# Dish ups the ante and now I'm considering a switch



## Brad00111 (Dec 30, 2007)

I never thought I would leave Directv. Been with them for well over 2 decades. But with this announcement at CES, to include 16 tuners I am seriously considering it:

http://www.cnet.com/products/dish-hopper-3/


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## cpalmer2k (May 24, 2010)

I am too. I'm going to be calling & having a serious discussion with them about my laggy HR34 & C31. If I can't get an upgrade to a 54 by summer I'll seriously consider the switch. The "Sports Bar" mode feature on 4K tvs seals the deal for me by itself


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## Riverpilot (Aug 13, 2010)

Ya.. this is a huge step up. I hope directv, errr AT&T can counter with something remotely close when it comes to the tuner count. A 5 tuner genie doesn't cut the mustard anymore.

That "sports bar" mode sounds cool as well. Wonder when they'll be coming out?


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## Billzebub (Jan 2, 2007)

The sports bar mode would be a lot better with Sunday Ticket


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## CraigerM (Apr 15, 2014)

This was announced after the merger not sure when it will come out. From Wikipedia:

At an analyst meeting in August 2015, following AT&T's acquisition of sattelite provider DirecTV, AT&T announced plans for a new "home entertainment gateway" platform that will converge DirecTV and U-verse around a common platform based upon DirecTV hardware, with "very thin hardware profiles". AT&T Entertainment and Internet Services CEO John Stankey explained that it the new platform would offer "single truck roll installation for multiple products, live local streaming, improved content portability, over-the-top integration for mobile broadband, and user interface re-engineering. All of these are steps that are planned to deliver that premium effortless entertainment experience anywhere."


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## WestDC (Feb 9, 2008)

Wow Can a Sub get 2 of those on the same account ? - LOL!


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## cpalmer2k (May 24, 2010)

CraigerM said:


> This was announced after the merger not sure when it will come out. From Wikipedia:
> 
> At an analyst meeting in August 2015, following AT&T's acquisition of sattelite provider DirecTV, AT&T announced plans for a new "home entertainment gateway" platform that will converge DirecTV and U-verse around a common platform based upon DirecTV hardware, with "very thin hardware profiles". AT&T Entertainment and Internet Services CEO John Stankey explained that it the new platform would offer "single truck roll installation for multiple products, live local streaming, improved content portability, over-the-top integration for mobile broadband, and user interface re-engineering. All of these are steps that are planned to deliver that premium effortless entertainment experience anywhere."


The only problem with that is most of AT&T's market area relies solely on old copper telephone lines where DSL maxes out at a top tier of 7mb down/500k up. That might happen in major cities, but the bulk of us will rely on traditional DirecTV equipment for a long time to come


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## cpalmer2k (May 24, 2010)

WestDC said:


> Wow Can a Sub get 2 of those on the same account ? - LOL!


No, I asked lol. One Hopper 3 per account


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## Reaper (Jul 31, 2008)

Brad00111 said:


> I never thought I would leave Directv. Been with them for well over 2 decades. But with this announcement at CES, to include 16 tuners I am seriously considering it:
> 
> http://www.cnet.com/products/dish-hopper-3/


Dish has it all over DirecTV/AT&T when it comes to hardware. I like their EPG better too, and would like it even more with a dark theme.

Notice that Dish continues to up the ante annually at CES while DirecTV... doesn't.

DirecTV does have the edge in programming though, clearly, especially if you're an out of market NFL fan.


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## Reaper (Jul 31, 2008)

Billzebub said:


> The sports bar mode would be a lot better with Sunday Ticket
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


Granted. It could still be pretty great though with the ABC and CBS games and NFL RZ playing.


