Old and new Hopper in same house

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Well, the installation has come and gone! So now I'm back with Dish with one old and one new Hopper. I am very impressed!

The install went with just one glitch. And that was with the wireless. Damned thing insisted that the wireless was WPA when it is WEP and wouldn't configure. So I connected an ethernet wire temporarily to it so we could get the rest of the install finished. After he left, I went in and tried the wireless again, this time it still said WPA, but it went onto the security part and now says it is WEP. Had to come back here and find out how to turn on bridging as that isn't in any documents I read. All is good.

First impressions.

1. The HD is superb! I still have my D* equipment hooked up and the differences are a tad noticeable, but now it is in Dish's favor! That's a change. :)

2. The SD on EA is wonderful. None of that D* bit starved SD. I definitely won't miss that. The SD is good enough that even those channels I would like in HD are good enough and about at DVD quality which ain't bad.

3. The speed is amazing! Compared to the best that D* has to offer, it is just a night and day difference.

4. Search is much better than it used to be imo. And having a dedicated search button is something I missed on the D* equipment although the search functionality on the D* equipment was superb.

5. I think that the menuing and such is a bit over the top in cuteness. I would prefer listings instead of all the cute logos, much easier to deal with imo. Because of the way things work, other than for the more basic things, a universal remote such as the Harmony 1 isn't as easy to use with the Hopper vice the HR series in my opinion.

6. VOD on the Hopper is just not real easy to use. No picking of channels similar to the way D* does it, which I think made more sense. I'll have to use it more to see if I change my mind about that.

Overall I'm very pleased and as soon as I've watched the recordings I have on the D* equip I'll cancel them out. Got to check out the VOD on Dish to see what of my D* recordings are available that way to help speed that process up.

The install had to download on the new Hopper as they had brought 2 old ones that they had preloaded because of a miscommunication. But it went very quick I thought. About 30-40 minutes from start of Hopper setup to ready to authorize.

How many timers can you set up? I searched and didn't come up with anything definitive.

I'm sure I'll have some other questions and comments as time goes by, but as of this moment I couldn't be more pleased with the change.
 
Aha, I knew I forgot a question.

How the hell do you turn on ad skipping in PTAT? I've got PTAT turned on with the defaults but don't have an actual PTAT recording yet, but I cannot find where you opt in or out of auto ad skipping.
 
lparsons21 said:
Aha, I knew I forgot a question.

How the hell do you turn on ad skipping in PTAT? I've got PTAT turned on with the defaults but don't have an actual PTAT recording yet, but I cannot find where you opt in or out of auto ad skipping.
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Wait till tomorrow. When you play back a PTAT event that has a red kangaroo on it, a pop p will appear asking you if you want to enable auto hop.
 
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satjay said:
Welcome back....Let us know what questions you have :)

I like the way VOD set up now, enjoy!

Many have said that HD picture was improved with Hopper
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I certainly think the HD has improved, but the SD is the biggest surprise. It is much better than it was when I had my 722k.
 
lparsons21 said:
The install went with just one glitch. And that was with the wireless. Damned thing insisted that the wireless was WPA when it is WEP and wouldn't configure.
Click to expand...

Lloyd! Dump that WEP immediately and turn on WPA2. WEP is pretty much worthless and can be cracked in a matter of minutes by drivers-by.
 
WEP is useless. I stuck with WEP for many years though, for legacy reasons. I finally ditched the old hardware and WPA2 all the way! I was constantly monitoring my WiFi with WEP. With WPA, who cares!!

As for Hopper vs 722k PQ, IMHO, they're both about the same, which is great!
 
A couple things I really notice missing compared to the way D* did things.

1. Search is very much better on the Hopper than it was on the Vip series that I used to have a couple years ago. That said, it isn't quite as good as D*'s since for search it feels rather slow at inputting the search term in comparison. Not earth shaking, but noticed.

2. I liked the unified playlist that D* offers, it just makes things simpler when picking a recording to watch. I think that the reason it isn't implemented on the Hopper/Joey system is that no hot link is set up between multiple Hoppers (ie; you have to make the link). With D*, they started from a different design utilizing existing equipment instead of the 'dumb' terminal that the Joey (and now C31 from D*) is.

3. I think that D* manages recording a bit better. Select a show and if there is a conflict, just tell it to 'record when available' and you're done. I'm not impressed with the 'conflict resolution' screen on the Hopper at all. I'm certain I'll get used to it, and maybe it will start to make more sense than it does right now.

And of course, there are a few things that Hopper brings to the table as well.

1. EHD done right! This was always a sore point with me with the way D* implemented it. Not only did they use the often problematic eSATA vice USB interface, they also don't allow account level use and it doesn't add to available storage, only replaces.

2. SD quality - much better on the Hopper than even the older Vip units, but hugely better than D*.

3. Autohop - this is great! While it doesn't skip all the ads, it does skip most of them automagically. I like it!


One question on recording. If I'm on a show and have been watching awhile, can I make a recording that goes back to the beginning of the show? If so, how?
 
lucky86 said:
You should be able to rewind back to the beginning of the show and hit record.
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If I remember correctly, my old DTV receivers recorded from the beginning of the show (or buffer) automatically. It would be nice to get a pop-up screen offering a choice of either 'from the beginning' or 'now'.
 
lparsons21 said:
Well, the installation has come and gone! So now I'm back with Dish with one old and one new Hopper. I am very impressed!

The install went with just one glitch. And that was with the wireless. Damned thing insisted that the wireless was WPA when it is WEP and wouldn't configure. So I connected an ethernet wire temporarily to it so we could get the rest of the install finished. After he left, I went in and tried the wireless again, this time it still said WPA, but it went onto the security part and now says it is WEP. Had to come back here and find out how to turn on bridging as that isn't in any documents I read. All is good.
Click to expand...
I highly recommend ditching WEP, and going with WPA2 for wi-fi encryption. WEP slows things down drastically, and may affect streaming video.
 
With WEP being a simpler encryption algorithm, technically in theory it would be faster. Just as no security overall = less overhead which means (a negligible amount of) more throughput. That being said, WEP is a joke these days, and can be cracked in as little as 1-15 minutes using typical consumer hardware and software.

No security = door wide open.
WEP = locking the storm door.
WPA = Closing and locking the door.
WPA2 = Locking the deadbolt.

Sent from my iPhone 4S using Forum Runner
 
Jaspear said:
If I remember correctly, my old DTV receivers recorded from the beginning of the show (or buffer) automatically. It would be nice to get a pop-up screen offering a choice of either 'from the beginning' or 'now'.
Click to expand...
By default, if you press "record" during a live program, it will automatically record it from the beginning. However, if your DVR was in standby at the beginning of that program, or none of the tuners was tuned to it, it will begin recording at the earliest point in the program that is buffered on the hdd.
 
On Hopper it starts recording from the point that you pressed record and dumps the buffer. You have to rewind to the beginning of the buffer then press record to capture the buffer. They need to re-add the menu that pops up with the options that the older ViPs have.

Sent from my iPhone 4S using Forum Runner
 
It's definitely slower on newer 802.11n devices as WEP drops the 300Mbps n speeds down to 802.11g speeds (54Mbps.) No difference on G-only routers though. Technically all APs have hardware encryption. It's just that WEP (or WPA for that matter) is not approved in the 802.11n standard. My ASUS RT-N16 with DD-WRT can fully support both WPA/TKIP and WEP at 300Mbps however the stock firmware (on almost all routers) does not. Only WPA2-AES "truly" supports 802.11n speeds.

Sent from my iPhone 4S using Forum Runner
 
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