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

[3HaloODST]

Considering that the word is that DirecTV's new HR44 "Genie" won't have 5 tuners anymore, not sure that Dish will prioritize making a 6-tuner Hopper reality.

Sent from my iPhone 4S using SatelliteGuys

 

[gadams]

A Hopper/Joey system works for a two TV household. Scott found out that a single Hopper doesn't work well with three or more TV's.QUOTE]

This is very much a "your mileage may vary" situation. We're planning on adding a second Joey to our one Hopper in the near future to support a third TV, but have absolutely zero plans to add another Hopper. The reason is that the third TV will only be used occasionally.

Obviously, if 3 TVs are in constant, heavy use, it's easy to see that one Hopper may not be sufficient, but the fact that YOU fall into that scenario does not automatically mean that everyone else with 3 TVs has the same usage pattern that you do.

So what if Dish was surprised by the number of dual Hopper requests. Compared to what? If they expected 5%, and got 10%, that would still represent a small minority. I'll freely admit that I pulled those numbers out of the air; do you have any real numbers to counter with?

To me, it makes much better sense to have a standard 3-tuner box that can be deployed in multiples to support small, large, and ginormous installations, than to support two different boxes, one of which by design is only installed to a small number of households with multiple TVs.

 

[mattyo]

Hey Guys...I've been with Dish for awhile and was waiting on the hopper to stabilize until I take the plunge. I have 6 TV's which are all HD in various rooms throughout the house...Is my best option 2 Hoppers and four Joeys? Thx in advance!

 

[navychop]

Hey Guys...I've been with Dish for awhile and was waiting on the hopper to stabilize until I take the plunge. I have 6 TV's which are all HD in various rooms throughout the house...Is my best option 2 Hoppers and four Joeys? Thx in advance!

For now, yes. If you have unusual recording needs, buy a 3rd Hopper. Must go thru Executive Resolutions for that, last I heard.

 

[sparc]

Hey Guys...I've been with Dish for awhile and was waiting on the hopper to stabilize until I take the plunge. I have 6 TV's which are all HD in various rooms throughout the house...Is my best option 2 Hoppers and four Joeys? Thx in advance!

If six tuners is enough for your household, then that's the best option.

 

[3HaloODST]

So what if Dish was surprised by the number of dual Hopper requests. Compared to what? If they expected 5%, and got 10%, that would still represent a small minority. I'll freely admit that I pulled those numbers out of the air; do you have any real numbers to counter with?

To me, it makes much better sense to have a standard 3-tuner box that can be deployed in multiples to support small, large, and ginormous installations, than to support two different boxes, one of which by design is only installed to a small number of households with multiple TVs.

It seems like I remember Scott posting a percentage a while back ago somewhere around here... Can't remember at all what it is or where the post is... I agree on the multiple standard Hopper proposition... I work with computers everyday... If there's one thing I know it's that the more redundancy, the better!

 

[ashutto20]

I would guess 2 hoppers is better then 1 genie???

 

[3HaloODST]

I would guess 2 hoppers is better then 1 genie???

Yep 1 extra tuner!

 

[trish2]

You can sub the 3.5 7200 drives with either SSD or drives w/ either 10 or 15k rpm (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236243). You can also go with 3 and 4 terabyte 7200 hard drives as well (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145562). With that said, I believe Dish should make a 6-8 tuner Hopper and make the proper changes. Force the competition to play catch-up. The install base is bigger than you realize. As stated previous, My family has said no to the hopper right now because it has too few tuners for our home.

Voyager,

You're certainly free to believe as you wish. The problem with a 6 tuner receiver, besides the small install base is some potential hardware limitations.

First, you would need more storage and 3 and 4tb drives are still pricey, about 150-250 depending on capacity. Second, you have more vying for thew internal storage.

