New Dish TV customer needs some quick answers

[marklyn]

I normally do my own due diligence and research my questions or issues but I'm running out of time before I leave for a 2 month trip abroad. I just got my Dish TV installed 2 days ago.
I have a Hopper 3 and two Joey 3's and my previous setup was a Roamio Tivo with 3 mini's running with Spectrum TV.
I've learned a lot on my own but would *really* appreciate some help regarding features I'd want to use when traveling abroad.

I've downloaded one season of a show from the 'on demand' choice, intending to watch this while I'm traveling but I only see the "On Demand Free & Rented" on the Hopper & Joey's. I don't see it on the Android Dish Anywhere app nor did I see it on the Dish Anywhere web screen on my laptop. Am I limited to watching what I've downloaded on demand to watching in home? I do see content that I've set for timer recordings on Dish Anywhere, just not the on demand stuff.
Regarding the "On Demand". The season I downloaded said "Free" but I was prompted each time as if I would be paying for the episode. Is this prompt normal, even though the episode clearly says it's free?

This morning when I turned on one of my Joey's it had a message on it "Looking for Hopper 1303". I went and turned on the Hopper 3 and instead of turning on quickly like it usually does, it said "starting up" and took about a minute to fully come on. By the time I walked back to where my Joey is, the Joey was on a tv channel like nothing was wrong. What is up with this situation? What do I do when I'm not at home and there is no one to turn on the Hopper 3?

Regarding the DVR options... is there any way to display DVR recordings in a list format vs the default large icon format?

I see as an option I can download content to an external device (DVR Recordings, Options, Manage Recordings, 6. Transfer to External Drive). Do I transfer using a USB Flash drive from the Joey or Hopper or does it matter? Will it transfer anything and in what format?

That's it for now, thanks for any answers. If I had another two weeks I'd probably find out the answers on my own but I could use some quick help before I'm traveling and not in front of the Hopper/Joey.

 

[HipKat]

The Dish Anywhere app and website should absolutely have a link for On-Demand but Dish Anywhere seems to have glitches pretty often. I'd see if it comes back over the next few days.
The Hopper, if it's doing reboots could have signal or power issues or you just coincidentally fired it up in the middle of an update

 

[scoob83]

It took several days before everything worked correctly online when I was a new customer. Guessing the systems to have to sync up. The installer also warned me of this and to be patient but everything would start working correctly soon.


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[marklyn]

I was playing around with a 32Gb flash drive trying to see if I could transfer a recorded show from my Hopper 3 to the flash drive. I plugged it into the back of the Hopper but when I went to the transfer section and selected the show, it said no USB drive connected. Must I buy an external drive or should a flash drive work?

 

[strikes2k]

I was playing around with a 32Gb flash drive trying to see if I could transfer a recorded show from my Hopper 3 to the flash drive. I plugged it into the back of the Hopper but when I went to the transfer section and selected the show, it said no USB drive connected. Must I buy an external drive or should a flash drive work?

I can't say definitively that a flash drive won't work. But, the only discussions I've ever seen regarding external drives was in regard to external hard drives. Most people use that feature to allow them to archive things they want to keep on a long term or permanent basis and don't want to waste the built in hard drive space since it's limited. Or they want to expand that space. Some people have multiple external hard drives and just plug in the one with the shows on it they want at the moment.

 

[bookworm370]

Even if it would work, flash drives are a no-no because the Hopper doesn't support the TRIM command to tell the controller that a file was changed or deleted. Very short life on a flash drive!

 

[marklyn]

I might be misunderstanding the terminology. So I connected a real external USB drive to the hopper and it prompted for a format, which I did. Then I went back to the DVR screen and successfully transferred one show in a series to the drive. I could actually then switch to the drive where the recording was and watch a minute of it. Then I took the drive and connected to my computer but the computer doesn't 'see' the drive? Is this method of transferring from the Hopper to an external drive only visible when it's connected to the hopper (or Joey?)? Does 'transfer' mean it moved the recording to the drive? I thought this method could be used to transfer shows to a drive and take with me and watch offline (no internet). Would appreciate more details on this feature, as I'd like to be able to watch shows offline from internet on occasion.

 

[dweber]

Content that you transfer to an external drive can only be seen on the Hopper3 or Joey clients. Also content on an external drive can not be seen using Dish Anywhere. If you have a phone with plenty of memory you can transfer content from the Hopper3 to your phone using Dish Anywhere. The content on your phone can then be watched. I have not done that recently. Dish Anywhere may not work in a foreign country.

It takes some time to transfer content to a phone. Make sure to turn on “Smart Prepare for Mobile” which is found under Timer Default Settings. The Hopper3 and your phone must be on the same WiFi network for the transfer to occur.

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[TheKrell]

I was playing around with a 32Gb flash drive trying to see if I could transfer a recorded show from my Hopper 3 to the flash drive. I plugged it into the back of the Hopper but when I went to the transfer section and selected the show, it said no USB drive connected. Must I buy an external drive or should a flash drive work?

Big flash drives will work, but 32GB is too small and the Hopper will think it's full of jpegs. Note I haven't tried the picture viewing stuff on my H3, but I have tried a 500GB SSD and that worked for archival storage.

 

[ethanlerma]

I might be misunderstanding the terminology. So I connected a real external USB drive to the hopper and it prompted for a format, which I did. Then I went back to the DVR screen and successfully transferred one show in a series to the drive. I could actually then switch to the drive where the recording was and watch a minute of it. Then I took the drive and connected to my computer but the computer doesn't 'see' the drive? Is this method of transferring from the Hopper to an external drive only visible when it's connected to the hopper (or Joey?)? Does 'transfer' mean it moved the recording to the drive? I thought this method could be used to transfer shows to a drive and take with me and watch offline (no internet). Would appreciate more details on this feature, as I'd like to be able to watch shows offline from internet on occasion.

Adding to this as well. DVR recordings (on both the internal HDD and any external drives you format) are encrypted (or scrambled) in a way only another modern Dish DVR can understand, and your account number works as the ‘keys to the castle’. This is in an attempt to prevent piracy by a user uploading the media online/sharing it to their friends, as well as to prevent the use of the recordings if you were to cancel services and return the DVR to Dish (making the EHD useless). Joeys do not support/need an external hard drive, as they access the Hopper they are connected to and have access to the EHD connected to the Hopper that way. When a recording is transferred to a EHD, it is moved entirely freeing space on the internal HDD. You can also move the recording back if you wish to do so.

As far as watching recordings on the go you have a few options already mentioned here, on the iOS/Android Dish anywhere app you should be able to download a copy of DVR recordings for offline viewing, with the same limitation of this only being posible for recordings on the internal HDD. If the place you travel to has reliable internet and is within the US (some accounts of international usage have been reported but YMMV) you should be able to access the Ondemand library as well, just not the downloaded content on your Hopper.

 

[marklyn]

That is really good information and I appreciate you taking the time to write it out. I wasn't sure about the on-demand content whether or not it's downloaded to the hopper if I could view it with dish anywhere but from the way you described it it sounds like I cannot view that remotely. Correct me if I'm wrong though. Thanks again.

 

[Jim5506]

Recordings on the internal drive are not encrypted, but it takes a bit of tweaking to recover them successfully (process them with a Perl algorithm or something to properly allow stream readers to play them), the external drives they ARE encrypted. I once ripped programs from my 722 but now I just use my Hauppauge PVR 1212 to set a timer on the Hauppauge to record off the internal drive of my H3 if I ever find anything worthy.