DISH Hopper coming at CES ?

Well my contract ran out last June, so I'm really glad I held off re-upping. Hopefully the Hopper & Joey will be the units that make me renew my contract.
Ghpr13:)
 
I upped to HD in August. Guess I won't be an early adopter. Which may be a good thing.
 
I wouldn't get too carried away here. I haven't heard anything about replacing all receiver out there with the Hopper. Obviously Dish wants this to be their flagship model but no one said anything about swapping out all old receivers and making all new customers get the Hopper.

I think what I said was misunderstood. When I said having to swap out everybody's units that wants one of these Hoppers, what I mean is that since they will not mix and match then someone would have to get all new equipment to get a Hopper. I did not mean that they were going to swap the entire customer base onto the hopper. I am just meaning someone just wants one Hopper and has to swap out the rest of the equipment so that it is all XIP equipment.

For example, lets say someone has a 722 and two 211's. They paid the $40 for each additional 211 to add the EHD to make them a DVR to avoid the DVR fees. If they want a Hopper then they have to swap out the 722 and both 211's. Now they are subject to the DVR fee's of the second Hopper and the Joey's however they implement them.

This is why I asked if they ever planned on having XIP receivers that are not DVR's. If the fee for the Joey's were not bad making it close to where they are paying now then it would not be an issue. Another issue is the cost of the upgrade for all the rest of the equipment that would have to be swapped out on someone's account. I think there will be a lot of disappointed people out there when they find out that it will cost them more than they realized having to swap it all out because they want a Hopper because of Dish Network not allowing DP and VIP models being on the same account as the XIP receivers.

I think for a lot of people the third tuner will help replace a dual tuner receiver plus a single tuner receiver. This, however, would not replace two dual tuner receivers or one dual and a few singles. Some people use them in single user mode on one tv and may have a few of those for that purpose.
 
I hope this is the case, but I haven't seen this directly addressed, that the second Hopper could be set to free the majority of the drive space for general use.

If someone gets a second Hopper then Dish should not need all that hard drive space that they dedicated for themselves since that is already on the first Hopper. They should give the user that additional space since their dedicated partition on the first Hopper can be shared throughout the whole house.
 
I see what you're saying now. The way it sounds a customer would have swap out all of their existing equipment. I've thought of this too because I have a 211k on my account that I'd like to keep because I have a Tailgater. I also paid the $40 to have a EHD on it too.

As for customers that do not want a DVR they'll just have to stick with the Vip equipment.
 
If someone gets a second Hopper then Dish should not need all that hard drive space that they dedicated for themselves since that is already on the first Hopper. They should give the user that additional space since their dedicated partition on the first Hopper can be shared throughout the whole house.

And how do they go about that? Are they able to free up hard drive space through a software update or is it fixed.
 
I am curious if they can change the software to free up the space in the second Hopper if it detects the first one connected to it since it is essentually a "shared system". I wonder if it would show the space available on each of the Hoppers or if would show the total amount available and just add the space available from the second hard drive onto the first. Maybe it is no more complex than figuring out which hard drive they pull the On Demand and other content from on their partition. If the second Hopper can detect that the show is already there just like our timers do then maybe it would not try to put them on the second hard drive as well having more space available for more of their On Demand content or maybe allow two weeks worth of primetime anytime content instead of just one.
 
I think what I said was misunderstood. When I said having to swap out everybody's units that wants one of these Hoppers, what I mean is that since they will not mix and match then someone would have to get all new equipment to get a Hopper. I did not mean that they were going to swap the entire customer base onto the hopper. I am just meaning someone just wants one Hopper and has to swap out the rest of the equipment so that it is all XIP equipment.

For example, lets say someone has a 722 and two 211's. They paid the $40 for each additional 211 to add the EHD to make them a DVR to avoid the DVR fees. If they want a Hopper then they have to swap out the 722 and both 211's. Now they are subject to the DVR fee's of the second Hopper and the Joey's however they implement them.

This is why I asked if they ever planned on having XIP receivers that are not DVR's. If the fee for the Joey's were not bad making it close to where they are paying now then it would not be an issue. Another issue is the cost of the upgrade for all the rest of the equipment that would have to be swapped out on someone's account. I think there will be a lot of disappointed people out there when they find out that it will cost them more than they realized having to swap it all out because they want a Hopper because of Dish Network not allowing DP and VIP models being on the same account as the XIP receivers.

I think for a lot of people the third tuner will help replace a dual tuner receiver plus a single tuner receiver. This, however, would not replace two dual tuner receivers or one dual and a few singles. Some people use them in single user mode on one tv and may have a few of those for that purpose.

Having to replace all the VIP boxes won't be a big problem as long as the fees are comparable. I think the main answer to the concerns is how much is a second Hopper going to be. Three tuners is tight for folks that have and are use to multiple duo receivers. If a second hopper stays in line with current fees then it should be acceptable to most.