Now let's go corner case and assume a worst case scenario, 6 simultaneous record streams + a couple of playback streams. 3.5 inch 7200 rpm drives aren't particularly high with their number of iops and this pattern would likely be enough to overwhelm the drive and there simply isn't much memory to use as a queue. All of the contention would throw the drives into a largely random pattern which hard drives are notoriously bad at random IO patterns.

So there are other technical challenges besides the practical aspect of a small installation base. none are insurmountable, but they wouldn't be cheap either.

Cheers,





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[DishSubLA]

The rumor is that DIRECTV is going to be going the other way and phase out the 5 tuner DVR in favor of a 3 Tuner DVR which is rumored to be called the HR-44 (Which will then be named the Genie). I have been told by my contacts that over 80% of those with a HR34 never use more then 3 tuners.

Personally I hope they (DIRECTV) offer both a 5 tuner and 3 tuner model.

. . . And the lower cost of manufacture and better economies. Let's face it, DirecTV is a good service and company and their 5 tuner DVR solutions were tempting, but Charles Ergen is the Spreadsheet King and teaches all his competitors about economies. Of course Direct would be going the 3 tuner route--for the same reasons Dish went down that road to begin with. .

 

[DishSubLA]

I don't thin Dish would ever go a 6 tuner route, but it cold allow the option of a truly integrated 2 Hopper system (they could get some money for the 2nd Hopper) as was originally designed. Most likely as an option from the menu as to how the subscribers wants the system to behave: as a 2 Hopper, 6 tuner system with "one DVR" for all or one can select the current limited integration. This gives the consumer choice and considering they had the software designed for full integration to begin with, this should NOT be a difficult feature to add.

 

[mdram]

I would guess 2 hoppers is better then 1 genie???

depends, if thats your only unit sure
but a genie can be integrated into an existing system and add to its tuners

 

[navychop]

.......With that said, I believe Dish should make a 6-8 tuner Hopper and make the proper changes. Force the competition to play catch-up. The install base is bigger than you realize. As stated previous, My family has said no to the hopper right now because it has too few tuners for our home.

6 or 9 sat tuners isn't enough for you? And that isn't even including PTAT.

I'd MUCH rather have the redundancy 2 or 3 Hoppers offer, especially if fully integrated, than a single point of failure. If SWMBO ain't happy, ain't NOBODY happy. And I think most customers, upon reflection, would rather have the redundancy, and the market for one or two 6 sat tuner boxes becomes vanishingly small.

 

[John Kotches]

You can sub the 3.5 7200 drives with either SSD or drives w/ either 10 or 15k rpm (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236243). You can also go with 3 and 4 terabyte 7200 hard drives as well (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145562). With that said, I believe Dish should make a 6-8 tuner Hopper and make the proper changes. Force the competition to play catch-up. The install base is bigger than you realize. As stated previous, My family has said no to the hopper right now because it has too few tuners for our home.

Yes you can go with larger drives, but the incremental costs added to the units could well place the price for production too high.
@7200 RPM
2TB $100
3TB $150
4TB $250

10K and 15K drives are significantly more expensive and there's additional heat dissipation to consider.
@10K RPM
1 TB $290

@15K RPM
600GB $300

SSD option:
1 TB $2484

It's fine to believe that Dish could come out with a 6 tuner hopper but the storage costs alone make it unrealistic IMO. Sure, there would be some price breaks versus buying 1-off but they aren't that significant because HDD and SSD are commoditized items.

I could see a Master/Slave combination of 2 hoppers as tenable, but I don't see the financial aspects of delivering a 6 tuner box as tenable.

 

[JM42]

I don't think drive speeds are a limiting factor. The three tuner hopper is already handling 6 record streams and 4+ playback streams during PTAT. I don't think two or three additional 8mbps record streams are going to break it.

Getting a single cable solution to a six tuner box is more of an impediment. They have to develop a switch/node solution to send a single transponder down the pipe vs half the satellite. It can be done, D* has SWM, but I don't know if there is a deeper technical nuance why Dish hasn't done it yet. Seems the install savings alone would pay for the development.

