local installer, not DISH directly. You'll have more options.

DanKirk wrote:

I've done some reading online, and it seems that many people are having issues with the Hopper system since the last software update. The complaints are that the Hoppers lock-up, the remotes are sluggish, and the Joeys disconnect regularly.

Is the Hopper system unreliable, and should I look at other options? Or, are the online complaints just isolated incidents?

How are your Hoppers working?

The remotes are "sluggish"? That's a good one. I used to have a DirecTV HR20 -- now that's slow! I've never had a Hopper "lock up", but I did have one reset itself.

There are bugs, but to me no show stoppers. For example, I bought an external USB hard drive, connected it to my Hopper to store TV programs, but my Hopper did not "see" it no matter what I did. Then I bought two of the DISH recommended drives and they both worked fine.

You'll love Hoppers, especially PTAT with AutoHop.