Hopper with Sling first impressions

[Scherrman]

Just got our first shipment of Hopper with Slings in stock. One of them is for a customer upgrading but first I will be swapping out one of my old Hoppers to get my own hands on experience. So far all I have done is open the box and look at the goodies inside. I'm going to run my paperwork for the upgrade here soon and then try to get it hooked up and activated here at the office before I bring it home after work. I'll post anything of interest when I can. Even though nothing major has changed I still get excited when getting new toys!

 

[elrayox]

The one thing my installer noted was that the software downloads were taking a fraction of the time of the original hopper....

 

[Scherrman]

I've got mine up and running in the office now. Took about a half hour for it to do all the downloads, pair the remote and then get to the activation screen. Before I called to activate it I realized that I forgot about managing all my old recordings. I have a tendency to forget about details when excited. LOL. So I went home for lunch to transfer the important shows onto my EHD only to find that my Hopper was not seeing my EHD. I needed to get back to work so I didn't worry about it, I'll just record those shows again when needed. I called the activation number when I got back here and had the receiver updated in a matter of minutes. Overall it was very easy but I'll save my final opinion for when I bring it home and connect it to my setup there.

My first thoughts on the new receiver so far is the speed. Flipping through the channels is fast but did notice some delay before the program showed on screen. Guide and menus look the same. When the title bar is on the top of the screen it also shows what some of the shortcut buttons do. Once I get it set up at home I'll try setting up a recording to transfer to my iPad. Pretty easy transition so far.

 

[Scherrman]

Brought the receiver home and swapped it out with my old Hopper without any issues. Smooth transition. I didn't have any recordings on it for my son to watch but was able to switch to my other Hopper right away to pull recording from that. The new Hopper also connected to my wireless Internet without having to do anything. Pretty simple transition so far. I'll post more when I get a chance to use some of the new features.

 

[Scherrman]

I used the Transfer feature for the first time last night and this morning. Man was that easy to do. My wife if going to her sister's this weekend and taking our 3 year old son along so she asked if I could put some shows on the iPad for him. I thought this would be the perfect time to try out the new feature. Last night I went into the guide and found some shows I could record. First I selected Dora and then it gave me the option to prepare the recording for transfer. I picked a couple other shows that were on early this morning too. When I got up this morning I got my iPad out and opened the transfer app to find the videos I selected sitting there waiting to be transferred. I clicked on Dora and then hit transfer, after that it only took about 2 minutes before I could watch it. This feature is exactly what I've been waiting for. LOVE IT!