Advice Needed

maggiep67

Well-Known SatelliteGuys Member
Original poster
Nov 25, 2012
33
5
Hi!

We recently got a 4K tv. Here's our current setup:

4K tv has a Hopper (the original)
Bedroom tv has a HWS
2 Joeys

Considering the new hopper for the 4K tv. I know that we would have to give up our second hopper. Need advice on best setup or if we should even change it.

Is the new Hopper worth losing one of our two Hoppers?

Also, since we each have stuff recorded on each hopper we currently own would we need an ehd for each to get those shows off to watch later? Can I connect both ehd's to the new Hopper?

Thanks!!
 
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The new hopper has 16 tuners and if you add the ota dongle , you get one more for sub channels to record. So during prime time you get 1 tuner fro the 4 networks and the other ota tuner for sub channels and then another 15 tuners for anything you might want to record and NO conflicts. So 20 shows at one time can be recorded during prime time. Why would you ever need another hopper with all that capability in one hopper? Now the ota still doesn't work reliably , so if you really have to have that feature , better wait till the software is updated to fix it. That is really the only really big flaw right now. But having one hopper eliminates the need for linking two hoppers together that never worked that well in the first place. The hopper 3 is 7 times faster in speed and better processors than hopper two or one . It does 4k upscaling as well if you attach it to a 4k tv.
 
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Keep in mind there isn't a lot of 4K video on Dish yet. So it isn't as critical as you might think, especially if your 4K TV does upscaling well.

That said, you would need a Joey to replace one of the HWS. You can hook both EHDs up to the Hopper 3.

As to is it worth it to go to the H3? Overall I think it is a good move. You gain 4K support, you gain a central point of management meaning since there is only one unit capable of recording, you just have one place to look for scheduling and such.

One downside is that you can only restore one set of timers and such from whichever HWS is more critical. The timers for the other one would have to be re-entered manually.

Back to the external hard drives. I would think that since you could plug in a hard drive used by a Hopper into another one on your account that you might be able to use just one external hard drive. Save from one Hopper to it, move it to the other, and save from it. But I've not read of anyone that has actually done that. Hopefully someone that has can come here and respond.



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Mike, slight correction. The H3 does not upscale to 4K. I've checked numerous times and unless the H3 is sending a true 4K video to you, the input to my 4K TV indicates 1080i/p.


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Until there is enough 4K content to make it worth the changes, I wouldn't right now. If you really want to flex your 4K's muscles, I would buy a Roku 4 and access the content on Netflix
 
Thank you for the responses so far. Great information and I appreciate all the advice. The 16 tuners sounds awesome because twice a week the hubs has 4 shows taping at once (not in prime time) and I have to rearrange recordings for him (he's not tech savvy).

Lots to consider because I like that he and I currently have our own hopper and I might miss that. Restoring the one set of timers isn't a big deal because my hopper does the prime time recording and I have only a handful of shows I record (he has way more than me).

If we go with Hopper 3, will this require a tech visit to replace the Hopper and the the second Hopper with a Joey or can we do it ourselves?
 
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It needs a tech visit as they have to change some things outside the home. Usually a new feed horn on the dish and some sort of splitter as I remember it.

And yeah, the 16 tuners makes recording contentions a thing of the past!


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The tech will have to change the LNB to the new Hybrid LNB and change out the dual Node to a Hub. I have been overjoyed to never, ever, care about how many channels I can record at the same time again...
 
Mike, slight correction. The H3 does not upscale to 4K. I've checked numerous times and unless the H3 is sending a true 4K video to you, the input to my 4K TV indicates 1080i/p.


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I was under the impression that the hopper 3, when set on 1080i/1080p/4k that it would upscale to the 4k standard the tv puts out. Are you saying that when you watch your regular programming from DISH it comes out as 1080i only? IF that is the case , there really is no need to upgrade to a 4k tv yet.
 
I was under the impression that the hopper 3, when set on 1080i/1080p/4k that it would upscale to the 4k standard the tv puts out. Are you saying that when you watch your regular programming from DISH it comes out as 1080i only? IF that is the case , there really is no need to upgrade to a 4k tv yet.
Just like the 722s and the earlier Hoppers the H3 outputs 1080i only when the input signal is not 1080P or 4K (only available VOD). The 4K TVs on the other hand do their own upscaling and make a 1080i signal look near 4K.
 
Yes, and if you have a Sony or Samsung you want the TV to do the up-scaling, theirs are very good.
 
Just like the 722s and the earlier Hoppers the H3 outputs 1080i only when the input signal is not 1080P or 4K (only available VOD). The 4K TVs on the other hand do their own upscaling and make a 1080i signal look near 4K.
So what I said was true than. If you connect the hopper 3 to a 4k tv , the tv will upscale the sat signal to near 4k quality. That is what I meant all along in my original post,even if it wasn't clear.
 
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Not sure if this was specified, but if there is enough space, you could get away with one EHD. Copy the content from one Hopper, move the EHD to the other Hopper and copy. Then all content from both Hoppers is on one EHD which you can then connect to the H3.
 
RANT ON

There is no way for any 4K TV to "upscale" a 1080i picture to near 4K quality, the information is just not there.

There may be some gain in picture quality if your 4K TV has High Dynamic Range (some less expensive ones may not), but otherwise all the TV does is double each pixel and send it to the screen, you still can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Hopefully the 4K/UHDTV will have better signal processing so a little better picture may be seen from that, but again there is no way to make a 1080i picture look like near 4k, more like far 4K because ony 1/2 of the pixel information is there and there is no way to make sumpthin' outa nuthin'.

If you were able to compare a 4K picture side by side with the same picture in 1080i on an identical 4K TV the difference would be obvious.

You know when digital TV was first forced upon us it was amazing how much better a 480i picture looked on an old NTSC screen, its a similar happenstance, the display is much better and the 1080i picture will look a little better on a 4K TV with high dynamic range, but it is not because of upscaling, the TV only does pixel doubling, and if it does interpolate the pixels between the two it is sent , it's just a mish mash of the information from the adjacent pixels.

RANT OFF
 
Not sure if this was specified, but if there is enough space, you could get away with one EHD. Copy the content from one Hopper, move the EHD to the other Hopper and copy. Then all content from both Hoppers is on one EHD which you can then connect to the H3.

Can't you connect 2 EHD's to the H3?
 
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Jim, thanks for the rant!! :)

I can tell you that the difference between 1080i/p upscaled on my Sharp 70" 4K TV and an actual 4K source of movies/shows is so slight it really isn't noticeable unless I crawl up really close to the TV. Of course that's anecdotal... :)


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