I think my Hopper is Dead

[rockandchelle]

Hopefully someone from DIRT will see this and help out, if not I will PM one of them when I see them on, but here goes:

I had a 1H/1J system installed Wednesday Morning, July 4. The install was completed around 11:30AM. Since it was the 4th of July I was off the rest of the day and had plenty of time to play with the hopper. I transfered all of my recordings off of my EHD to my Hopper, setup my timers again, watched some TV and played some pandora. The unit was working great. That night I watched some TV on my joey in the bedroom and it also worked great. Thursday, July 5, I played with the system a little more without any issues. My family and I went out of town that evening and just got back today, Sunday July 8. During that time I confirmed on the dish app on my phone and dishonline that my hopper was indeed recording stuff.

When I got home today at about 6PM. I noticed my Hopper power light was on. I thought it odd as I remember making sure to leave it in standby. When I turned my TV on all I saw from the hopper was a blue screen on my TV. I felt the top of the unit and it was very hot to the touch. I opened the front door and pressed the reset button. My TV immediately said "Searching for Signal" and I heard the fan on the hopper kick on for about 1 second (I remember it going for much longer when it was installed) and then kick back off. I let it sit for a while and nothing happened. I decided to unplug it. My kids watched Netflix through our Blu-Ray player and I left it unplugged for over an hour. When I plugged it back in the Green Power Light came on and the fan came on again for just 1 second and then turned off. About a minute later the unit seemed to reboot itself (during this time nothing ever appeared on the screen), the green power light flashed and the fan came on for 1 second and then back off. About 30 seconds later the screen on my tv went blue and nothing else happened, it just sat like that for 20 minutes. Never heard the fan again. So, I unplugged it from the wall and pulled out some RCA cables and plugged them in and changed the input on the TV. This time the same thing happend, but after it did an auto reboot the screen went black and stayed like that for 20 minutes until I unplugged it.

So, it seems as though I am having some serious hopper issues. I really hope to get this resolved soon as I was really enjoying my hopper and joey setup.

 

[rockandchelle]

With zero replies, it seems I am the only one experiencing this issue. Really quite frustrating.

 

[356B]

That's a new one, call your installer or Dish and get someone out to your house. Since you have tried the normal reboot stuff it could be a bad unit or peripheries. I take it after the reboot you don't get the "Starting up" graphic? Nothing on the screen is bad news, although I did have an issue once with my LG TV, Nothing on the screen, we changed HDMI inputs still nothing, finally I unplugged the TV let it set a minute, plugged it in a everything was visible.
Let us know what resolves this.

 

[Scherrman]

Did you try unplugging it and letting it cool down at all? It could have over heated. I had a Joey get too hot and shut down once. I unplugged it for a half hour and plugged it back in. Never had an issue again once I repositioned the Joey.

 

[Joe Satellite Fan]

Don't know if the Hopper is the same, but I had two 722s with exactly the same symptoms and they were because the hard drive had failed.

 

[rockandchelle]

Did you try unplugging it and letting it cool down at all? It could have over heated. I had a Joey get too hot and shut down once. I unplugged it for a half hour and plugged it back in. Never had an issue again once I repositioned the Joey.

I actually unplugged it before I went to bed last night and tried again this morning, and it did the same thing.

That's a new one, call your installer or Dish and get someone out to your house. Since you have tried the normal reboot stuff it could be a bad unit or peripheries. I take it after the reboot you don't get the "Starting up" graphic? Nothing on the screen is bad news, although I did have an issue once with my LG TV, Nothing on the screen, we changed HDMI inputs still nothing, finally I unplugged the TV let it set a minute, plugged it in a everything was visible.
Let us know what resolves this.

I actually spoke with someone from Tech Support early this morning on Chat, they escalated me to Advanced Tech and they said they though it was somehow power related inside the Hopper. They schedule someone to come out this morning and he was at my house about 2 hours later (really great service!!!!). Yeah, after a reset or startup from power pulled, nothing would show on the screen. Occasionally the screen would go all black or blue, but most of the time my tv said searching. I even tried it with another HDMI input with a different HDMI cable and also through RCA Video/Audio and got the same results.

In the end I don't really know what was really wrong with the original Hopper. The tech took and installed a new one and it has been working fine.

One thing the tech did say was that you should never plug the hopper into a surge protector, only directly to the wall. He said it is because the wiring gauge in the surge protector is not the same as out of the wall. He said this could cause power issues. I have never heard of this before.

