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I really enjoy my Hoppers, enjoy them so much I even purchased a third one! However there are some features missing from Hopper that even the older ViPs had. Others are features that neither had, but I would like :-


1.) MANUAL TIMERS. I would think that this would be obvious to Dish. Especially since their guide isn't always accurate or up-to-date. Plus with the future release of the OTA tuner, how on Earth will you schedule recordings on sub-channels or OTA channels without guide data?

2.) DVR History. On my 722Ks, I could see the history of items deleted. Hopper does not have this functionality. I'm glad that at least the timer history is still available on Hopper.

3.) Manual selection of update time. This is especially important when one has EHDs connected. With EHDs connected, the update/reboot process can take significantly longer as the Hopper is running Fsck on the EHDs. While it doesn't occur often, sometimes when I turn on one of my Hoppers, I can't do anything at all as they are still checking the EHDs. If we could set a manual update time, then we can avoid this.

4.) Password protection of recordings. On my 722Ks, protecting recordings would mean that they could only be deleted with the "locks" password. No such functionality on the Hopper.

5.) Thumbnails on EHD content. When viewing EHD content, thumbnails will not show up unless you happen to have some episodes of the same show residing on the internal storage as well.

6.) SD-friendly menus/turn off thumbnails. Hopper/Joey are not easy to read on SDTVs, and thumbnails just take up precious space on TVs with such low resolution. Also, Hopper/Joey do not take overscan into account by default. There is an option to adjust the zoom on the menus to account for overscan, however I think that in 480i mode it should automatically assume overscan will be used, like the older ViPs did. Also, many HDTVs also use overscan, some more than others, therefore I think that by default Hopper/Joey should not have so many items on the edges. Or maybe just have it zoomed "out" 2-3 notches by default, instead of the current setting which is zoomed in to the max by default. I have heard that Dish is supposedly going to release menus that are more SD-friendly, but I wonder when?

7.) Higher contrast menus/font resizing. The menus on H/J are overall legible (on HDTVs,) however the contrast isn't the best. Such as in the "Timers" menu, the information is white on gray and black on gray with smaller text. Then there's the "Daily Schedule" menu, where when you highlight a show that is set to record, the description for the show is tiny black text on gray, which again is legible with 20/20 vision and an HDTV, but not so much with not-so-perfect eyes, smaller TVs, and SDTVs. Also would like to be able to have the option to change how many rows/columns are on the guide just like with the older ViPs.

8.) OTA (of course, I know Dish is already taking care of that one.) I would also like to be able to have dual-ota on each Hopper. Also the ability to share the tuners with linked Joeys (and maybe even linked Hoppers)

9.) When a recording is scheduled, if you are already on the same channel, the recording should "hop" onto your tuner, rather than taking up 2 tuners for the same show (unless you're time-shifted or not viewing live TV, perhaps even add the same popup to "allow" or "disallow" the recording to share tuners, in case you want to keep the Live TV buffer.)

10.) "Hop" onto recordings. Yes it is possible to "Hop" onto the same channel if it is Live TV, but not so easy if two TVs want to view the same recording. Yes you can "resume" a "stopped" (or paused) recording, but you can't just "Hop" onto a recording currently playing and be at the exact same point on the recording as the other TV, nor can you rewind/pause both TVs (simultaneously) like you can with Live TV.

11.) "Resume" a recording that is still recording. As of now (even on the older ViP series,) you cannot "resume" after stopping playback of a recording still in progress. You can only "start over" or "view live TV." Once the recording is finished recording, only then can you "resume" where you left off.

12.) More control over Joeys (and even Hoppers.) As of now there is no way to free up a tuner that a Hopper or Joey is occupying, say for example someone falls asleep with their Joey on, that tuner will be occupied until the inactivity timer turns it off (which by default is 2 hours.) The only workaround I know of for this is to set a recording up to "steal" that tuner back. Also would like for timers scheduled by a receiver to only interrupt THAT receiver. Say you have a Joey and a Hopper watching live TV. Say the Joey schedules 2 recordings but continues watching Live TV. When those 2 recordings fire off, it should only interrupt the Joey that scheduled the recording.