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## Reaper (Jul 31, 2008)

CraigerM said:


> This was announced after the merger not sure when it will come out. From Wikipedia:
> 
> At an analyst meeting in August 2015, following AT&T's acquisition of sattelite provider DirecTV, AT&T announced plans for a new "home entertainment gateway" platform that will converge DirecTV and U-verse around a common platform based upon DirecTV hardware, with "very thin hardware profiles". AT&T Entertainment and Internet Services CEO John Stankey explained that it the new platform would offer "single truck roll installation for multiple products, live local streaming, improved content portability, over-the-top integration for mobile broadband, and user interface re-engineering. All of these are steps that are planned to deliver that premium effortless entertainment experience anywhere."


Sounds good. This is worrying though: "a common platform based upon* DirecTV hardware*". DirecTV's hardware is utter crap.

But clearly they're eying a cloud DVR service, which could greatly reduce the hardware profile. That and the other features sound high speed Internet intensive to me though, so many people may end up paying their local cable company a lot of money for that service.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Reaper said:


> Dish has it all over DirecTV/AT&T when it comes to hardware. I like their EPG better too, and would like it even more with a dark theme.
> 
> Notice that Dish continues to up the ante annually at CES while DirecTV... doesn't.
> 
> DirecTV does have the edge in programming though, clearly, especially if you're an out of market NFL fan.


My in laws have dish, though not a hopper. Frankly I hate the UI, at least what they have.

Directv and their partners do have a presence at ces, but closed door meetings.


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## texasbrit (Aug 9, 2006)

Brad00111 said:


> I never thought I would leave Directv. Been with them for well over 2 decades. But with this announcement at CES, to include 16 tuners I am seriously considering it:
> 
> http://www.cnet.com/products/dish-hopper-3/


It's an announcement. Let's see how long before it's really available.
And in any case, people like us might be interested in some of this technology but the average user does not care. Most people with Genies never use the five tuners that are available.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

I would live that many. 

Surprised people aren't asking about why only 2tb hard drive and what if it fails your screwed. 

I wonder if it's really 16 tuners. Two 8 tuner chips make sense but I wonder if they are count ptat style and there's only really 13 or 12 tuners. 

DIRECTV needs to take heed and show us the tuner count!


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

inkahauts said:


> Surprised people aren't asking about why only 2tb hard drive and what if it fails your screwed.


Multiple external hard drives that are tied to the account (and usable on the previous and next DVR) not tied to the receiver. The external drive also does not disable the internal drive.

I have recordings I made on my 622 (2006 tech) that play on my Hopper.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

Yeah dish figured that out ages ago. But if you have one of these and a bunch of joeys it's still one point which people complain about with the genie all the time. I disagree and think it's fine. 

Did they say how many rooms it can handle at once? How many joeys cans stream from it at once and does that affect sports bar mode?


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## Riverpilot (Aug 13, 2010)

texasbrit said:


> It's an announcement. Let's see how long before it's really available.
> And in any case, people like us might be interested in some of this technology but the average user does not care. Most people with Genies never use the five tuners that are available.


According to the other site, this is all being released this month. The Hopper 3 & Joey 4k.

Hopefully the "behind closed doors" opens up in the next couple of weeks and shows us a new genie or new hardware with 10+ tuners and 4k all in one.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

inkahauts said:


> Did they say how many rooms it can handle at once? How many joeys cans stream from it at once and does that affect sports bar mode?


Seven rooms ... math says 16 minus 6 other rooms leaves ten for sports bar and recordings.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

inkahauts said:


> I wonder if it's really 16 tuners. Two 8 tuner chips make sense but I wonder if they are count ptat style and there's only really 13 or 12 tuners.


Why would it matter? How many people seriously need more than 12 tuners and aren't watching anything on the big four broadcast networks?


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

slice1900 said:


> Why would it matter? How many people seriously need more than 12 tuners and aren't watching anything on the big four broadcast networks?


It is 16 tuners ... including one that can record or play the big four at any given time leaving the other 15 open. 19 channels at the same time could be considered too much, but it is a server for up to seven rooms. It is better to have a tuner or two that is never used than hit a limit on a regular basis.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

dpeters11 said:


> My in laws have dish, though not a hopper. Frankly I hate the UI, at least what they have.
> 
> Directv and their partners do have a presence at ces, but closed door meetings.


