DISH Upgrade Options

[Oldmuttonhead]

Hi, everyone.. Long time lurker, first time poster lol

I'm sorry to ask something that has been discussed quite a bit, but I'm very confused. I have an original Hopper with 3 Joeys that I've had for a little over 5 years. I was really happy with it until the UI upgraded and now it's just gotten to the point where it's so frustrating to use. I looked into upgrading our equipment last year, but the price I was quoted was pretty ridiculous. I can't remember off the top of my head what it was, but it wasn't even close to what I was willing to pay and I didn't even try to negotiate or anything. Later we considered completely abandoning DISH for a streaming service, but the lack of local channels has stopped us from doing that so far, plus DISH helped me rearrange my package to make it a little bit less expensive, which helped.

Well, usually after the first of the year my wife and I sit down and reevaluate our budget and that brought up our DISH and TV situation again. I've been doing some research and I'm so confused about what my upgrade options are for my DISH equipment. I see some people talking about purchasing their Hopper 3's outright, some are talking about getting them from free, and some are paying DISH quite a bit for them, it seems.

So here are my questions:

1. What's the best/most cost-effective way to upgrade my original Hopper and Joeys to the Hopper 3?
2. Is it worth the upgrade? Is the system significantly better than the original Hopper?
3. If upgrading isn't possible in my budget or not worth it, what are your thoughts on just dropping DISH all together and going with a streaming service like YouTube TV, Hulu Live, Sling TV, DirecTV Now, etc?

 

[boba]

Hi, everyone.. Long time lurker, first time poster lol

I'm sorry to ask something that has been discussed quite a bit, but I'm very confused. I have an original Hopper with 3 Joeys that I've had for a little over 5 years. I was really happy with it until the UI upgraded and now it's just gotten to the point where it's so frustrating to use. I looked into upgrading our equipment last year, but the price I was quoted was pretty ridiculous. I can't remember off the top of my head what it was, but it wasn't even close to what I was willing to pay and I didn't even try to negotiate or anything. Later we considered completely abandoning DISH for a streaming service, but the lack of local channels has stopped us from doing that so far, plus DISH helped me rearrange my package to make it a little bit less expensive, which helped.

Well, usually after the first of the year my wife and I sit down and reevaluate our budget and that brought up our DISH and TV situation again. I've been doing some research and I'm so confused about what my upgrade options are for my DISH equipment. I see some people talking about purchasing their Hopper 3's outright, some are talking about getting them from free, and some are paying DISH quite a bit for them, it seems.

So here are my questions:

1. What's the best/most cost-effective way to upgrade my original Hopper and Joeys to the Hopper 3?
2. Is it worth the upgrade? Is the system significantly better than the original Hopper?
3. If upgrading isn't possible in my budget or not worth it, what are your thoughts on just dropping DISH all together and going with a streaming service like YouTube TV, Hulu Live, Sling TV, DirecTV Now, etc?

1, Lease the H3 is the cheapest.
2, If you have a Hopper 2000 you will probably see improvement in a H3, better is your decision
3, We aren't you and what you are asking is a personal decision. You have to make your own decesions about programming. For me a Wally and Welcome pack is enough 2018 price is going to be $22.99 I believe. You can add streaming costs to that.

 

[littlecloud319]

I usually see and upgrade cost of $150 for the Hopper 3. I would suggest calling dish until you get an American CSR and get them to do the upgrade for free. They were told by the software developers that the CUI wasn’t capable of running on the original Hopper and they ignored them and forced it on to the receivers anyway. There’s no reason anyone should have to pay them to have a usable system.

 

[david_jr]

You also might be able to save money by eliminating a Joey and adding an Amazon Fire Stick where one of your Joeys is currently located. We added 2 Fire Sticks to our 2 HWS/3 Joey system and eliminated 2 Joeys and their $7 each monthly fee from our bill. It is amazing how well a Fire Stick with Dish Anywhere app installed works. Hard to tell it's not a real Joey for the most part except for the monthly cost. Downside is you have to purchase the Fire Stick from Amazon. Those $7 a month Joey fees really add up though, at $84 a year. You can only use 1 Fire Stick on an H3 system though if you do upgrade to that, or so we have been told, unless you upgrade to 2 H3's, but that would end up costing more too defeating your purpose of saving money. 1 Fire Stick per Hopper is what they say. It still amazes me that Dish did this CUI UPGRADE to us when our equipment was working so well before the UPGRADE. And they're sticking with it like nothing ever happened despite all of the complaints.

 

[Hall]

1. What's the best/most cost-effective way to upgrade my original Hopper and Joeys to the Hopper 3?

Contact DIRT about your upgrade options. Get a hold of them here or on Facebook.

 

[comfortably_numb]

Hi, everyone.. Long time lurker, first time poster lol

I'm sorry to ask something that has been discussed quite a bit, but I'm very confused. I have an original Hopper with 3 Joeys that I've had for a little over 5 years. I was really happy with it until the UI upgraded and now it's just gotten to the point where it's so frustrating to use. I looked into upgrading our equipment last year, but the price I was quoted was pretty ridiculous. I can't remember off the top of my head what it was, but it wasn't even close to what I was willing to pay and I didn't even try to negotiate or anything. Later we considered completely abandoning DISH for a streaming service, but the lack of local channels has stopped us from doing that so far, plus DISH helped me rearrange my package to make it a little bit less expensive, which helped.

Well, usually after the first of the year my wife and I sit down and reevaluate our budget and that brought up our DISH and TV situation again. I've been doing some research and I'm so confused about what my upgrade options are for my DISH equipment. I see some people talking about purchasing their Hopper 3's outright, some are talking about getting them from free, and some are paying DISH quite a bit for them, it seems.

