A couple weeks ago I was at a friend's house checking out his new Samsung 4k TV. He flipped through channels and stopped on Encore Westerns, which caused him to point out the sharpness of the new TV exposed the lousy SD video quality worse than his old DLP unit did. When I asked if any of the On Demand titles were in HD he had no idea his Hopper even offered that, so I showed him how all it worked. The first title he tried to access ("100 Rifles", if that matters) started to download but then reported a 'download failed' error. We tried another and it failed too. I replaced the wireless dongle with a hardwire Ethernet cable, but that didn't help; still fails.
We then tried Pandora. It loads up fine, but songs only play for 5, 10, maybe 15 seconds and then it skips to the next. Once it a while it will play a full song, but it's maybe one out of ten at best. The Pandora app built-in to the TV plays flawlessly for hours, so I don't think it's his router/modem/ISP. I don't know if the VOD download issue and the skipping Pandora are related, but they both have his Hopper's networking in common.
He has a 1st gen Hopper (like I do). He called a DISH script-reader who promptly ran him through the 'unplug/replug, reset the modem/router, stand on one foot and cluck like a chicken' routine before being kicked to tier 2. A very nice lady there had us check a few things and said she'd be referring this to engineering. That's where I left. I tested Pandora on my Hopper later that night and it plays without skipping, as expected.
Since then, they've been able to download and watch a bunch of TV episodes (Game of Thrones, for example) without incident as long as they don't try to watch while it's downloading. The odd problem is that movies seem to download with the scenes out of order, for lack of a better description. A movie will play the first 15 minutes or so, and then play the last 20, then somewhere in the middle, etc. It appears the entire movie is there, it's just jumbled up.
He called DISH again today and they offered him a Hopper 3, but that's $3 more per month and he doesn't see why he should have to pay more to fix this problem (even if the H3 would be worth it for most of us) and doesn't want to go through the receiver swap hassle if he can avoid it.
Has anyone run into these symptoms before? Have I overlooked something obvious, or should he just get a replacement Hopper and be done with it?
We then tried Pandora. It loads up fine, but songs only play for 5, 10, maybe 15 seconds and then it skips to the next. Once it a while it will play a full song, but it's maybe one out of ten at best. The Pandora app built-in to the TV plays flawlessly for hours, so I don't think it's his router/modem/ISP. I don't know if the VOD download issue and the skipping Pandora are related, but they both have his Hopper's networking in common.
He has a 1st gen Hopper (like I do). He called a DISH script-reader who promptly ran him through the 'unplug/replug, reset the modem/router, stand on one foot and cluck like a chicken' routine before being kicked to tier 2. A very nice lady there had us check a few things and said she'd be referring this to engineering. That's where I left. I tested Pandora on my Hopper later that night and it plays without skipping, as expected.
Since then, they've been able to download and watch a bunch of TV episodes (Game of Thrones, for example) without incident as long as they don't try to watch while it's downloading. The odd problem is that movies seem to download with the scenes out of order, for lack of a better description. A movie will play the first 15 minutes or so, and then play the last 20, then somewhere in the middle, etc. It appears the entire movie is there, it's just jumbled up.
He called DISH again today and they offered him a Hopper 3, but that's $3 more per month and he doesn't see why he should have to pay more to fix this problem (even if the H3 would be worth it for most of us) and doesn't want to go through the receiver swap hassle if he can avoid it.
Has anyone run into these symptoms before? Have I overlooked something obvious, or should he just get a replacement Hopper and be done with it?
