Advice request - new setup

[letoatrads]

So, the current home I have 2 HWS and a Joey.

Pretty happy with the overall setup, kiddo has her own Hopper and her and the wife don't conflict at all.

Fast forward to moving to the new house. Wow, TV explosion. So going from a couple of 32in HD TV's to the potential for the following.

4K TV in main room
HD TV in bedroom
HD TV in office
HD TV in bathroom ( yes, the wife gets a 32in TV over the tub...sigh)
HD TV in the workout room
HD TV in the kiddo's room in the basement
HD TV outside in a cabinet on the screened in porch.

So, would you all stick with the 2 Hoppers we have now and add some mix of Joey's? Or would you go with the H3 and add Joeys? I haven't stayed close enough to the hardware situation to know which route to go. I'm a little worried about trimming down the recording space...but I have plenty of 2TB external drives floating around, so if that works well with the H3 it wouldn't be an issue for me.

Thanks in advance all!

 

[spoiler1041]

So, the current home I have 2 HWS and a Joey.

Pretty happy with the overall setup, kiddo has her own Hopper and her and the wife don't conflict at all.

Fast forward to moving to the new house. Wow, TV explosion. So going from a couple of 32in HD TV's to the potential for the following.

4K TV in main room
HD TV in bedroom
HD TV in office
HD TV in bathroom ( yes, the wife gets a 32in TV over the tub...sigh)
HD TV in the workout room
HD TV in the kiddo's room in the basement
HD TV outside in a cabinet on the screened in porch.

So, would you all stick with the 2 Hoppers we have now and add some mix of Joey's? Or would you go with the H3 and add Joeys? I haven't stayed close enough to the hardware situation to know which route to go. I'm a little worried about trimming down the recording space...but I have plenty of 2TB external drives floating around, so if that works well with the H3 it wouldn't be an issue for me.

Thanks in advance all!

Hopper 3 supports 6 joey's and the H3 for a total of 7 tv's so don't build a second kids room.

 

[.Andy]

Hopper 3 has some cons. 1)Its still in beta (practically lots of errors) 2) You can only watch one sling. 3) None of the recordings are private. 4)Less recording space.

 

[DWS44]

1)Its still in beta (practically lots of errors)

No offense, but that's a bit of a stretch to portray it to be that bad, IMO. With the exception of the OTA recording, my H3 is a solid as any Hopper I've ever had.

3) None of the recordings are private.

That one is a good point, though. I'd think having privacy and/or separation of recordings is probably the biggest thing the OP would want to consider. Do you mind if you, your wife, and your kid's recordings all appear on one Hopper? IF not, I'd say the H3 and six Joeys would be the way to go. Certainly more tuners available to handle the workload of seven viewing locations w/o potential recording & Live TV conflicts..

 

[TheLip]

So, the current home I have 2 HWS and a Joey.

Pretty happy with the overall setup, kiddo has her own Hopper and her and the wife don't conflict at all.

Fast forward to moving to the new house. Wow, TV explosion. So going from a couple of 32in HD TV's to the potential for the following.

4K TV in main room
HD TV in bedroom
HD TV in office
HD TV in bathroom ( yes, the wife gets a 32in TV over the tub...sigh)
HD TV in the workout room
HD TV in the kiddo's room in the basement
HD TV outside in a cabinet on the screened in porch.

So, would you all stick with the 2 Hoppers we have now and add some mix of Joey's? Or would you go with the H3 and add Joeys? I haven't stayed close enough to the hardware situation to know which route to go. I'm a little worried about trimming down the recording space...but I have plenty of 2TB external drives floating around, so if that works well with the H3 it wouldn't be an issue for me.

Thanks in advance all!

With that many tv's I would definitely get a Hopper 3. If a couple of tv's are being used and a couple of recording's then bam, you have a conflict. While there have been some issues with the H3 software, it is getting better every day. You will not have conflicts or have to think about them.

I would get an H3
2 wireless Joeys for some flexibility
As many 4k joeys as they will give you
Round it out with Joey 2's

I would also consider the possibility of mirroring some of those locations using only one receiver with an HDMI split if the circumstances (viewing and location constraints) allow. This will save you some money and you can simply put an extra remote in the 2nd location since multiple remotes can be paired with each receiver simultaneously which will allow control from either room via the UHF remote. (For example - If the bedroom is in close proximity to the office and only one of the locations is likely to be watching tv at one time then only use one receiver to feed both locations.)

 

[TheLip]

No offense, but that's a bit of a stretch to portray it to be that bad, IMO. With the exception of the OTA recording, my H3 is a solid as any Hopper I've ever had.



That one is a good point, though. I'd think having privacy and/or separation of recordings is probably the biggest thing the OP would want to consider. Do you mind if you, your wife, and your kid's recordings all appear on one Hopper? IF not, I'd say the H3 and six Joeys would be the way to go. Certainly more tuners available to handle the workload of seven viewing locations w/o potential recording & Live TV conflicts..

I would also add that you could simply manage the recordings by creating folders for the kids or others. Edit the timers for the recordings from the kids rooms to go into a special folder for them. The recording would not be private per se, but they would be separate.