So here are my questions:

1. What's the best/most cost-effective way to upgrade my original Hopper and Joeys to the Hopper 3?
2. Is it worth the upgrade? Is the system significantly better than the original Hopper?
3. If upgrading isn't possible in my budget or not worth it, what are your thoughts on just dropping DISH all together and going with a streaming service like YouTube TV, Hulu Live, Sling TV, DirecTV Now, etc?

Welcome. Which channels are most important to you and your wife (besides the locals)?

 

[dolfan3033]

You also might be able to save money by eliminating a Joey and adding an Amazon Fire Stick where one of your Joeys is currently located. We added 2 Fire Sticks to our 2 HWS/3 Joey system and eliminated 2 Joeys and their $7 each monthly fee from our bill. It is amazing how well a Fire Stick with Dish Anywhere app installed works. Hard to tell it's not a real Joey for the most part except for the monthly cost. Downside is you have to purchase the Fire Stick from Amazon. Those $7 a month Joey fees really add up though, at $84 a year. You can only use 1 Fire Stick on an H3 system though if you do upgrade to that, or so we have been told, unless you upgrade to 2 H3's, but that would end up costing more too defeating your purpose of saving money. 1 Fire Stick per Hopper is what they say. It still amazes me that Dish did this CUI UPGRADE to us when our equipment was working so well before the UPGRADE. And they're sticking with it like nothing ever happened despite all of the complaints.

This is what I did.. but it should be pointed out that you can have more than 1 fireTV linked.. but you can only use one at a time. Perfect for TVs that are only used occasionally.

 

[Jim5506]

Since you have a Hopper2000, I would get my problem escalated up the chain as far as you can push it.

Since Dish has degraded the performance of your hardware and the H3 is much much faster and better than the H2k, you should not have to pay for an upgrade.

If they dig their heels in, don't pay more than $100 total for the upgrade including getting the $95 tech visit waived with no Home Advantage subscription required.

 

[littlecloud319]

Since you have a Hopper2000, I would get my problem escalated up the chain as far as you can push it.

Since Dish has degraded the performance of your hardware and the H3 is much much faster and better than the H2k, you should not have to pay for an upgrade.

If they dig their heels in, don't pay more than $100 total for the upgrade including getting the $95 tech visit waived with no Home Advantage subscription required.

For me they wouldn’t budge past the HWS. Working on making that H3 now. My HWS is just as slow after the last couple updates.

 

[bnewt]

Since you have a Hopper2000, I would get my problem escalated up the chain as far as you can push it.

Since Dish has degraded the performance of your hardware and the H3 is much much faster and better than the H2k, you should not have to pay for an upgrade.

If they dig their heels in, don't pay more than $100 total for the upgrade including getting the $95 tech visit waived with no Home Advantage subscription required.

This could be said for every customer that doesn't have the H3. I have 2 HWS & 1 wireless joey. Since the forced CUI, cold molasses moves quicker than the dish equipment. Add to that the ota issue that one of their updates somehow managed to screw up & honestly they have degraded the quality of the product we pay for & they continue to raise prices.

 

[Claude Greiner]

You need to call dish again and see what offers you qualify for first before talking about an upgrade.

Worse case scenario your buying the equipment at regular price.

 

[Oldmuttonhead]

Thanks for all the advice, everyone. I'll contact DIRT and see what they say.

 

[Oldmuttonhead]

Welcome. Which channels are most important to you and your wife (besides the locals)?

My wife watches a lot of the ID Channel, HGTV, TLC, basically anything with home improvement or real crime shows. I watch a lot of sports, mostly NFL and college football, sometimes NASCAR although I didn't watch it much this year at all.

 

[Oldmuttonhead]

You also might be able to save money by eliminating a Joey and adding an Amazon Fire Stick where one of your Joeys is currently located. We added 2 Fire Sticks to our 2 HWS/3 Joey system and eliminated 2 Joeys and their $7 each monthly fee from our bill. It is amazing how well a Fire Stick with Dish Anywhere app installed works. Hard to tell it's not a real Joey for the most part except for the monthly cost. Downside is you have to purchase the Fire Stick from Amazon. Those $7 a month Joey fees really add up though, at $84 a year. You can only use 1 Fire Stick on an H3 system though if you do upgrade to that, or so we have been told, unless you upgrade to 2 H3's, but that would end up costing more too defeating your purpose of saving money. 1 Fire Stick per Hopper is what they say. It still amazes me that Dish did this CUI UPGRADE to us when our equipment was working so well before the UPGRADE. And they're sticking with it like nothing ever happened despite all of the complaints.

We have Chromecasts already, would those work as well as the Fire Stick?

 

[david_jr]

I am not familiar with the Chromecasts, perhaps someone that is could offer feedback.

 

[dolfan3033]

FireTV Stick is like a chromecast that uses a remote instead of a phone. I believe you can cast to a fireTV... but I don’t have much experience with that since I prefer a remote.

I prefer FireTVs (actually, the older fireTV boxes they don’t make anymore) because you can side load Kodi on them and play local media stored on a NAS (or in my instance, a raspberry pi 3 with a drive attached shared using samba).

I’ll admit that I haven’t used a chromecast in awhile, and it was the 1st generation one at that, but i prefer the fireTV.

 

[comfortably_numb]

My wife watches a lot of the ID Channel, HGTV, TLC, basically anything with home improvement or real crime shows. I watch a lot of sports, mostly NFL and college football, sometimes NASCAR although I didn't watch it much this year at all.

HGTV, TLC, and ID are all in the Welcome Pack. NFL is mostly on local channels (at least our team is). So you might be able to get away with that package which could save you a lot of money. I have Welcome Pack + HBO on my Hopper 3 and have 2 Fire Sticks for the bedrooms.

Edit: ID channel is in free preview until February 6. It isn’t normally in Welcome Pack