What happens to my equipment I own if I drop Dish

EMANON

Well-Known SatelliteGuys Member
Original poster
Aug 9, 2007
25
1
WA
I own my Hopper 1st generation. I am thinking of dropping Dish. What happens the recordings that I have saved? Will it still be usable as a DLNA device?
 
Recordings on an external hard drive would be lost, and would not be recoverable even if you came back to DISH later on. Recordings on the device itself on a VIP receiver can be seen sometimes, for at least awhile I can't answer for a Hopper but Navychop is saying you can't. The receiver as a whole will not function for anything overall. DISH owns the the software that runs the receiver and you own the actual receiver.
 
The only thing you can do is try recording those shows onto a DVD if you have a DVD recorder. Other than that, the receiver is deactivated and you are free to hang onto it or sell it. If you keep the receiver and decide to sign up again with it, those recordings will be gone and you will have to start over.
 
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My experience in the few times we had to switch to a new DVR (722 or Hopper), either for upgrade or replacement, has been that I could always watch whatever was already recorded on the Hopper. Unless there is some sort of internal timer or Dish hidden function to deactivate watching of recordings in a month or so, never had an issue for at least a few weeks. I remember recent Hopper changes (I had a Sling unit and also H2K) and one condition I had was I had to keep them for a while to either watch or move recordings to an EHD to put on the replacement DVR before returning. I never had them connected to anything other than plugging in so do not know how Dish could "deactivate" anything on a DVR if it's not connected to the satellite dish or Internet after you cancel (unless as mentioned above). Now, maybe if the Hopper is connected to the dish/Internet after you cancel service then maybe they could send a quick hit to the Hopper to make it unusable for playback. Do not know for sure, just speculating that technically that could be done if they wanted to and had that built in.

Agree that once you leave Dish the recordings cannot be moved to another provider's DVR, only recorded to a DVD as Scherrman advised. EHD stuff? That's not able to be put onto another provider's DVR.

DLNA? Who knows. Since you are set on leaving Dish and own the equipment I guess you can try it out. But it is not a very good DLNA as Hall replied. I never liked it and was buggy.

IMO, disconnect the Hopper prior to deactivating your account, leave it disconnected from anything (including wireless) other than the TV and prepare yourself to lose everything on it. If afterward you find you can watch stuff for weeks afterward, BONUS! Or stay with Dish and upgrade to their ultra-cool new 16 tuner mega Hopper.
 
It is trivial to have a receiver "phone home" and if no authorization signal is received, shut down until such is received. Just ask the folks that try to put back into service a box they've stored away. But with service, a simple call for a "hit" to be sent puts it back in service.

How long? Who knows?
 
Recent set-tops (as in the past 5-10 years) seem to have a built-in mechanism that does cripple or disable them if they can't "check in". No one seems to know how long that is, but I think (30) days would be a good starting guess.
 
My experience in the few times we had to switch to a new DVR (722 or Hopper), either for upgrade or replacement, has been that I could always watch whatever was already recorded on the Hopper. Unless there is some sort of internal timer or Dish hidden function to deactivate watching of recordings in a month or so, never had an issue for at least a few weeks. I remember recent Hopper changes (I had a Sling unit and also H2K) and one condition I had was I had to keep them for a while to either watch or move recordings to an EHD to put on the replacement DVR before returning. I never had them connected to anything other than plugging in so do not know how Dish could "deactivate" anything on a DVR if it's not connected to the satellite dish or Internet after you cancel (unless as mentioned above). Now, maybe if the Hopper is connected to the dish/Internet after you cancel service then maybe they could send a quick hit to the Hopper to make it unusable for playback. Do not know for sure, just speculating that technically that could be done if they wanted to and had that built in.

Agree that once you leave Dish the recordings cannot be moved to another provider's DVR, only recorded to a DVD as Scherrman advised. EHD stuff? That's not able to be put onto another provider's DVR.

DLNA? Who knows. Since you are set on leaving Dish and own the equipment I guess you can try it out. But it is not a very good DLNA as Hall replied. I never liked it and was buggy.

IMO, disconnect the Hopper prior to deactivating your account, leave it disconnected from anything (including wireless) other than the TV and prepare yourself to lose everything on it. If afterward you find you can watch stuff for weeks afterward, BONUS! Or stay with Dish and upgrade to their ultra-cool new 16 tuner mega Hopper.

EHDs are tied to a customer's account. Once you quit that account is done. When you sign up again you are given a new account number so the EHD will get reformatted when you try using it again.

Last time I tried transferring recordings from a Hopper to an EHD when upgrading I only had two days before the functions were lost on the deactivated receiver.
 
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Last time I tried transferring recordings from a Hopper to an EHD when upgrading I only had two days before the functions were lost on the deactivated receiver.

Interesting. Don't plan on deactivating any equipment anytime soon so hopefully the original poster can do some binge watching to get those watched before he leaves Dish. Still, would be interesting to have him post an update a month or so after he leaves on if they were at least viewable on the DVR.
 
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