Totally different UI on the Hopper.

Sent from my iPad Pro using Tapatalk


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## Billzebub (Jan 2, 2007)

Reaper said:


> Granted. It could still be pretty great though with the ABC and CBS games and NFL RZ playing.


Conceptually you're right, but in reality the local Fox station never schedules a game opposite the Steelers and it's a good business decision. The rating would be horrible, better to counter program with something else. While I think the. Value of Sunday ticket has suffered it sure was nice to switch tuners between the Steelers game and the Jets game this past Sunday.


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## JoeTheDragon (Jul 21, 2008)

Brad00111 said:


> I never thought I would leave Directv. Been with them for well over 2 decades. But with this announcement at CES, to include 16 tuners I am seriously considering it:
> 
> http://www.cnet.com/products/dish-hopper-3/


Where is the full time RSN HD?

also how many real tuners does that have?


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## JoeTheDragon (Jul 21, 2008)

slice1900 said:


> Why would it matter? How many people seriously need more than 12 tuners and aren't watching anything on the big four broadcast networks?


Well if 4k needs 2 tuners per channel then 12 = 6. Right now 4 is the min for any master box / gateway


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## JoeTheDragon (Jul 21, 2008)

Riverpilot said:


> According to the other site, this is all being released this month. The Hopper 3 & Joey 4k.
> 
> Hopefully the "behind closed doors" opens up in the next couple of weeks and shows us a new genie or new hardware with 10+ tuners and 4k all in one.


I think that ATT is working on a headless? gateway / main dvr box with clients at each tv.


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## RAD (Aug 5, 2002)

The Hopper 3 REALLY looks interesting. But there's one thing that DIRECTV has that keeps me hoping that I'm making the right choice by staying, bandwidth. Look at all the KU, Ka and RDBS licenses that DIRECTV has vs. Dish. we already know Dish is downrezzing their HD channels to 1440x1080, I don't see how they can add much more with what they have now for HD let alone 4K. 

As for the rumored DIRECTV/AT&T integrated box I wonder how long before you could see that? I thought that until the merge was officially approved/implemented that the two sides weren't allowed to engage in something like designing a common box?


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## RunnerFL (Jan 5, 2006)

16 tuners of low PQ is still low PQ. I'll take 5 tuners of good PQ over 16 tuners of low PQ any day.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

RAD said:


> The Hopper 3 REALLY looks interesting. But there's one thing that DIRECTV has that keeps me hoping that I'm making the right choice by staying, bandwidth. Look at all the KU, Ka and RDBS licenses that DIRECTV has vs. Dish. we already know Dish is downrezzing their HD channels to 1440x1080, I don't see how they can add much more with what they have now for HD let alone 4K.
> 
> As for the rumored DIRECTV/AT&T integrated box I wonder how long before you could see that? I thought that until the merge was officially approved/implemented that the two sides weren't allowed to engage in something like designing a common box?


Echostar/Dish applied for some reverse band licenses years ago but none of their satellites can use it and AFAIK don't even have any under construction that can. Funny how Directv is willing to spend on satellites to have tons of bandwidth but goes cheap on the STBs, while Dish goes cheap on satellites and bandwidth but is willing to spend on STBs. Dish's split arc setup means they probably end up spending almost as much as Directv on satellites but get much less benefit from each dollar since they need to broadcast most channels twice.

The merger restrictions are basically that you can't operate as if you were already a merged entity. There would be nothing today that would stop Directv and say Comcast from working together on whole home technology and designing devices that could support both. So Directv and AT&T were free to work together in similar fashion during the time the merger was pending. I'd guess we should see something later this year. Maybe the CE people will be testing one soon or who knows maybe they already are.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

JoeTheDragon said:


> Well if 4k needs 2 tuners per channel then 12 = 6. Right now 4 is the min for any master box / gateway


It will be many years before there are 6 4K channels you want to watch/record at once. Heck, I bet it will be two years before there even ARE six 4K channels


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## JoeTheDragon (Jul 21, 2008)

slice1900 said:


> It will be many years before there are 6 4K channels you want to watch/record at once. Heck, I bet it will be two years before there even ARE six 4K channels


Right now there is

rogers sports net 4K part time?

