when will the 6 tuner hopper come out? I hope "SOON" for real.

based on Scott's information, DirecTV already has a version of AutoHop ready to go. They are just waiting on the Dish litigation to say AutoHop is legal and doesn't violate any contractual obligations.

Instead of being leaders and advocates for their subscribers. Closely the same thing happened when Dish pushed for locals to be carried.
 
I'm about to get two Hoppers and one Joey installed. What isn't fully integrated?
That is the same system I have and am very pleased. Best setup I have had from either company.


The main thing is it is not a single 6 tuner integration. You can set timers only from each specific hopper. Otherwise it works great. You can view DVR content from either or from the joey.
 
That is the same system I have and am very pleased. Best setup I have had from either company.


The main thing is it is not a single 6 tuner integration. You can set timers only from each specific hopper. Otherwise it works great. You can view DVR content from either or from the joey.
That's a very minor issue.
 
I'm about to get two Hoppers and one Joey installed. What isn't fully integrated?

some of us would like to be able to see tuners between hoppers. Comes in useful when the 3 tuners are all active on the local box and you can pick a tuner off the other hopper.

There's another group that wants to take that level of integration further and have a unified list of all tuners in the household.

Right now the basic integration only lets you view previously recorded content between hoppers. The exception is the joeys which can also link and unlink between the different hoppers.
 
some of us would like to be able to see tuners between hoppers. Comes in useful when the 3 tuners are all active on the local box and you can pick a tuner off the other hopper.

There's another group that wants to take that level of integration further and have a unified list of all tuners in the household.

Right now the basic integration only lets you view previously recorded content between hoppers. The exception is the joeys which can also link and unlink between the different hoppers.
Those features would be nice, but not a deal breaker. I think this will work fine for us. I'll probably set the PTAT on the Hopper in the off room so that I don't tie that up in the main room.
 
Those features would be nice, but not a deal breaker. I think this will work fine for us. I'll probably set the PTAT on the Hopper in the off room so that I don't tie that up in the main room.

We've been very satisfied with the system. Especially now that we've hit fairly stable software on the boxes.

I think at least being able to see tuners between hoppers will make it a little easier for people to move around between TVs in our household and not worry about what's being recorded at any particular location.
 
I think the biggest benefit to a unified system is load balancing of hard drive space, and availability of tuners when one box has all 3 tuners in use and another timer is about to fire on the same box it could fire up the recording on the other box.
 
We've been very satisfied with the system. Especially now that we've hit fairly stable software on the boxes.

I think at least being able to see tuners between hoppers will make it a little easier for people to move around between TVs in our household and not worry about what's being recorded at any particular location.
Speaking of stable. My 922 used to be, but I'm having to reboot it almost daily lately. Another reason to move on.
 
My household certainly makes use of the 9 tuners with the three Hoppers. I personally prefer the separate DVR lists, timer lists, tuner usage, and I can use my WiFi Joey to manage all three Hoppers. Not to mention that three Hoppers has a LOT more HDD space than the single-DVR solutions. I prefer not having to wade through everyone else's stuff all the time, separate timer/tuner usage prevents conflicts as well. I'm not sure what all the hype is about having a single DVR for the household, or even integrating Hoppers together to create a single entity. IF Dish ever did that, I sure as heck hope they'll give the option to go back to the "old" way.
 
Going back to the directv autohop mentioning.

Eight years ago I owned something called a replaytv 5040. I used two serial cables db9 to control two sd set top boxes for channel control. The unit downloaded the guide information from their serverthat had the directv guide so it could change channels via serial, btw mucb more reliable than an ir blaster, and record. The unit could record two sd signals at the same time and watch a recording at the same time. This was before HD. You could also download an app for your pc and network with the replaytv to stream recordings or even copy movies off the unit and burn dvds. The best featurof the replaytv 5040, auto commercial skip on every recording as soon as it was recorded. It was 95 percent effective. So what happeneto replaytv? They were sued over the commercial skip function. They went out of business and sold to none other than directv. Directv has had this technology for the last 7 or so years. I loved my replaytv but it went to ebay went HD was the norm. Its ashame dtv doesnt have the balls to enable this feature and they sit and watch the results of the dish dispute.
 
My household certainly makes use of the 9 tuners with the three Hoppers. I personally prefer the separate DVR lists, timer lists, tuner usage, and I can use my WiFi Joey to manage all three Hoppers. Not to mention that three Hoppers has a LOT more HDD space than the single-DVR solutions. I prefer not having to wade through everyone else's stuff all the time, separate timer/tuner usage prevents conflicts as well. I'm not sure what all the hype is about having a single DVR for the household, or even integrating Hoppers together to create a single entity. IF Dish ever did that, I sure as heck hope they'll give the option to go back to the "old" way.
Well, yeah, customer choice is always a good thing. Different strokes for different folks. As far as the "hype", I already mentioned two benefits, namely load balancing of hard drive space and tuner availability. I just thought of a 3rd: the option to automatically skip events that already exist on the "other" DVR.
 
As I said earlier, can use a Joey to manage all the DVRs, load balance, use different tuners. I think that personally gives me more control than the supposed integration, UNLESS they did indeed give options to load balance the HDDs/tuners. Not just do things the way "they" want it to be done, which is most likely what would happen.

EDIT: Also, of course, it doesn't matter which Hopper you record to, as the recordings can be seen from any receiver, Hopper or Joey. What's better though, is that each Hopper has a separate list, not a "unified" or "integrated" list of recordings to wade through 2 or 3 Hoppers' worth of recordings.
 
Last edited:
Yep. Every feature I mentioned is predicated on consumer choice. Right now you have a choice, but a cumbersome manual one. Yet a cumbersome manual choice is still better than no choice at all.
 
Maybe I am liking the idea of a 6-tuner Hopper after all. That way, everyone complaining about "integration" can just get the 6-tuner Hopper, and have a (better) alternative to HR34-type WHDVR. Then, I could keep my "old" Hoppers and have it the way I like it. For me, it's far from cumbersome, and the menu setup isn't that hard to learn. Chances are, those that couldn't figure out this "cumbersome" way to do things aren't likely to care about "integration" either.

Another thing to consider, is the fact that Hopper has the same old "96 timer / 576 event" limit that the older receivers had. That means that having more Hoppers allows for more timers. This is crucial for my household. If this supposed 6-tuner Hopper were to come out, and still have the same limits, I can already see a lot of people complaining about it.
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Total: 0, Members: 0, Guests: 0)

Who Read This Thread (Total Members: 1)