I have had the hoppers since inception, and a few years back was a Beta tester for them even. I have yet to have a failed receiver, but I still keep the EHD connected for the purpose of "what if". Even though I have been lucky with all the subscribed equipment with Dish, I have seen others have failures. With TWC, they had failures while I was with them. I had a computer HDD crash, and an external in Iraq. Computer electronics are bound to go at sometime, so security is always good to have. Advantage to Dish... I am now a sub to Netflix and can catch a lot of my shows, plus the kids marathon I have right now(since the gf won't let me play my shows in the living room while the kids are in there) to add to the value. Also, I watch OITNB effortlessly, where it required a second remote for my AVR inputs.
Dish Support?
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I get that. What is OITNB? I'm not saying redundancy is a bad idea, or that the option of transferring recordings isn't good to have...it absolutely is. I'm just saying, given the choice, I'd rather have an EHD add to my primary pool of recording space rather than supplement it. Both would be even better.
Cool. I just talked with DirecTV's customer support, and asked them a few of the same kinds of questions. Yes, it will pick up where you left off, yes, the hard drive replaces and you can use up to 4TB. But I asked about getting a 2nd Genie, and she said it's an up front cost of $199, and the lease fee is $15/month. I told her that on Dish I can get a 2nd hopper with no additional fee, the lease fee is $10/month, and it totals 4TB. So I would be getting double the space for 2/3 of the lease cost AND no up front charge. She said (and I quote), "You won't need to worry about running out of space because the Genie has a 1 terrabyte hard drive, the highest in the industry." I said, "That is blatantly false. Dish's Hopper has a 2 terrabyte hard drive in it." Holy cow, that is ridiculous.
As a Dish "PomPom", as I am called, you may get the same response from some Dish reps as well. CSR's truly are kids picked off the streets and hired....The industry in general has a lower than 50% employee retention rate for CSR's and that is ridiculous. Most other successful companies and fields hold under 5%. Can not knock them to hard, but it is good that you knew the correct information to combat with.
The Hopper will support 2 ehd's at a time. You can have unlimited ehd's. With 2 Hoppers, you can swap ehd's between them.
With the Hopper with built in Sling, you can access the Hopper and what's recorded on the internal drive from a computer, tablet or smart phone. Great feature if you traveling. In my case, since one of my HWS's is located in my computer room I sometimes watch something on the tv and another show on my computer.
With the Hopper with built in Sling, you can access the Hopper and what's recorded on the internal drive from a computer, tablet or smart phone. Great feature if you traveling. In my case, since one of my HWS's is located in my computer room I sometimes watch something on the tv and another show on my computer.
The Hopper does not copy programs to the EHD. It moves them to the EHD freeing up that space on the internal EHD. So if you add a 2TB drive to the Hopper it gives you a total of 4TB. You can move programs back and forth between the Hopper and EHD.
To be clear: the programs you transfer to the external HDD means that more space becomes available on the internal HDD for additional new recordings. The best way to think of this is if you have a PC with one HDD as your storage, and one as your record to HDD. You will have acces to both HDD's to playback or transnfer (yes, you can transfer a recordings BACK to either the original HDD or antohter DVR' HDD that is on your account) if you wish.
Further, the HDD strorage can be accesed for playback by any paired Joeys, and the strorage HDD can also be connected to any ViP Dish DVR (non-Hopper/Joeys) on your account allowing playback in other rooms that may not include Hoppers/Joeys except for the ViP 211, which actually does record to the external HDD.
You can create an UNLIMITED number of Storage HDD's. For example: One HDD for movies, one for the kids shows, one for your shows, etc.
Competitors either span the new recordings across the internal HDD and external HDD so that when your internal HDD dies you lose all the recordings on the external one or don't allow any transferring to an external HDD which means you will LOSE all your recordings on the internal HDD when it dies, and that is the worst solution, at least for me. Also, if you think the internal HDD is goint to die, or you want to SAVE recordings from possibley being LOST when the internal HDD dies (and they all DIE), with Dish you can transfer recordings to the external HDD for SAFE KEEPING.
