# 2 hoppers 1 joey



## domingos35 (Jan 12, 2006)

2 person household
i now have 1 hopper and 2 joeys
thinking about replacing 1 joey with another hopper
does it make sense or is it worth it?


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

It all depends on your recording conflicts. My two person household does just fine with a Hopper and two Joeys.

The caveat being that currently the Joey will only talk to one Hopper and the Hoppers won't share data ... but eventually a two Hopper system will have six tuners and two storage devices (plus any eventual OTA).


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

As James says, it really depends on how you use your system now.

In a two person household, you can't (without guests) have more than two different people wanting to watch a different program... and you have 3 tuners... but IF you find yourself wanting to record one thing and watch another a lot, you run out of tuners in a hurry.

On my 922 with 2 SAT tuners and 2 OTA tuners, every once in a while I have a night where I alone am using 4 tuners at the same time!

So if you watch a lot of stuff and so does the other person... having the 6 tuners might be invaluable.


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## domingos35 (Jan 12, 2006)

installation of additional hopper scheduled for monday
my wife records A LOT of stuff while she watches live programming on the hopper i now have and with SOCCER EURO2012 coming up in june i need more tuners


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## gboybama (Mar 23, 2012)

They let you do this? My original request from Dish was 2 Hoppers and 1 Joey, but they refused to let me.

I now have 2 Hoppers and 3 Joeys. Would they let me switch to 3 Hoppers and 2 Joeys? We have been running the system with 5 people in the house for the first time as of yesterday and we have already had a tuner conflict.


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## RasputinAXP (Jan 23, 2008)

You cannot stack more than 2 Hoppers. How the hell did you wind up with a tuner conflict with 6 tuners?


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## gboybama (Mar 23, 2012)

RasputinAXP said:


> You cannot stack more than 2 Hoppers. How the hell did you wind up with a tuner conflict with 6 tuners?


Easy. It's due to the setup.

Previously, I had a 722 in the den in single mode. We generally used all those tuners at night between watching and recording. Even so, we still had conflicts there. So, in my home, Hopper #1 was set up with no Joeys. It's isolated by necessity at least until Dish updates the firmware.

Hopper #2 is hooked to a TV that is never hardly turned on in my office. The 3 Joeys are paired with it in three separate bedrooms.

At that time the wife was exercising in our room watching Joey #1, two kids were in their room, each with a Joey on, and one was also trying to record a cartoon. That's 4 requests from Hopper #2.

I guess it's a good thing the baby had something else to do.

I'd pair one of the Joey's to the Hopper in the den, but I know at night, I will be seriously short on tuners there if I do, especially now that I lack OTA.

What's a five person household that all likes different shows to do?


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## david_jr (Dec 10, 2006)

3 hoppers can be stacked. Requires double-secret DIRT assistance.


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## gboybama (Mar 23, 2012)

david_jr said:


> 3 hoppers can be stacked. Requires double-secret DIRT assistance.


Please tell me more. I would be willing to jump through hoops to prevent the upcoming wife meltdown when she's forced to watch Dora during her workout.


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## euro_boy (Jun 20, 2005)

gboybama said:


> They let you do this? My original request from Dish was 2 Hoppers and 1 Joey, but they refused to let me.
> 
> I now have 2 Hoppers and 3 Joeys. Would they let me switch to 3 Hoppers and 2 Joeys? We have been running the system with 5 people in the house for the first time as of yesterday and we have already had a tuner conflict.


I got the same response from DIRT. It was either 1 hopper and 2 joeys OR 2 hoppers and 2 joys (for 3 TV installation). 2 hoppers and 1 joey was "not a permitted configuration". Personally, I think they just wanted to charge extra $7/month for a joey that would not be connected.

I opted to wait a little, till more "bugs" are fixed and data sharing (between hoppers) is implemented. I have to admit that from reading these forums I get the impression that hopper/joey combo does not have nearly as many bugs as were in some previous receivers' early releases.


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## TBoneit (Jul 27, 2006)

Stewart Vernon said:


> As James says, it really depends on how you use your system now.
> 
> In a two person household, you can't (without guests) have more than two different people wanting to watch a different program... and you have 3 tuners... but IF you find yourself wanting to record one thing and watch another a lot, you run out of tuners in a hurry.
> 
> ...


