Hopper/Joey DVR Tuner confusion

truebluejack

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Original poster
May 6, 2014
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louisiana
Ok, sorry if this has been said here. I have a hopper and joey coming in 3 days and am brand new to dish. I know the hopper has 3 tuners for recording, but I have heard that watching live tv on the joey uses one of these dvr tuners. Is this correct? My question is if the hopper is watching live tv and my one joey is watching live tv, how many programs can I record at the same time?
 
One. I would consider paying the little extra and getting the Super Joey instead of the standard Joey. It will add two more tuners to the Hopper.
 
This depends on whether or not PTAT is useful. Without PTAT, three tuners is three tuners. With it, it may be six.

The key is to generally avoid watching anything live unless you have to. That's what DVRs do best.

To be able to say if it will work, we need some examples of what you think might cause problems.
 
The hopper has 3 tuners and the regular joey has none so it uses a tuner from the Hopper to watch live TV. The Super Joey adds 2 tuners for a total of 5.
You can record or watch the four major networks using just 1 tuner. You can also add the OTA module so you can watch or record one additional OTA channel.
 
Yeah thanks guys. I think my main thing is I come from DTV and cable, and from talking to the guy on cust. service, I didn't realize watching live tv on the joey would take away a tuner. It shouldn't be a problem too often, but I watch a ton of sports live, so I hope it doesn't conflict too often. I don't know whether to blame myself for not realizing this, but I saw someone made the point on here earlier about a lot of "common folk" getting the hopper and joey and realizing the lack of tuners once you are watching live tv.
 
How much of your watching is on your local stations? You can add an ota module to give you an additional tuner for your locals. The ota module with an ota antenna will give you access to all the sub-channels or low powered stations in your area. If you are close enough to another city to receive signals, the ota module will pick them up. I can receive my locals from Rochester NY plus all the ota channels from Syracuse.
 
I don't know whether to blame myself for not realizing this, but I saw someone made the point on here earlier about a lot of "common folk" getting the hopper and joey and realizing the lack of tuners once you are watching live tv.
If you're watching something other than news or live sports live, you're probably not doing it right. The Hopper is one of the few platforms where one tuner can bring you three networks if the "big four" are high on your list.
 
The super joey is ok, till you get into the meat of wiring it which is a cluster! I can't stand installing them cause of the added wire requirements and hassle it takes. I don't think most people take cabling into consideration at all when they order these things, there is a huge requirement to the hopper and then if you add the SJ another huge requirement.

I wouldn't worry about the SJ, just stick to the regular hopper and a single joey that will give Picture in Picture at the hopper and another tuner open for the joey when needing to be used otherwise the hopper still has ultimate control over all 3.
 
I talked to a guy from CS and he said I have 30 days from install which is this Friday to decide if I am unhappy with things. He said as long as I do it within the 30 days I could switch out the joey for the super joey and just pay the extra 3 dollars/month. I really dont think I will need to do it though.
 
WEll I just went ahead and upgraded to the super joey, I will let everyone know how the install goes especially to those who are looking to coming ove to dish, the tech will be here any minute...
 
The super joey is ok, till you get into the meat of wiring it which is a cluster! I can't stand installing them cause of the added wire requirements and hassle it takes. I don't think most people take cabling into consideration at all when they order these things, there is a huge requirement to the hopper and then if you add the SJ another huge requirement.

I wouldn't worry about the SJ, just stick to the regular hopper and a single joey that will give Picture in Picture at the hopper and another tuner open for the joey when needing to be used otherwise the hopper still has ultimate control over all 3.

The installer that put my Super Joey in today was awesome. He cleaned up my setup which had the added effect of improving the signal coming into the house to my Hopper w/ Sling. Initially, I was told the install was only going to take an hour and a half, but when the guy got here and saw how things were, he took the time to replace my two dishes down to one and took out a redundant switch that he said really wasn't doing anything and he had no idea how my setup was even working in the first place. (!?!?!?) When everything was said and done he was here for 3 1/2. He was really driving home the point about the wiring for the Hopper/Super Joey and how much of a difference it made. He told me about a co-workers install where that guy was lazy and didn't replace any coax in the home that was from the C-Band days. He was there for 8 1/2 hours cleaning up his co-workers work pulling all new wires. Anyway, the guy did a bang up job and I'm really liking the Super Joey and how fast it was compared to a regular one. I don't really need the extra tuners, but since it wasn't going to cost me anything but 3 extra dollars a month I'd get it.
 
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