Thread: Sling to 922 to Hopper family tree?

Originally Posted by Miner

Another question I have is does Dish get any subsidy from the Big-4 for the Primetime Anytime feature?

Just random thoughts.

Miner

Judging by the comments I have heard, I don't believe the networks have anything to do with this feature. It is simply a feature that Dish decided to implement.

Originally Posted by JM42

They are tunerless. I didn't mean the Hopper relays the entire sat signal, just the data stream for the channel your watching after being received by the tuner and demuxed in the hopper.

Sling has to take that same data stream, decompress it, and then re-compress it using a lossy algorithm, a lot of unecessary work. You end up with a copy of a copy that takes more bandwidth than the original sat data stream.

That makes sense for the live stream to the Joey. Last time I looked at files from the External Hard Drive I thought they were MPeg files, encrypted. Does the Hopper send the encrypted (or unencrypted) MPeg file to Joey? I'm just curious about that.

I can totally agree the Sling signal is bloated; but if I put a fast enough hardware and big enough pipe (MOCA), I could probably make it work in the home, esp if I can control the 2 units internally (not going to sling.com or dishonline.com).

Sling--for Dish, anyway--is all about watching TV using portable devices (smart phones, pads, etc.) and computers anywhere you can access a network, or the so-called "TV Everywhere" concept/service.

Now, if only Dish could get Sling to actually WORK PROPERLY... That would be great!!

However the concept of Sling is not diminished by Hopper/Joey as Hopper/Joey are WHDVR solutions. They are also Dish's solution for getting HD in every room in the house, which has nothing to do with Sling's functionality, which is to allow Live TV and DVR content to be streamed over the Internet. I guess you could say that Hopper/Joey superseded the Sling Extender for sure, but not the Sling concept as a whole...

Originally Posted by Miner

That makes sense for the live stream to the Joey. Last time I looked at files from the External Hard Drive I thought they were MPeg files, encrypted. Does the Hopper send the encrypted (or unencrypted) MPeg file to Joey? I'm just curious about that.

I can totally agree the Sling signal is bloated; but if I put a fast enough hardware and big enough pipe (MOCA), I could probably make it work in the home, esp if I can control the 2 units internally (not going to sling.com or dishonline.com).

Scott had mentioned that the Joeys had a built in smartcard (and a slot). This would indicate that they are going to get the encrypted satellite stream (the single channel not the full transponder) sent to them.

Sling never worked well even in the house with direct ethernet connection. Your picture would slowly build up in quality as it ramps up the rate, and trick play would be sluggish and the quality would drop back down and then have to ramp back up.

Very good info to know.

I like to think Dish has made good technical decisions at times, but also can point to places where they seem to have made poor decisions (Web TV, 921, 922, Google TV). They do, however realize their mistakes and, to me at least, don't throw good money after bad.

I have a sling adapter and I use only inside the house. It works great once it starts but as Mike123abc points out, the starting, pausing and trick play, as well as the GUI make it almost unworkable.

Miner