Dish Anywhere recordings transfer broken? Really struggling with it ...

twvette

New Member
Original poster
Apr 10, 2022
2
2
Phoenix
Is anyone having good luck transferring recordings to a Fire HD 8 Plus or iPhone/Pad currently with all latest version? Is there really only a handful of us that use the app for this as seems few reports over the years? My full story of struggles below ...

I used an OLD ipad for a very long time with no real issues transferring recordings (except was always slow and had to keep refreshing if transferring lots of videos) to it for years as I travel a lot and also use it for camping trips on occassion.

Finally the app would not support the old iPad at all about a year or so ago so I got a Fire HD 8 plus tablet and it worked GREAT for a few months. The transfers were very fast and no issues with it saying needs to prepare the recording (or if did it was also VERY fast) or getting stuck in this stage or the transfer stage. It just worked way better than ever did on my old iPad and if I selected say 10 recordings to transfer I did not have to keep waking up the Fire to get all of them to transfer (I had all iPad power setting set as long as could, etc.).

A few months later they seemed to change the app and it then wanted to connect to the receiver within 12 hours to validate any previous transfers where never did this before. Really lame as that does not work well when traveling (the whole point of transfers) as even transfers the night before needed to be validated.

Within a month or so of the above it then seemed all jacked up and recordings starting saying they need prepared even though the prepare option was setup on my DVR and they would not prepare (would just sit in queue waiting to prepare forever) and/or not transfer. I also tried an iPad mini that is a few years old and a new iPhone13 and neither of them worked either. The recording is then also stuck in the queue and even if you delete it from the queue it wont delete it so only option is to uninstall the app.

Thought my DVR might be bad so had it switched out, but no luck here as same problems as above. Then called Dish support, they escalated to someone who knew about transfers and they basically told me sorry will have our developers look into it but seemed like all of this was news to them and no sign that they test this functionality with each release.

Been trying over the last many months, updating the apps as well as my Hooper 3 DVR software and no real luck until today. it now seems might be working with my iPhone13 now (have not tried the iPad mini). Still same problem on my Fire with fresh app install etc. What is strange is on my iPhone the later episodes of Blue Bloods recordings have to go through the Preparing stage whereas the first four episodes of the last season did not. Its taking about 20 minutes per episode to Prepare like did on my old iPad but it is doing it and then transferring as I write this so at least some progress.

I do find it interesting that on my Fire with a fresh App install it errors out on the on screen pairing option even though it sees my hopper in the app login screen to do this. I can login with user name and password instead and all other functions in the App seem to be fine so seems to be just a transfer issue still.

It is also interesting to me that in the Hopper default record settings I have the prepare for mobile set to on but I see no sign of this setting in the individual timer settings like use to in the past. Even within the default record setting info it still mentions that you can change this default for individual timers in their menu, but it is not there on any of my timers or even when setting up a new timer.

What a mess. Big bummer for me as these videos really help me tolerate plane flights these days so can just zone out watching video. Sure wish Dish would put some priority on fixing this stuff and not breaking it with new app releases. Or, maybe there is something I am overlooking. Hoping don't need to just go back to an iPad to be reliable as this is the only thing I use my tablet for.

Is the needing to validate transferred recordings every 12 hours still a thing now or did they realize this was dumb?
 
No sure any real interest in this topic/issue as no replies but figured would update if anyone is seeing similar.

I was able to watch a couple of transferred DVR recordings on my iPhone13 on my last flight. Seems a bit glitchy to get them to start as sometimes I have to click on Watch many times for each episode transferred as it gives an "Playback error: Failed to decode" error, but if I do it a couple or in some cases many times it eventually starts playing (in one case I think it was 10 plus times I had to do it). Very strange ...

The good news is not seeing any indication of needing to validate the transferred recordings after 12 hours anymore.

Transferring a few more additional recording to my iPhone13 now and still seems most will need the Prepare stage even though my DVR is setup to already prepare them for transfer and its taking a long time to do the Prepare just like did in the past, but again at least it seems to work. Just very annoying ...
 
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