How many streams can Hopper output at one time?

[steve4810]

I'm sure there are several posts among the thousands about Hopper that mention this but,

Is there a design limit on how many joeys a one hopper can connect with and/or is there a limit to how many simultaneous streams it can provide to the joeys;

1. If they are all different (a mix of live broadcasts and recordings)?

or

2. If they are all the same (like everybody wants to watch the Superbowl real time)?

 

[Laddyboy]

One Hopper will work with up to three Joeys. There are a maximum of three live streams with up to 4 streams total as best as I can tell.

 

[steve4810]

Thanks. I wonder if they set these limits for business purposes or these are real technical limits.

 

[n0qcu]

Thanks. I wonder if they set these limits for business purposes

YES

 

[Laddyboy]

I don't think it's a technical limitation so much as a practical one. The Broadcom chip they're using is very powerful. The unit only has three tuners available for live viewing so it doesn't make a lot of sense to allow for 10 Joeys to be connected and ten streams. A second Hopper can be added to the mix along with another three Joeys though and all will work as a combined entity.

 

[steve4810]

But what about the exception of everybody wanting the same thing? Shouldn't mirroring the stream be really processor lite. Or can't a single stream be viewed my multiple devices. Just heard these kind of things are what makes Victoria Secret able to mirror their "fashion show" to millions of separate IP addresses at once.

I'm just guessing of course.

 

[JM42]

Thanks. I wonder if they set these limits for business purposes or these are real technical limits.

I think it's a little of both. The Hopper would not fall to pieces if you added a fourth or fifth Joey, but keeping headroom in the box allows for some future capabilities.

Also, would Dish be doing the right thing promoting a single Hopper as supporting 5+ locations? If a client has 5+ TVs, chances are very good any additional up front for a second Hopper would not be a big impediment, and the client will be happier in the long run with the dual hopper solution.

 

[sparc]

Does it matter that the hopper will serve you DVR content while you're watching live and/or recording streams?

I think you could technically record three live streams and then also be watching different DVR content on all the hoppers and Joeys.

I wonder if that creates some sort of limit.

 

[navychop]

And throw in an OTA stream or two.

 

[dare2be]

I think it would work just as the ViP tuners work. You could max out the tuners by recording 3 streams at once, AND max out the TV outputs by watching 4 other different DVR recordings at the same time with 3 Joeys attached, for a total of 7 different "streams" being processed at once.

 

[mike123abc]

It is one of those questions we may not have answered until it gets out into the field. In theory it could be that the household limit on receivers is hit before the limits of the hopper (based on hard drive limits, serving a bunch of joeys should not be an issue). But, there could be some software limit. What if you have 2 hoppers and 4 joeys and all 6 TVs happen to want to watch recordings that exist on just one of the 2 hoppers? The disk drive of one hopper should be able to handle 6 reading streams and 4-5 recording streams (assuming 3 SAT and 1-2 OTA), but can the chipset do it?

As mentioned above the VIPS can do 6 streams (4 recording and 2 watching). So it will be interesting to see if the hopper can do 10.

 

[dare2be]

My computer knowledge tells me that the limits of any computer's performance are determined by the slowest component. At least in the computer world, that tends to be the HDD. I don't know if that formula extends to the A/V receiver technology.

 

[steve4810]

I can rest easy.

I have stirred the pot.

But I can see the real absolute answer is unknown.

Sent from my Toshiba Thrive using SatelliteGuys

 

[kwindrem]

It is one of those questions we may not have answered until it gets out into the field. In theory it could be that the household limit on receivers is hit before the limits of the hopper (based on hard drive limits, serving a bunch of joeys should not be an issue). But, there could be some software limit. What if you have 2 hoppers and 4 joeys and all 6 TVs happen to want to watch recordings that exist on just one of the 2 hoppers? The disk drive of one hopper should be able to handle 6 reading streams and 4-5 recording streams (assuming 3 SAT and 1-2 OTA), but can the chipset do it?

As mentioned above the VIPS can do 6 streams (4 recording and 2 watching). So it will be interesting to see if the hopper can do 10.

I count 16: PTA record (counts as 4), two other records from the satellite tuners, two from OTA record, play out to two Hoppers and 6 Joeys all from the same Hopper. Add two more for OTA. My best guess is that each stream is on the order of 4-5 Mb/s. That's a total of around 10 MB/s so pretty much any modern hard drive should be able to handle it even considering multiple streams (not just one large one). The hard drive may not be the bottleneck in a large system that pulls all streams from one Hopper.

 

[steve4810]

I count 16: PTA record (counts as 4), two other records from the satellite tuners, two from OTA record, play out to two Hoppers and 6 Joeys all from the same Hopper. Add two more for OTA. My best guess is that each stream is on the order of 4-5 Mb/s. That's a total of around 10 MB/s so pretty much any modern hard drive should be able to handle it even considering multiple streams (not just one large one). The hard drive may not be the bottleneck in a large system that pulls all streams from one Hopper.

Back to one of my questions: How many identical streams can a hopper output, like everybody watching the Super Bowl in real time?

Sent from my Toshiba Thrive using SatelliteGuys

 

[rdinkel]

Back to one of my questions: How many identical streams can a hopper output, like everybody watching the Super Bowl in real time?

And can they all be pausing or skipping ahead/back without impacting viewing of anyone else watching the same program?

 

[kwindrem]

Back to one of my questions: How many identical streams can a hopper output, like everybody watching the Super Bowl in real time?

Sent from my Toshiba Thrive using SatelliteGuys

Well ... "live" really isn't live with the ability to pause, backup, skip forward... So the "live" feed could be skewed for each TV.

As used by Dish, MoCA has a 225 MHz bandwidth so I don't suspect that supporting ~8 4-5 Mb/s streams is an issue.

 

[dare2be]

I count 16: PTA record (counts as 4), two other records from the satellite tuners, two from OTA record, play out to two Hoppers and 6 Joeys all from the same Hopper. Add two more for OTA. My best guess is that each stream is on the order of 4-5 Mb/s. That's a total of around 10 MB/s so pretty much any modern hard drive should be able to handle it even considering multiple streams (not just one large one). The hard drive may not be the bottleneck in a large system that pulls all streams from one Hopper.

It isnt just about throughput, but more about seek times and read/write head movement. Serving up more than 4 data streams stored in different areas of the hard drive and 3 record streams to other areas of the hard drive, perhaps it is a technical limit that only 3 tuners and 4 TV streams can be handled by the disk. This isn't even taking into account writing OTA streams and perhaps technical hard drive limits are what is delaying OTA tuner support
as well.

 

[steve4810]

And can they all be pausing or skipping ahead/back without impacting viewing of anyone else watching the same program?

No. Those functions would be disabled for everyone on that stream.

Are you saying when a Joey user looks at the list of streams he can join that if he joins one he can pause without impacting others? If so why are his options limited to streams in progress?

Maybe I'm missing something.

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[rdinkel]

I may be way off base, but I understood that each Joey and Hopper user would have full trick play capabilities.