Joey problems

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SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Mar 20, 2004
182
85
Illinois
All four of our Joeys continue to have problems. They work for awhile (after a Hopper reboot) and then won't tune a live channel. It ends up going to the TV Activity screen showing the active tuners in use (with plenty available) or it will say 0 of 0 tuners available at the top and rest blank, or the channel banner will appear at the top but the screen is black with nothing. You have no choice but to go in and reboot the Hopper 3 and wait for everything to come back up. It may work for awhile but then will go out again with the same issues. Tonight the programming guide descriptions disappeared and the AutoHop logo on the recorded shows disappeared and a recorded show didn't offer to AutoHop when it should have.

I have called Dish support three times now. We've done a partial reset, a whole home reset, and the support agent went in and looked at the Hopper through the internet. They just say everything looks fine to them and have never offered to have someone come out and look at things. They've taken notes and submitted it to an engineering department, so I don't know if we just wait to hear from them or what is next? They never offer any type of bill credit for the trouble either...

We have a Hopper 3 with four Joeys--3 wireless, 1 wired. The issue is on all four Joeys. I'm about ready to just cancel it all. We pay $130 a month and have to reboot the Hopper 5 times a day now.
 
I was getting a similar error on a wired Joey connected to an H3. Defective H3 that had thermal issues. Got/getting a new one.
I don't know why, they won't even suggest that for me or sending someone out to take a look at the equipment. I'm guessing the Hopper needs replaced.
 
There's is definitely a hardware problem in the Hopper, the hub or the cabling. I don't know why all of a sudden Dish refuses to send techs out for these problems, yet they'll send a tech out when a customer get's his TV on the wrong input or doesn't know how to re-link a Joey to a new Hopper they sent the customer, pair a remote to a new TV, etc. I drove an hour and a half yesterday for my one and only job of the day to show a customer that Fox Sports Midwest was on Channel 412-8, not 418 like he kept insisting it should be
 
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I wanted to follow up with this. I talked to Dish tech support three different times and the last two people said they would "report" the problem to engineering and that it was a known issue with others having the same complaint. They never offered to send anyone out to the house so I finally called a local Dish retailer. He decided to redo the wire from the wall coax outlet to the crawl space from RG59 to RG6. Even though it was a short run of RG59, he still felt it could be causing the problem. He said a weak signal line couldn't support the 16 tuners and therefore was likely causing the problem. So far, that has fixed the problem. Dish Tech Support never called back or followed up with any solution. For all they know we are rebooting our Hopper 4-5 times a day still.
 
I wanted to follow up with this. I talked to Dish tech support three different times and the last two people said they would "report" the problem to engineering and that it was a known issue with others having the same complaint. They never offered to send anyone out to the house so I finally called a local Dish retailer. He decided to redo the wire from the wall coax outlet to the crawl space from RG59 to RG6. Even though it was a short run of RG59, he still felt it could be causing the problem. He said a weak signal line couldn't support the 16 tuners and therefore was likely causing the problem. So far, that has fixed the problem. Dish Tech Support never called back or followed up with any solution. For all they know we are rebooting our Hopper 4-5 times a day still.

Wait, you had RG59 running to the Hopper? That’s the exact problem. The Hopper needs 3Ghz cable because unlike legacy, which I think uses up to 1800Mhz or VIP, which uses up to 21Mhz, the Hopper uses the entire 3000Mhz spectrum.
 
Wait, you had RG59 running to the Hopper? That’s the exact problem. The Hopper needs 3Ghz cable because unlike legacy, which I think uses up to 1800Mhz or VIP, which uses up to 21Mhz, the Hopper uses the entire 3000Mhz spectrum.

The coax wall outlet in the house were RG59. The wires all come together under the house. The coax wire from the dish outside had been run under the house to the Hybrid Solo Hub and then the RG59 wire from it to the wall outlet. This was corrected. I don't know why the installer didn't do that when the Hopper 3 was put in.
 
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The coax wall outlet in the house were RG59. The wires all come together under the house. The coax wire from the dish outside had been run under the house to the Hybrid Solo Hub and then the RG59 wire from it to the wall outlet. This was corrected. I don't know why the installer didn't do that when the Hopper 3 was put in.

Because he was lazy. Period.
 
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Because he was lazy. Period.
Probably...my cousin had such a bad technician a few weeks back for a new install...they got the old Hopper and the dish wasn't put on the house correctly. Another one had to come back and install a second dish for some reason...we need 119, 110, and 129 in this area. People don't have two dishes outside.
 
Probably...my cousin had such a bad technician a few weeks back for a new install...they got the old Hopper and the dish wasn't put on the house correctly. Another one had to come back and install a second dish for some reason...we need 119, 110, and 129 in this area. People don't have two dishes outside.

There was no issues with line of sight? I’ve used 2 dishes from 2 different spots to get all 3 sets in, but regardless, I follow poor work all the time and I have no patience for laziness. You have to live with what I do at your house.
 
I wanted to follow up with this. I talked to Dish tech support three different times and the last two people said they would "report" the problem to engineering and that it was a known issue with others having the same complaint. They never offered to send anyone out to the house so I finally called a local Dish retailer. He decided to redo the wire from the wall coax outlet to the crawl space from RG59 to RG6. Even though it was a short run of RG59, he still felt it could be causing the problem. He said a weak signal line couldn't support the 16 tuners and therefore was likely causing the problem. So far, that has fixed the problem. Dish Tech Support never called back or followed up with any solution. For all they know we are rebooting our Hopper 4-5 times a day still.
Is your Hopper connected to the internet? If so, they can tell that you are no longer rebooting it. :)
 
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We were losing connection between one or both of our Joeys regularly. It began at a rate of once a month and then got steadily worse until it was several times a day. Each time we had to reset the Hopper and the Joeys to get it working. I concluded there was a problem with the WAP (wireless access point), the small black box connected to the Hopper). I also found from another thread on this topic that the tech used the old DirecTV RG59 cable from the antenna to the jack inside the house. RG59 MUST NOT be used for newer Dish equipment because it does not have adequate bandwidth to support the 3GHz signals. RG6 must be used instead. You can tell the difference by the size of the cable (RG59 is 0.25" in diameter, RG6 is 0.275"). There should also be labelling on the cable. Replacing both the RG59 and the WAP solved the problem (I suspect that replacing the RG59 alone would have fixed it but wasn't going to go thru the trouble of two separate service calls).
Getting Dish to send out a tech was not easy because they would not do anything about it unless we paid $95 for a service call. Dish said our equipment was out of warranty. I asked to speak to a supervisor (I figured we were renting their equipment which was defective) and she gave me 3 months free of the Dish Protect plan (I have to cancel it or I will be charged $10 per month after 3 months). If they don't do this for you sign up for Dish Protect and cancel it after the equipment is repaired.
This all started on a Saturday and Dish had a tech out the next day - a Sunday, so I was very impressed with that part of the ordeal!
 
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