Question about Wally

When we were building our home on the property we had an outbuilding with a small apartment in back. During this time we had Dish Network, and the dish is still attached/wired in the outbuilding. We lived there temporarily until they were complete.

We finally moved into the 'big' house, and extended our dish program to a normal household setup. We unplugged and walked the hopper to the new home down the driveway. My oldest doesn't watch TV very often at all, and I was wondering about replacing her 'joey' with a 'wally' for the times in which we have house guests from back home stay in the apartment we still have in the outbuilding. It was to far away for the joey to talk to the hopper, and the wireless receiver is as well.

This would be a replacement receiver instead of the joey itself. If she wanted to watch TV while houseguests were not around? That would be her receiver in her room.

I keep getting conflicting information from Dish Network if that is doable. To me it is just another receiver on our Dish account, and since the dish/wiring itself is STILL on the outbuilding - the same as it was when we were waiting for the build to finish it should work right?

I understand they would need 'add ons' to the Wally to record movies, and some say you need a wifi adaptor to watch Netflix, etc. Would it be the same programing as we have at the house down the driveway JUST coming from the Wally instead? Can the Wally be used as a regular receiver? We live in a rural area, and our local Dish people tell me get a wally - but are slim on details beyond that.

Would any Wally work, or do we need a special model?

Thank you for your time!

HipKat said:

There's no different kind've Wally for home use. Just buy one, tell them it's for your motor home and use the Dish (I assume it's a separate Dish on the outbuilding) that's there. However, remove any devices inline, like the Solo Hub/Solo Node or Tap so the line to the Wally is direct from the Dish, as Mr. Warden mentioned

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Thank you for your time. I will have to check to see what a 'solo hub' and the rest of those are. The apartment in the back of the outbuilding was setup originally for our hopper that we now have at the main house. When we moved the service down the driveway? Yes, they basically left the dish originally installed on the roof. They put the new dish on the new home. So, we have two here.

I gather that means our oldest wouldn't be able to use that as her box in the house since it sounds like the solo hub, etc. would be connected to our home setup. Am I reading this correctly?

les.warden said:

I have Hopper3 and Joey3 in the house. Also have a Wally in the motor home. The Wally is a $7 add on to my home system, just like the Joey3, except Wally is used in the coach with its own antenna. I’ve added an external HDD so it can record shows. I’ve used this all the way out West with no problems. I’m in Illinois. When we’re not traveling, I can disable it and save the $7 until we start traveling again, then I re-enable it.

It seems to me your extended residence would be just like our MH. You would need an additional antenna for your external residence. Hopper/Joey don’t play well with Wally on the same lines.

NOTE: When I got the Wally, I guessed it would need a firmware update and would need to download everything. To get this done quickly, I connected it directly to the house dish (3 LNB), bypassing the switch where the Hopper and Joey plug in. You have to go directly to the antenna with the Wally. Let it download everything, got it working in the house, then moved it to the coach.

Since you’ll need an additional antenna anyway, you probably won’t have to do this.

Hope this helps.

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I think our dish at the outbuilding - which was left there instead of moving it to the house could update the firmware for me.

From what I'm reading it sounds like the Wally will not be able to be used as a home receiver for the bedroom at the house. It would have to stay in the outbuilding completely. The Solo Hub/Solo node, or tap that HipKat mentioned can be removed from the outbuilding to work properly, but since you can't do that at the house? It will have to stay here.

HipKat said:

Probably not and the setup may depend on when each was installed. Up until about 2 years ago or so, all Hoppers were installed with 2 cables, or a Duo Cable from the dish - which had a DPP LNBF to a solo node



After that most and now all Hoppers (not including dual-hopper setups or Hoppers w/Super Joeys here) used one cable from the Dish, using a DPH LNB, connected to a solo hub, which I suspect is how the new house is setup



Either way if there's a Dish on the place you stayed in temporarily, the out building, still, the node or hub needs to be removed for a stand-alone Wally to work

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Hmm. Okay. Sounds like maybe we need to get another hopper for the outbuilding. That way it could be used either place. We just moved the service over to the house in July. I believe our current hopper is about 2 years old.