13.) Password-protect timers/events. Similar to #4, neither Hopper nor ViP series have this functionality. I would like the ability to password-protect timers and events with the "locks/parental controls" PIN. Or maybe even a separate PIN altogether.

14.) Not so much a feature request as a bug-fix request. I would like it if Dish could fix the :29/:59 "hiccups" that pixelize recordings and Live TV at the top and bottom of every hour.

15.) Another bug, when timers are deleted/modified right before they "fire off," the tuner will be "stuck" on "is about to record" infinitely until the Hopper is reset. The timer never fires off and the tuner is "occupied" and inaccessible. Also there are a few times when it would keep recording a show infinitely, perhaps also due to messing with timers while they are "firing off," or maybe it's a bug when multiple people are messing with timers on the same Hopper? Not sure about that one.

16.) Padding. The Hopper should be able to add/remove padding as it is available. The default is "1 minute before" and "3 minutes after." Say you have two recordings going, third tuner watching Live TV (at another location,) and then another two recordings scheduled on the next hour. In this case, the Hopper should automatically remove padding on the recordings so that no more than 2 tuners are used for the recordings. As it currently stands, the padding will still take place, interrupting the Live TV tuner for however long the padding is set for. This can be a pain for the person on the other TV just watching Live TV.

17.) Tuner limits. There should be an option to limit certain receivers to only a certain amount of tuners, so that it automatically creates "conflicts" even if all three tuners are not in use. Say you have a Hopper and a Joey linked. The Joey could be limited to 2 tuners while the Hopper always has 1 tuner. The menu could be similar to the "conflicts" menu when you attempt to use more than 3 tuners on a Hopper. Or maybe as an alternative, an option to permanently disallow interruption of certain TVs. So that you don't always have to use the remote to stop recordings before they interrupt.

18.) When you have 3 recordings going at once, then the next hour another 2, the next hour's recordings should only occupy the tuners not being currently watched. As it currently stands, the recordings can interrupt the tuner being watched, even if there's an extra tuner available for the upcoming recordings.

19.) When the satellite signal is lost while recording, sometimes it will render the entire recording useless, giving an "Error Code 4" or the likes. My 722Ks never had that problem.

20.) As has been mentioned before, "full" Hopper integration would be very nice. Rather than the "integration" rumored to be coming soon, which only shares recorded content, but not timers/tuners.

21.) Recordings that were transferred from my 722K to the Hoppers all have the same "record date" of "05/21/2102 12:00am." Not a huge deal but it would be nice to have that fixed.

22.) When you press "INFO" on recordings, the default button highlighted is "Watch." This is not consistent with other "INFO" views, such as during Live TV. During Live TV, you can press "INFO" to see what the show's about, then press "SELECT" to close the popup. When you view "INFO" on recordings, pressing "SELECT" will start the recording, and you must move your selection to "CLOSE" or press "CANCEL" to exit the popup.

23.) On the 722K, when you pressed "SEARCH" while highlighting an event in the daily schedule, it would automatically put that name in the search field and allow you to search. Then, when you were done, you could use "CANCEL" to back out and end up right back on the previously highlighted event. On the Hopper, most of that functionality is there, however when you press "CANCEL" then it just takes you out of the menus completely.

24.) Ability to delete search history. On my 722Ks, I could individually select and delete entries in the search history, or even clear it out completely. Can't do either one on Hopper.

25.) Hide what you're watching. It would be nice to be able to hide what you're watching, so that when RED BUTTON is pressed, nobody else can see (insert joke about porn here.)

26.) Hide recordings/VoD/Blockbuster content on the drive from other receivers. Again, for more privacy (insert another porn joke here.)

27.) Last but not least. PLEASE fix the "you are not currently subscribed to this channel" popup on recordings from channels you no longer subscribe to. I NEVER had this problem on the 722Ks, so I find it hard to believe that this is a "feature" and not a bug. If it is indeed a "feature," then why did my 722Ks NEVER have this issue?


That's all I can think of for now, I'll add more later as I think them up. Everyone feel free to comment and chime in on what features you would like to see as well.