Hello Stewart

I have to ask this. Are the two OTA and two Sat tuners in use during the day or evening?

If by day then yup you need another Hopper, otherwise if it is in primetime then I would think a Hopper would do the job. $ networks Plus two other Sat tuners.

And if they come up with a OTA tuner for the Hopper than you would be gold too.


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## RasputinAXP (Jan 23, 2008)

gboybama said:


> Easy. It's due to the setup.
> 
> Previously, I had a 722 in the den in single mode. We generally used all those tuners at night between watching and recording. Even so, we still had conflicts there. So, in my home, Hopper #1 was set up with no Joeys. It's isolated by necessity at least until Dish updates the firmware.
> 
> ...


The Joeys can move from Hopper to Hopper. If you're recording PTA you can watch any of the 4 channels in-progress. You said that you're recording OTA, so if you're recording any of the Big 4 simultaneously you're shorting yourself if you're not using it. On your "Hopper #1" if you use PTA there you have a pair of free tuners (in theory), migrate one Joey there and bounce back and forth.

Of course to me this is all academic, I only have an H+J setup.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

TBoneit said:


> Hello Stewart
> 
> I have to ask this. Are the two OTA and two Sat tuners in use during the day or evening?
> 
> ...


Until they come up with support for OTA on the Hopper/Joey, I would still have a problem because Dish doesn't carry my CW station in HD and I have a couple of shows (Supernatural, Ringer) that I watch.

I also have a couple of nights where I have stuff on SAT channels that cause me issues and I have to record some repeat/later airings to work around.

Basically, a heavy-TV-watcher can exhaust a bunch of tuners on his own in a hurry... much less when sharing with a whole household.


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## gboybama (Mar 23, 2012)

RasputinAXP said:


> The Joeys can move from Hopper to Hopper. If you're recording PTA you can watch any of the 4 channels in-progress. You said that you're recording OTA, so if you're recording any of the Big 4 simultaneously you're shorting yourself if you're not using it. On your "Hopper #1" if you use PTA there you have a pair of free tuners (in theory), migrate one Joey there and bounce back and forth.
> 
> Of course to me this is all academic, I only have an H+J setup.


Man, I really appreciate the reply. And those are good ideas.

But, I never should have even mentioned OTA. Really, 90% of what we watch isn't on a major network. Sons of Anarchy, Game of Thrones, Dexter, Intervention, Storage Wars, Hoarders, Food Network Star, Dance Moms, Toddlers&Tiaras, Walking Dead, O'Reilly, 24 Hour Law & Order SVU, Degrassi, Fairly Oddparents, Dora, Diego, etc. etc. etc. It's uncommon for us not to have 4 TV's watching live programming at night with none of it on the major networks. With dish timers popping on and off at the same time, we're out of tuners almost every time and who wants to juggle Joey pairings?

I know. It's a lot of TV being consumed by a household. I'm ashamed.

Kids were complaining about conflict messages again yesterday.

Honestly, I wouldn't have made such a deal out of this if Dish had allowed me to keep the two kids upstairs on the (owned) 322 receiver as I had planned and as was completely technically possible. This may be a do or die proposition for my subscription at this point.

I knew that 2 Hoppers, 1 Joey was what I needed with the 2 kids' rooms segregated out on their old 322. But, I trusted in the wisdom of Dish and now it's mass chaos at my house.

I have also asked for a feature where a Joey is locked out of setting recordings. Parental controls will not do this. Did they honestly not consider that those of us with Joeys all over the house may not want children with free reign over the DVR? What happens when the hoppers can see each other and kids can mistakenly mess up my recordings as well so they can watch Power Rangers?


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## jdskycaster (Sep 1, 2008)

^How many tuners did you have in the house prior to the updgrade? I had 5 previously for 4 people not including the OTA tuners which we rarely used. Granted we did have a few conflicts but not many. 

The wife and daughter were the primary culprits until they finally understood that DVR's make life easy, carefree, enjoyable, really lifting your overall spirits and live TV sucks the marrow from your bones with only a few very rare exceptions to that rule.

From my perspective there is a very cheap and easy solution to your problem. Technology has brought us kids programming available 24/7 on pay channels. Teach them to record all of that crap (which contains roughly 60% actual content 40% advertising) during off hours and they should never have to watch a live broadcast ever in their lifetime again. Let them know just how lucky they are and that half of our brains have been melted away by the pre-DVR (and VCR) years having been forced to watch commercials. Years of our lives that been forever lost and we can never reclaim them.