 

[GaryPen]

One thing the tech did say was that you should never plug the hopper into a surge protector, only directly to the wall. He said it is because the wiring gauge in the surge protector is not the same as out of the wall. He said this could cause power issues. I have never heard of this before.

You have never heard it before because it is nonsense.

 

[sperry85]

Agreed. Complete and utter nonsense.. yeah your hopper needs so much power it requires a 10 guage copper wire...

 

[rogerpl]

I had a tech say no surge protector.

 

[mdonnelly]

I think it probably is a power issue, but not a surge protector issue. Any surge protector will let you pull enough amps to spin up a disk drive.

 

[mdram]

i think this is what dish has thier techs tell people.

they told me that when they put my 622, and the reciever before that in

 

[sperry85]

Slinglinks ( connects to internet ) and Dishcomms ( connects to phone line ) will not work through most power strips is the reason dish wants receivers plugged into the walls. The tech is either misinformed or got confused.

Being that the hopper cannot use either device, it does not apply to the hopper/Joey system.

 

[rockandchelle]

Yeah, he said just to plug it into the wall because of power issues. But, he also said that if it is plugged into the wall and it gets struck by lightning, Dish will replace it for free anyways....so don't worry about it.

 

[sperry85]

Yeah, he said just to plug it into the wall because of power issues. But, he also said that if it is plugged into the wall and it gets struck by lightning, Dish will replace it for free anyways....so don't worry about it.

Dish will replace the receiver, but maybe not the TV that is connected to the receiver. Or I should say, if the dish is grounded properly, they will not replace the TV or any other component that it jumps to since they're all interconnected in some way.

 

[ohioankev]

Hopefully someone from DIRT will see this and help out, if not I will PM one of them when I see them on, but here goes:

I had a 1H/1J system installed Wednesday Morning, July 4. The install was completed around 11:30AM. Since it was the 4th of July I was off the rest of the day and had plenty of time to play with the hopper. I transfered all of my recordings off of my EHD to my Hopper, setup my timers again, watched some TV and played some pandora. The unit was working great. That night I watched some TV on my joey in the bedroom and it also worked great. Thursday, July 5, I played with the system a little more without any issues. My family and I went out of town that evening and just got back today, Sunday July 8. During that time I confirmed on the dish app on my phone and dishonline that my hopper was indeed recording stuff.

When I got home today at about 6PM. I noticed my Hopper power light was on. I thought it odd as I remember making sure to leave it in standby. When I turned my TV on all I saw from the hopper was a blue screen on my TV. I felt the top of the unit and it was very hot to the touch. I opened the front door and pressed the reset button. My TV immediately said "Searching for Signal" and I heard the fan on the hopper kick on for about 1 second (I remember it going for much longer when it was installed) and then kick back off. I let it sit for a while and nothing happened. I decided to unplug it. My kids watched Netflix through our Blu-Ray player and I left it unplugged for over an hour. When I plugged it back in the Green Power Light came on and the fan came on again for just 1 second and then turned off. About a minute later the unit seemed to reboot itself (during this time nothing ever appeared on the screen), the green power light flashed and the fan came on for 1 second and then back off. About 30 seconds later the screen on my tv went blue and nothing else happened, it just sat like that for 20 minutes. Never heard the fan again. So, I unplugged it from the wall and pulled out some RCA cables and plugged them in and changed the input on the TV. This time the same thing happend, but after it did an auto reboot the screen went black and stayed like that for 20 minutes until I unplugged it.

So, it seems as though I am having some serious hopper issues. I really hope to get this resolved soon as I was really enjoying my hopper and joey setup.

I had a similar event happen with my first Hopper unit about 20 minutes after the tech left. Everything was working great then I started going through my guide, Hopper froze. I had to manually get up and reset the Hopper as it never automatically crashed then reboot. Once I did that the Hopper never came back on it would just keep rebooting and every time it would reboot the fan would run for just one second. I unplugged it and went to bed, woke up the next morning and instead of calling Dish I called the techs that came out the day before and they came to my house and checked out my outlet and everything was fine on that end so they swapped out my Hopper.

 

[rockandchelle]

I had a similar event happen with my first Hopper unit about 20 minutes after the tech left. Everything was working great then I started going through my guide, Hopper froze. I had to manually get up and reset the Hopper as it never automatically crashed then reboot. Once I did that the Hopper never came back on it would just keep rebooting and every time it would reboot the fan would run for just one second. I unplugged it and went to bed, woke up the next morning and instead of calling Dish I called the techs that came out the day before and they came to my house and checked out my outlet and everything was fine on that end so they swapped out my Hopper.

Good to know I wasn't the only one.