ESPN 4K maybe? part time?

BT Sport Ultra HD

PPV events / movies 4k

NBC/Universal 4k any where from just a 4k channel to usa 4k , syfy 4k , etc.

HBO 4K?


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## WestDC (Feb 9, 2008)

I'm still waiting for the 1080P channels to be broadcast - Where did the 3D channels Go -LOL!


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

JoeTheDragon said:


> Right now there is


Zero. That's how many 4K channels you can get on any provider in the US.


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## CuttySnark (Oct 23, 2015)

That is a pretty legit product. I just imagine the 4 channels at once on a 4k 70" sammy and salivate a bit.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

slice1900 said:


> Dish's split arc setup means they probably end up spending almost as much as Directv on satellites but get much less benefit from each dollar since they need to broadcast most channels twice.


Nowhere near "most". The only channels that must be transmitted on both arcs are the national Conus feeds. Most of DISH's satellite transmission is local channels. 31 of DISH's Western Arc transponders carry 3186 channels. 16 of DISH's Eastern Arc transponders carry 999 channels.

There are some markets that are on both arcs, usually SD on Western and HD on Eastern (similar to DIRECTV's duplicate transmission of locals between Ku and Ka) for transition or to give installers a chance to solve LOS problems by looking the other way instead of walking away. So even though there is some repetition, there is some value in the duplication that exists.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

James Long said:


> Nowhere near "most". The only channels that must be transmitted on both arcs are the national Conus feeds. Most of DISH's satellite transmission is local channels. 31 of DISH's Western Arc transponders carry 3186 channels. 16 of DISH's Eastern Arc transponders carry 999 channels.
> 
> There are some markets that are on both arcs, usually SD on Western and HD on Eastern (similar to DIRECTV's duplicate transmission of locals between Ku and Ka) for transition or to give installers a chance to solve LOS problems by looking the other way instead of walking away. So even though there is some repetition, there is some value in the duplication that exists.


I figured it was assumed that I meant CONUS channels when I said 'most' needed to be broadcast twice (the only exceptions are channels with both east & west coast feeds)

Thanks to the split arc Dish only needs half as many transponders for locals per arc that Directv does, but that still doesn't leave a lot of CONUS transponders for Dish. They have to cram their HD channels in as it is, I don't see how they could deliver much in the way of 4K unless they use their 129 or 77 sats for it to avoid further overloading their main sats in each arc. Of course by the time there is much in the way of 4K maybe they are able to retire SD and it won't be a problem...


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

slice1900 said:


> Of course by the time there is much in the way of 4K maybe they are able to retire SD and it won't be a problem...


Other than test feeds (used for CES and internally) DISH has not done 1080p or 3D linear feeds. It would need to be something compelling to do a 4K linear feed. I'd consider ESPN compelling.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

James Long said:


> Other than test feeds (used for CES and internally) DISH has not done 1080p or 3D linear feeds. It would need to be something compelling to do a 4K linear feed. I'd consider ESPN compelling.


That's pretty much true for everyone at this point. Directv fooled around with a few 3D channels but we all know how that went and they are long gone. No broadcasters ever provided 1080p uplinks so no one has ever provided 1080p channels. I think one of Directv's PPV channels is 1080p but I believe that's 1080p24 which actually requires less bandwidth for the same quality when compared to standard 720p and 1080i.

I have to give Dish credit for coming up with something that makes a 4K TV useful even if Dish never provides any 4K channels you want to watch


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

slice1900 said:


> I have to give Dish credit for coming up with something that makes a 4K TV useful even if Dish never provides any 4K channels you want to watch


The lack of content is probably why the Joey 4K was delayed until this month. But DISH seems to have content covered now ... not live, and not all from their servers, but something to watch.