The tailgater issue is the most problematic.

I don't see a "XIP 211" type receiver in the cards, I think they are going all in with the hopper/joey paradigm.

100%, way out there conjecture, but I could even conceive of no-DVR fee Hopper installs for new subs. End user recording could disabled but with 3 day "PTA-Lite" (to sell subs) and other (revenue producing) VOD type services turned on. It all really just depends on what Dish's numbers look like for those services.


Give them a DVR trial for the first couple weeks, then enabling DVR could be a remote based, impulse compatible purchase. We all know once you try DVR you don't go back. I bet they would end up with a lot of extra DVR fees from folks that would never go to the trouble to schedule an upgrade install later on.
 
I wonder if there will be a requirement to have a separate "tailgater" account from your regular home account. Might be the simplest fix if indeed they have a billing software problem. But the amount they'd charge could be a problem.

I can see one day a DVR-less Hopper. Then when someone wanted to upgrade to DVR they could pay a fee and plug in an EHD.

I've heard of people with DVRs that never use any DVR features. They'd have to learn something new.
 
I've heard of people with DVRs that never use any DVR features. They'd have to learn something new.
[Raises hand] ...my in-laws. Last time I visited there were precisely 2 events stored on their HDD...one my brother-in-law had created when he last visited, and one I still had on it from my visit a year prior. I don't even think they know they can pause live tv. Explaining it to them would be fruitless as well. :facepalm
 
I can see one day a DVR-less Hopper. Then when someone wanted to upgrade to DVR they could pay a fee and plug in an EHD.
I don't believe that will happen. It's a DVR world now, use it or not. Would not make sense to manufacture and inventory two different boxes.
 
I don't believe that will happen. It's a DVR world now, use it or not. Would not make sense to manufacture and inventory two different boxes.

Actually, I think most people still don't have DVRs. I hope I'm wrong.

But that's the point. They would not have to manufacture two different boxes. The firmware could detect if there is an onboard HDD and if DVR functions are authorized. If authorized and no internal HDD, go look for EHD. Actually quite simple to do. But yes, they would still be two boxes, the haves and the have nots. But the code base would be common. These things might become so cheap as to make this approach worthwhile. Maybe.
 
They could have just the Hopper and simplify things a bit. Give everybody HD and DVR. Make it a standard feature for all subscribers. Average the costs out. Charge less for it but everybody gets charged for it making the cost a little more for those that do not have it but it gets a lot of people using DVR that never had it before keeping a lot of customers that might otherwise stray. This would drop the price for those that do have it now and they would still not lose any money. That would keep existing subscribers happy that do have the service as well. However, those that still do not like it may stray due to higher pricing. They could also turn the feature on or off through the software but give everybody the free preview of DVR.
 
I have seen the diagrams that a one hopper setup will require 2 lines from the dish into a single node switch. Since the beginning I have only had one line come into the house, and for my single 622 that has still worked fine.

My question for any installers out there - would that single node switch need to be indoors or would it be possible to have that outside and still have only one line come in to the house and connect to the hopper?
 
In a 2 Hopper set up, are the 2 Hoppers required to be at the same location or can they be in separate rooms? Would make a difference whether I would need 2 or 3 Joeys.
 
I wonder if there will be a requirement to have a separate "tailgater" account from your regular home account. Might be the simplest fix if indeed they have a billing software problem. But the amount they'd charge could be a problem.

I can see one day a DVR-less Hopper. Then when someone wanted to upgrade to DVR they could pay a fee and plug in an EHD.

I've heard of people with DVRs that never use any DVR features. They'd have to learn something new.

It's so funny that you brought up this point, I have a dear friend of mine she is 75 the cable company brought her out a brand new DVR like 2 years ago she has no idea how to use it to this day never recorded one thing ever.

Then my aunt who is also like 65 keeps deleting everything after she has watched it because she is afraid she is going to run out of "tape" I keep going Aunt Jo there is NO tape in there it will delete itself but she is so sure that its going to "tape" over something LOL. She actually bothered to figure out how to use the thing completely but doesn't understand how it works inside at all. and the bad thing about it is she has a 922 LOL
 
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If someone gets a second Hopper then Dish should not need all that hard drive space that they dedicated for themselves since that is already on the first Hopper. They should give the user that additional space since their dedicated partition on the first Hopper can be shared throughout the whole house.

I would bet for full price of the Hopper, it will never happen.
In a world of those coders, only dedicated fixed size partitions exist.
Try to resize these for any existing DVR include the base of Hopper's SW - 922. All partitions will be DELETED next reboot and you'll lost everything.
 

Any word on NY RSN's from CES?

Sling adapter is only playing live TV

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