I have been critical of certain aspects of the H3, but seriously - H3 is the future and will get better. Many of the complaints about the H3 surround the interface (been improving) which will likely be pushed to all Hopper's at some point in the future anyway according to much of the speculation on these forums. So, why would you not want the best hardware available?

 

[n0qcu]

Each receiver has the ability to set a default folder for recording from that location. Simply set the recordings from the kids rooms to go into a special folder for them.

Wrong.
Each timer must be edited to send its recordings to a specific folder.

 

[TheLip]

Wrong.
Each timer must be edited to send its recordings to a specific folder.

I stand corrected. Thanks. (Original post edited)

I forgot that function was in the previous Hopper version. Perhaps that functionality might be restored in a subsequent software release though.

I would still much prefer the new hardware over the old and my recommendation does not change.

 

[dweber]

I like the redundancy of having 2 hopper with sling receivers. If your hopper 3 receiver goes down, you will have no tv. Plus if you use the OTA module, there are still problems with the hopper 3. Plus the HWS can do 1/15X, 1/4X, 4X, 15X, 60X, and 300X for forward speeds. They eliminated several of the speeds on the hopper 3.

My 2 hopper with slings and my Joey 2 are very stable machines. I never have any problems with them. Of coarse, I have 2 terabytes of storage on each machine and 3 additional 2 terabyte drives. I have never run out of tuners. The only reason that I could see for upgrading to a hopper 3 would be for 4K but all of my tv's are 1080P.

 

[jerryez]

On most channels except the major networks, the programs are shown several times each week. If you try to record a movie and have a conflict, the movie or other recording will show again( and can be recorded) later. So, more tuners are not always needed.

 

[charlesrshell]

On most channels except the major networks, the programs are shown several times each week. If you try to record a movie and have a conflict, the movie or other recording will show again( and can be recorded) later. So, more tuners are not always needed.

I hear ya, but I have 10 minutes added to most timers because you never know when the ending gets cut off. This pushes some timers into the Hopper early morning reboot time zone and that sometimes causes the programs not to record. This is a big pain for us to reschedule timers. Can't wait to upgrade to the Hopper 3. Having 20 timers to work with must really be awesome.

 

[Partysox]

I like the redundancy of having 2 hopper with sling receivers. If your hopper 3 receiver goes down, you will have no tv. Plus if you use the OTA module, there are still problems with the hopper 3. Plus the HWS can do 1/15X, 1/4X, 4X, 15X, 60X, and 300X for forward speeds. They eliminated several of the speeds on the hopper 3.

My 2 hopper with slings and my Joey 2 are very stable machines. I never have any problems with them. Of coarse, I have 2 terabytes of storage on each machine and 3 additional 2 terabyte drives. I have never run out of tuners. The only reason that I could see for upgrading to a hopper 3 would be for 4K but all of my tv's are 1080P.

I will throw this out there for something to think about. Supposedly the H2s will be getting the new iu in the future which instead of having 1 H3 with a couple of problems you might have 2 H2s with maybe more problems, and some of the things you like about the H2s are going to change with the update. Just throwing it out there......

 

[navychop]

Which is why I dread that day.

 

[kwindrem]

So, the current home I have 2 HWS and a Joey.

Pretty happy with the overall setup, kiddo has her own Hopper and her and the wife don't conflict at all.

Fast forward to moving to the new house. Wow, TV explosion. So going from a couple of 32in HD TV's to the potential for the following.

4K TV in main room
HD TV in bedroom
HD TV in office
HD TV in bathroom ( yes, the wife gets a 32in TV over the tub...sigh)
HD TV in the workout room
HD TV in the kiddo's room in the basement
HD TV outside in a cabinet on the screened in porch.

So, would you all stick with the 2 Hoppers we have now and add some mix of Joey's? Or would you go with the H3 and add Joeys? I haven't stayed close enough to the hardware situation to know which route to go. I'm a little worried about trimming down the recording space...but I have plenty of 2TB external drives floating around, so if that works well with the H3 it wouldn't be an issue for me.

Thanks in advance all!

Joeys are $7/mo each. I'd consider mirroring some of the viewing stations unless they will all be in use simultaneously and watching different programming.

 

[letoatrads]

Joeys are $7/mo each. I'd consider mirroring some of the viewing stations unless they will all be in use simultaneously and watching different programming.

Thanks - yea, considering 3 of the TV's are in the master bedroom/bathroom...lots of mirroring will be done.

I think I've been convinced that the Hopper 3 is the way to go, even though I'm going to dislike giving up my 2 HWS's.

Big thanks to everyone who threw info my way!

 

[Fearless]

As many 4k joeys as they will give you

Is there a rule of thumb on how many you can expect to get?

 

[DWS44]

Is there a rule of thumb on how many you can expect to get?

I don't recall hearing anything about any limits up to the max number of Joeys that the Hopper can handle. Up to that, they'll probably keep giving you 4K Joeys till you run out of $50 bills.

 

[thomasjk]

I don't recall hearing anything about any limits up to the max number of Joeys that the Hopper can handle. Up to that, they'll probably keep giving you 4K Joeys till you run out of $50 bills.

The limit is 6.