Second is to teach the wife to do the same thing. Now this one is not an easy fix. Wives have something built in to them called the sentimental gene. They actually long for the days of commercial stuffed programming as this can trigger memories long since past of Saturday mornings in front of the set watching endless cereal commercials and waiting for Bugs and Roadrunner or Foghorn Leghorn to return. This took much more coaxing and carressing on my part to get the significant other to understand that 24/hr cooking and gardening shows really are just as much fun timeshifted without comercials as they are with.

Now the solution to both is not immediate. It may take 48-72 hours in order to fill enough recorded content to keep them busy. Take them outside for a few evenings, spend a weekend at the park and the zoo. Ride bikes, shoot hoops, hell play Barbies or if you are lucky and have son or daughter that is into video games have a couple of gaming marathons. From that point on life will be blissful and you should never have to fight for a tuner consumed by live commercial broadcasts ever again. Go forth and good fortune in your quest my son.

Best Regards,

JD


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## broeddog (Sep 12, 2009)

I have a two Hopper only system and was told by a Dish supervisor that I would soon be able to connect the Hoppers, to be able to watch recordings between the Hoppers. Is this true and if so, is there a time frame when I will be able to share the recordings between the Hoppers.


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## wtrjock (Feb 9, 2007)

JD...very fun reading. I agree completely. We never watch live tv in our house.


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## Ray [email protected] Network (Dec 28, 2010)

A future software update should provide communications between Hoppers. I don't have a time frame of when this will occur. Thanks.



broeddog said:


> I have a two Hopper only system and was told by a Dish supervisor that I would soon be able to connect the Hoppers, to be able to watch recordings between the Hoppers. Is this true and if so, is there a time frame when I will be able to share the recordings between the Hoppers.


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## RasputinAXP (Jan 23, 2008)

gboybama said:


> Really, 90% of what we watch isn't on a major network. Sons of Anarchy, Game of Thrones, Dexter, Intervention, Storage Wars, Hoarders, Food Network Star, Dance Moms, Toddlers&Tiaras, Walking Dead, O'Reilly, 24 Hour Law & Order SVU, Degrassi, Fairly Oddparents, Dora, Diego, etc. etc. etc. It's uncommon for us not to have 4 TV's watching live programming at night with none of it on the major networks. With dish timers popping on and off at the same time, we're out of tuners almost every time and who wants to juggle Joey pairings?
> 
> I know. It's a lot of TV being consumed by a household. I'm ashamed.
> 
> Kids were complaining about conflict messages again yesterday.


Honestly, that's what the DVR is for. Why watch it live? It's not like they're producing brand new episodes of any of the kids' shows any more frequently than once a week. Same goes for any of those reality shows. I have to agree with the poster above who said "give it 48 hours." Queue up the DVR, and tell the kids "use it." The TV my kids do watch (nearly-5 and nearly-3) is entirely DVR'd. There's not enough new Phineas and Ferb, Octonauts, Sesame Street or Team Umizoomi to require more than a rolling 5-day "keep" on one or two slots in the afternoon.


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## gboybama (Mar 23, 2012)

jdskycaster said:


> ^How many tuners did you have in the house prior to the updgrade? I had 5 previously for 4 people not including the OTA tuners which we rarely used. Granted we did have a few conflicts but not many.
> 
> The wife and daughter were the primary culprits until they finally understood that DVR's make life easy, carefree, enjoyable, really lifting your overall spirits and live TV sucks the marrow from your bones with only a few very rare exceptions to that rule.
> 
> ...


I had 6 discrete Dish tuners available in the house previously, all of which could view non prime time shows simultaneously. Plus OTA on 4 TV's. I'm becoming more and more convinced that what I've done is take a step back.

Try telling *my* family to adopt that plan of behavior modification to accommodate our new limitations. I am the only one under my roof who could even grasp the concept of such a paradigm shift. If I drop this on them, they will collectively tell me they liked everything back the way it was.

Increasingly, I'm not sure I disagree.


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## david_jr (Dec 10, 2006)

gboybama said:


> Please tell me more. I would be willing to jump through hoops to prevent the upcoming wife meltdown when she's forced to watch Dora during her workout.


PM sent.


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