Does Dish Network have any OTA dongles for the Hopper 3 that have MORE than two tuners? What's the max amount of tuners I can get for OTA?

TheKrell

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Just one dongle per receiver and no dongle more than 2 tuners.

But, just think of the possibilities. With either 2 dongles or a 4-tuner dongle, you wouldn't need to sub to Dish locals to get PTAT.
 

the mack

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Never gave it any thought but if you have multiple joeys only 2 OTA channels are available if you use OTA only for locals..
Almost makes you have to subscribe to local service.
 

MikeD-C05

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I use my 4 tuner ota TABLO dvr. It reliably records all of the program and I paid the extra $20.00 a year to get commercial skip on anything I record -except news. It is like my own personal Prime time Anytime device. All you need is your own external hard drive and an antenna and hook it up to the internet and your good. Can watch it anywhere using the App on my phone or I-pad. It beats the $15.00 a month dvr fee + $12.00 for sat locals. Had it going on two years in June and it is still working fine.
 
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joegr

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At least one person on this thread has has good results with the Tablo device. Has anyone used the Amazon tuner? We already have firesticks on both TVs.
I have a friend with the Amazon Recast box. He's pretty happy with it. He's had it a few months now.
 
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Tony S

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At least one person on this thread has has good results with the Tablo device. Has anyone used the Amazon tuner? We already have firesticks on both TVs.
I have posted this in other threads, but since you asked...

I have had the Amazon Recast for about 9 months. It has 4 OTA tuners, a 1TB hard drive that can hold 150 hours of video, and a free program guide included in the price. I am very happy with it. It is very reliable. It has never missed a recording in the 9 months that I have owned it.

On the downside, you need an Amazon Fire TV device to use it (not so bad since the Fire TV device also has the Dish Anywhere app, and that works pretty well). Also, the Fire TV device and the Recast DVR have to be on the same network. That means that when you are away from home, you can only watch your Amazon DVR by using Amazon's Fire TV app. The Fire TV app is available on iphones, ipads, and other Amazon devices that support the Fire TV app, however it is not available on Amazon's own Fire TV. This is the major thing that I do not like, but it is not a deal breaker for me.

The Recast has allowed me to drop the local channels from my Dish package and save $12 a month. Also, I no longer care if Dish has a dispute with with one of my local stations. (In the past, I have lost FOX, CBS, and ABC while Dish negotiated a new contract).

EDIT: I should also mention that Amazon puts the Recast on sale quite often. I was able to buy the 4 tuner version for $179.99 ($100 off list price).
 

edisonprime

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I do use a 1 TB TiVo Bolt to answer you guys. But I would like a total of more than 6 tuners; not to mention that I also would like more OTA tuners on my Hopper 3 without changing inputs. Although I believe I know the answer, I’ll ask just in case. So I assume there’s no third party OTA dongles either?


Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys
 

Cheddar_Head

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Feb 13, 2008
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At least one person on this thread has has good results with the Tablo device. Has anyone used the Amazon tuner? We already have firesticks on both TVs.
I will vouch for my 2-tuner Tablo working for the last 3 years. My only regret is not buying the 4-tuner model. I had some issues early on but Tablo worked with me on replacing my initial model. That and making sure I had a good antenna.
 
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DishSubLA

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Apr 9, 2006
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Dish hasn't been able to get the 2 tuner dongle to work correctly, why would you want to open that can of worms?
If you really need more than 2 tuners I believe there are non dish products offering up to 8 tuners definitely 4 tuners.
Both of my two tuner USB modules have worked flawlessly from day one when those tuners first came out. I belive the problem has been traced to heat, and people putting the tuners in places with insufficient airflow like in a tight place.
 
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DishSubLA

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I have posted this in other threads, but since you asked...

I have had the Amazon Recast for about 9 months. It has 4 OTA tuners, a 1TB hard drive that can hold 150 hours of video, and a free program guide included in the price. I am very happy with it. It is very reliable. It has never missed a recording in the 9 months that I have owned it.

On the downside, you need an Amazon Fire TV device to use it (not so bad since the Fire TV device also has the Dish Anywhere app, and that works pretty well). Also, the Fire TV device and the Recast DVR have to be on the same network. That means that when you are away from home, you can only watch your Amazon DVR by using Amazon's Fire TV app. The Fire TV app is available on iphones, ipads, and other Amazon devices that support the Fire TV app, however it is not available on Amazon's own Fire TV. This is the major thing that I do not like, but it is not a deal breaker for me.

The Recast has allowed me to drop the local channels from my Dish package and save $12 a month. Also, I no longer care if Dish has a dispute with with one of my local stations. (In the past, I have lost FOX, CBS, and ABC while Dish negotiated a new contract).

EDIT: I should also mention that Amazon puts the Recast on sale quite often. I was able to buy the 4 tuner version for $179.99 ($100 off list price).
Yes, Fire Recast TV is by far the greatest value, most economical. TiVo is way too expenisve. Even the well priced TiVo Roamio for OTA, while it comes at one price with all service included, not extra fees for EPG, etc., can become way too expensive if you want to see the TiVo DVR content on other TV's in your home requiring you to invest in costly Mini's (TiVo clients), and there is NO streaming capability built-in to the Roamio OTA. One would need to purchase the stand-alone TiVo Stream (it can be a frustrating piece of equimpent) that is no longer manufactured, or get a Slingbox for streaming. All these extra costs takes you into something like 2 or 3X the cost of the Fire Recast TV. The only downside to Recast is that at present, only ONE Recast per account. This means you cant expand using the same account if you need to, and considering all those OTA sub-channles with decent content, I could see a serious OTA household needing more than one Recast, even if it is just to keep seperate Mon & Dad's recordings seperate from the rest of the household.
 

DishSubLA

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I do use a 1 TB TiVo Bolt to answer you guys. But I would like a total of more than 6 tuners; not to mention that I also would like more OTA tuners on my Hopper 3 without changing inputs. Although I believe I know the answer, I’ll ask just in case. So I assume there’s no third party OTA dongles either?


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Yes, there are AirTV USB OTA tuners that will work on the H3, and some people claim that it runs cooler fixing overheating problems in SOME situations where the tuners are placed in areas of poor air flow, but AirTV tuners are essentially the as those sold for the H3, and they have only 2 tuners, anyway.

Keep in mind it is not necessarily the USB module having more than TWO tuners, the SOFTWARE of the H3 would have to support tuners providing more than 2 tuners. Even you could find a USB OTA tuner capable of, say, 4 tuners, I would not expect to have more than 2 tuners function because I doubt the H3 software supports it.
 

DishSubLA

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I should also add that the chip or chip-set has to support more than two OTA tuners or channels. I believe last I knew, the maximum OTA channels some chip-set could handle was 4 tuners, but, again, there are probably chip-sets that support only 2 OTA channels at one time, and that would be the cheaper option for Dish.
 

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