 

[mdram]

I don't think drive speeds are a limiting factor. The three tuner hopper is already handling 6 record streams and 4+ playback streams during PTAT. I don't think two or three additional 8mbps record streams are going to break it.

Getting a single cable solution to a six tuner box is more of an impediment. They have to develop a switch/node solution to send a single transponder down the pipe vs half the satellite. It can be done, D* has SWM, but I don't know if there is a deeper technical nuance why Dish hasn't done it yet. Seems the install savings alone would pay for the development.

dish could license the tech from directv

oh i made myslef laugh on that one

 

[John Kotches]

I don't think drive speeds are a limiting factor. The three tuner hopper is already handling 6 record streams and 4+ playback streams during PTAT. I don't think two or three additional 8mbps record streams are going to break it.

.

The 3 tuner hopper is handling (at most) 3 streams. PTAT records the entire transponder instead of parsing out the channel from the transponder. It parses the channel you want to watch from the raw TP mux at playback.

I am not talking about bandwidth here either, I'm talking about randomization of the I/O. You're writing to 3 locations and if you aren't playing back from the current live stream that's even more randomization. Within a given stream it won't be random, but when you start making more and more requests, the drive spends a long time seeking. This can be optimized to an extent with NCQ, but once you reach a certain threshold of outstanding IO requests, that isn't as much help.

Double the number of possible write streams and you negatively impact the ability to keep up with the work load. There are things that could be done, such as adding additional drives onto the system, but that introduces risk as well. There's actually something to be said for having a pair of drives so that if the OS becomes corrupt on one, you can boot and run from the other.

We haven't even discussed the "all the eggs in 1 basket" aspect of these either. Lose the 6 tuner box, lose everything.

Getting a single cable solution to a six tuner box is more of an impediment. They have to develop a switch/node solution to send a single transponder down the pipe vs half the satellite. It can be done, D* has SWM, but I don't know if there is a deeper technical nuance why Dish hasn't done it yet. Seems the install savings alone would pay for the development.

Perhaps a VIP series splitter would work. I'm not as well versed on the signal delivery side of things.

 

[mdram]

.
We haven't even discussed the "all the eggs in 1 basket" aspect of these either. Lose the 6 tuner box, lose everything.

this is why i think every unit needs to have at least 1 tuner of its own

 

[sparc]

this is why i think every unit needs to have at least 1 tuner of its own

at that point, i would just get 2 or maybe even 3 hoppers (if i was really looking for redundancy).

I'm not seeing too many threads about dead hoppers, so i'd say a 2 hopper household is plenty redundant to keep your TV alive.

 

[JM42]

.
The 3 tuner hopper is handling (at most) 3 streams. PTAT records the entire transponder instead of parsing out the channel from the transponder. It parses the channel you want to watch from the raw TP mux at playback.

I just responded in the other thread http://www.satelliteguys.us/threads/294056-PTAT-question?p=2999958#post2999958 why I don't think they are storing a single stream for the whole transponder.

I am not talking about bandwidth here either, I'm talking about randomization of the I/O. You're writing to 3 locations and if you aren't playing back from the current live stream that's even more randomization. Within a given stream it won't be random, but when you start making more and more requests, the drive spends a long time seeking. This can be optimized to an extent with NCQ, but once you reach a certain threshold of outstanding IO requests, that isn't as much help.

Even with a 6 tuner box you'd only be serving about 100mbps combined read/write requests for 10-12 "clients." I was putting single disk servers into production doing more work than that 10 years ago with less capable hardware.

Perhaps a VIP series splitter would work. I'm not as well versed on the signal delivery side of things.

No, that functionality is already built-in to the Hopper. The current switch technology sends all the even or all the odd transponders for a sat to a tuner, even though the tuner really only needs a single transponder at a time. There is not enough bandwidth in the cable to stack six tuners that way. They would need to have switching smart enough to skinny it down to a single transponder per tuner, again much like D*'s SWM tech.