Overall, I've found the Dish "Archival HDD" system superior, especially by allowing me to SAVE PRECIOUS recordings of show or movies and I've save all my recordings after noticing behavior that foreshadows an internal HDD failure so that when it does fail, I have ALL my recordings on the strorage and didn't lose a one when the internal HDD dies. You can then transfer them BACK to the new DVR internal HDD or leave them on the external HDD and playback from there.
I never said other services could not continue from where you left off, I said you never could with DISH while the recording was in progress, so don't look for it to get "fixed."
As for the hard drive, Really? Direct TV allows you to add an external hard drive in addition to the on board one and record to it? Never heard of that and I say you are wrong. Further with DISH that external hard drive can be moved from one receiver to another and watch what was recorded.
I don't know what you are getting at with the RSN sports. Whatever is being broadcast is recorded, if HD then recorded in HD. I said the pro game itself would most always be in HD but the rest of the programming will be SD. For some that is a big deal.
Ok, so you contacted a phone CSR, EXCUSE ME.... Phone or Chat not as good as the excellent DIRT team here, something Direct TV does not have.
It's not a matter of the Hopper having problems often, you want multiple rooms, it makes sense to many of us, I guess not you, to have a second Hopper instead of a Super Joey. It was a suggestion, but hey, you know better about that and DIrect tv hard drives.
Yes, the internal drive is disabled, not the same thing. You still are recording to one of the drives. I see no advantage for DISH to go that route, the Hopper has a huge internal hard drive, what good would disabling it be to add another drive just to be able to record to it?
Man, you seem really testy. I'm not sure what put you on the defensive, but I'll try to answer your snarky post seriously.
I know you didn't say other services couldn't do it; I was simply saying that every other service DOES do it, so it is, in fact, normative, whereas Dish's practice is abnormal (not bad, but they are the only ones I know of that don't have that feature).
As for the hard drive on DirecTV, I don't care if you believe me. I had their service and it worked that way. Others here have also confirmed that's how it works.
I'm not sure what you are getting at with the sports thing. That's why I asked for clarity. You made it sound like playback was in SD. That seemed odd to me, since if the live showing was HD, why wouldn't playback also be in HD?
Also, I'm not sure why you are upset that I contacted Dish's customer service. I never said a word about DIRT; I didn't know they existed until a couple of days ago.
Again, I'm not sure why you're so testy and defensive. You seem awfully upset but it's not remotely clear why. If I offended you somehow, I apologize. I came here looking for answers to a few questions, and many folks have sought to answer them. Awesome. Isn't that how this is supposed to work? So what is there to be upset about?
But what difference does this make? You said, "Direct TV allows you to add an external hard drive and record to it? Never heard of that and I say you are wrong." However, it is literally true. You can add an external hard drive and record to it. I'm not sure why this is a problem for you. Whether it replaces/disables the internal hard drive or not, you can do it.
You're wasting your time responding to this thread Tampa. There are some people who come here and ask questions and say thank you. Then there are some who ask questions then say they don't believe you and want to debate how you don't know what you're talking about after you take the time to do them the favor of an expert answer. Sad. Very sad.
I'm confused about this, because it's not what I've done, yet that's what you're implying. I never said I didn't believe anyone. In point of fact, it was Tampa who was the one who said exactly that ("never heard of that and I say that you're wrong."), even though he's actually the one that's wrong about that issue. Shouldn't people want to ask clarifying questions when false information is given by the so-called "experts"? Also, I did say thank you, several times, to those who provided helpful answers. I just didn't think angry, defensive posts deserved a thank you. If Tampa is this place's example of an "expert," I'm probably asking in the wrong place. Thanks.
Save it pal. You just about called me a liar yesterday. What I said was absolutely correct, which you finally acknowledged with a wise guy insulting crack. The people here who have tried to help you including myself and Tampa are experienced and yes, experts.
If you were my customer I would ask you to take your business elsewhere.
Please don't respond to any more of my posts. Good bye again.
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I never called you a liar, "pal," nor did I make a wise guy insulting crack. You can't point to a single instance of that. Don't blame me because you choose to be a douche. If I was your customer, I'd take my business elsewhere. I'm glad I'm not.
Thanks to those that actually tried to help and gave me the requested information without being defensive or insulting. Many of you were very helpful. The two that weren't, I hope you are proud of how you've handled yourselves here. I'm out.
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