Streamed (and recorded) VOD (free movie) issue

[sktrus]

Since I am a country pumpkin without unlimited Internet service, I hardly use Dish's VOD feature. Well, I have finally managed to get unlimited Internet couple days ago, and very excited about that. The service is fast enough to stream without buffering. Yesterday, I picked two free movies from VOD and streamed and recorded them. They are both in On Demand folder and will stay there for 18 days unless I delete them. So, that's the good news. Here's the problem I ran into:
I was streaming the second movie last night. We were having an ice storm and my electricity flicked for a second, and fortunately came back. That interrupted the streaming. I switched to live tv. Today, I checked the VOD folder, and noticed that the recording was complete.Well, at least it looked that way with green bar being all the way to the end of the box. I selected that movie. I had two options, resume or start over. Resume doesn't take me to the spot where the service was interrupted. No big deal. I was able to start over. I wanted to fast forward. Briefly pressing the forward button on remote advances the movie only 30 seconds. Pressing and holding it shows nothing as far as forward speed is concerned. The screen freezes few seconds and the movie advances, but I don't know how long.
Is there a software limitation with Hopper 3 with streamed and recorded show where I can not use fast forward? I don't have this issue with Prime or other recordings. I am going to watch this second movie from the beginning and see whether the whole movie was recorded.
Is there a solution to this or should I accept the limitation and move on?
Thanks for reading.

 

[sktrus]

Dish VOD surprisingly recorded the entire movie without any interruption. Brief power outage for couple seconds had no effect. Perhaps the battery in my router kicked in. Hopper 3 turned itself off though. Anyway, the fast forward feature (with high speed) again did not work. I was able to use forward button to skip commercials. The first movie had no commercials, the second had plenty. I found that annoying!
I am hoping a Dish rep will respond to my thread.

 

[pattykay]

Dish VOD surprisingly recorded the entire movie without any interruption. Brief power outage for couple seconds had no effect. Perhaps the battery in my router kicked in. Hopper 3 turned itself off though. Anyway, the fast forward feature (with high speed) again did not work. I was able to use forward button to skip commercials. The first movie had no commercials, the second had plenty. I found that annoying!
I am hoping a Dish rep will respond to my thread.

I'm not a Dish rep, but I'll take a crack at it. The behavior you are seeing is typical of VOD, unfortunately. There is no fast forward option. However, if you keep pressing the Skip Forward button rapid-fire, you should see a pop-up in the lower-right corner of the screen, telling you how many minutes and seconds you are skipping. Rewind (or rather, the lack thereof) and Skip Back work the same way.

As for the commercials, that all depends on the channel that is actually providing the VOD content. If it originated on a premium movie channel, there will be no commercials during the movie, as expected. If the movie is being provided by a regular cable channel that normally has commercials, then the VOD will also usually have commercials, as would be expected. To make sure that you are only getting movies from the premium movie channels (if you want to avoid commercials entirely) you can go to Browse By Channel from the On Demand menu, rather than browsing through the VOD movies by category (theme).

 

[sktrus]

Thanks Crodrules for a recommendation to find commercial free movies. Am I right assuming channel 300 contains free movies? All the other VOD channels require fee? I am still learning how it works. the first movie ( without ads) was a Hallmark channel movie. The other with ads was a TBS movie. If the remote worked the way it should, I wouldn’t mind skipping ads.. it was too slow and cumbersome.

 

[sktrus]

Crodrules, I am typing this on iPad with Safari browser. Check the picture that popped up next to your respond!!!!

 

[pattykay]

Thanks Crodrules for a recommendation to find commercial free movies. Am I right assuming channel 300 contains free movies? All the other VOD channels require fee? I am still learning how it works. the first movie ( without ads) was a Hallmark channel movie. The other with ads was a TBS movie. If the remote worked the way it should, I wouldn’t mind skipping ads.. it was too slow and cumbersome.

All of the VOD is available through channel 300. Some channels have convenient shortcut channel numbers to their VOD in the guide, next to their regular channel numbers. When you launch channel 300, keep going down through the main On Demand menu, until you see the Browse By Channel category. Then on that row, select See More. This will take you to where you can find each individual channel's VOD content. Premium movie channels are conveniently grouped in the same row on that page. If you select a VOD event from a channel that is not included in your subscription, then the Info screen for that event will have a How To Subscribe button, instead of the usual Watch button.

 

[DishSubLA]

Some VOD will have FF disabled (and even Skip Fwrd can be dis-abled), usually NOT content from Premium Movie channels, but most often content from the commercially supported channels. The thing is, I have often viewed VOD from commercially supported channels with NO such restrictions, even if commercials are part of the VOD, and yet, I've had a number of trick-play restrictions with other VOD's. In my experience with the things I've VOD'd, it is 50-50 restrictions / no restrictions. What's heart breaking on such restricted VOD, is that you can't FFW to the point for you to resume or pick-up from where you'd left off from watching LIVE.

These limitations are imposed by the copyright owner/channel, and NOT by Dish. Dish used to download any requested content onto the HDD, and then we had no restrictions. But a few years ago, Dish started providing a fair majority of the requested VOD by live streaming, and much less saved to DVR HDD. In my experience I would say that it is 80-20 live stream / saved to DVR HDD. I find it is often--but not always--dependent on the channel on which that content aired, but I really can't find a true 100% consistency to when restrictions apply and when they don't--except for movies on premiums that seem to always have no restrictions. Even streamed live VOD can be allowed to FF, in my experience.

However, the Channel 1/501 VOD's are stored on the DVR HDD, and the last time I viewed things there, there are no restrictions of movement, but that is paid content. Still the situation of some content being restrictive of trick-play is annoying.

 

[sktrus]

If you select a VOD event from a channel that is not included in your subscription, then the Info screen for that event will have a How To Subscribe button, instead of the usual Watch button.

That's a relief. I hate to pick a movie that makes you cough up $ without your approval.

In my experience I would say that it is 80-20 live stream / saved to DVR HDD.

Thank you. I assumed Hopper 3 records every stream! Good to know.

 

[pattykay]

Dish used to download any requested content onto the HDD, and then we had no restrictions. But a few years ago, Dish started providing a fair majority of the requested VOD by live streaming, and much less saved to DVR HDD. In my experience I would say that it is 80-20 live stream / saved to DVR HDD.

That must explain why I have never seen the ones with no restrictions. The vast majority of my VOD viewing was done with a Wally, which does not have the option of saving VOD content to the external hard drive. All VOD content viewed through a Wally is done through a live stream. The same thing applies to the channel 1 / channel 501 VOD movies: there is no way to access those that way through a Wally, since the system will not allow them to be stored on the hard drive.

 

[renegade734]

A battery backup (UPC) will prevent system reset in the event of brief power bumps. This will keep your receiver alive for 10-15 minutes. When power comes back up, you can resume watching TV immediately, instead of waiting for your receiver to reboot. You can pick up an inexpensive one at Walmart.

 

[sktrus]

I tried to rewatch a movie I originally streamed and hopper 3 recorded. It was flawless when I streamed it. The second attempt was a nightmare. The movie would freeze every few minutes. ( I checked. DVR showed it was recorded.) Forward button would do nothing. The only thing that worked was I would switch to live tv then go back to dvr and resume the movie. It happened so many times until we finished the movie. I deleted it as soon as possible. Is this going to happen in the future again? If you can not rewatch a streamed movie what is the purpose for recording it?