And receiver features such as the Sports Bar mode for four HD feeds on a 4K screen and later this year a six channel mosaic where the customer chooses the six channels are features that puts something on a 4K screen. And gives them a reason for 16 tuners (the more features I read about the more I wonder if 16 will be enough.  )


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## CraigerM (Apr 15, 2014)

Isn't that one of the reasons AT&T bought DTV so they could do 4k? UVerseTV on FTTN can't do 4k right? Or could it if they used DTV encoders for UVerseTV's FTTN and FTTP? Won't their new AT&T Gateway will be a hybrid SatelliteTV/IPTV hybrid then that way maybe they could do 4k on both systems? Could they do multiple tuners say 10 more having a SatelliteTV/IPTV hybrid Gateway?


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

Uverse's ability to do 4K has nothing to do with Directv. The encoders Directv uses are available for AT&T to buy.

No chance 4K will ever be big enough that it would justify spending however much AT&T spent on Directv to get that technology even if Directv did have some sort of special sauce that would let them bring it to their Uverse customers.

AT&T bought Directv because they wanted to be a bigger player in TV, gain economies of scale from being a bigger player, and because Directv is a successful business that makes a good profit margin, and they obviously believed that even with cord cutting it will continue to be a successful business for years to come to justify that investment.


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## CraigerM (Apr 15, 2014)

slice1900 said:


> Uverse's ability to do 4K has nothing to do with Directv. The encoders Directv uses are available for AT&T to buy.
> 
> No chance 4K will ever be big enough that it would justify spending however much AT&T spent on Directv to get that technology even if Directv did have some sort of special sauce that would let them bring it to their Uverse customers.
> 
> AT&T bought Directv because they wanted to be a bigger player in TV, gain economies of scale from being a bigger player, and because Directv is a successful business that makes a good profit margin, and they obviously believed that even with cord cutting it will continue to be a successful business for years to come to justify that investment.


What if they did a hybrid SatelliteTV/IPTV Gateway that did 4k and had 16 tuners like the Dish Hopper. Wouldn't that make UVerseTV profitable if it was turned into DirecTV over IPTV?


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## mdavej (Jan 31, 2007)

Uverse can barely deliver 4 simultaneous 2k streams, if your run is short enough. The other 12 would still have to come over satellite. So that wouldn't buy you much.


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## JoeTheDragon (Jul 21, 2008)

mdavej said:


> Uverse can barely deliver 4 simultaneous 2k streams, if your run is short enough. The other 12 would still have to come over satellite. So that wouldn't buy you much.


Fiber can or the very lest move copper subs to DTV + UVerse backup for rain fade.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

JoeTheDragon said:


> Fiber can or the very lest move copper subs to DTV + UVerse backup for rain fade.


Yes, I think AT&T has said they will not be wiring any new Uverse areas. The only new wired broadband customers will be FTTH, and bandwidth won't be a problem. It sounds like so far they are selling Directv in preference to Uverse even two customers who already have AT&T broadband, so rather than having satellite as an overflow for more tuners like CraigerM seems to be suggesting, they will have satellite as the main feed and broadband (of whatever type) as the backup for when rain fade occurs (probably at lower quality, but I think most people would rather have a few minutes of reduced quality streaming in their recording rather than a few minutes of nothing)


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## CraigerM (Apr 15, 2014)

slice1900 said:


> Yes, I think AT&T has said they will not be wiring any new Uverse areas. The only new wired broadband customers will be FTTH, and bandwidth won't be a problem. It sounds like so far they are selling Directv in preference to Uverse even two customers who already have AT&T broadband, so rather than having satellite as an overflow for more tuners like CraigerM seems to be suggesting, they will have satellite as the main feed and broadband (of whatever type) as the backup for when rain fade occurs (probably at lower quality, but I think most people would rather have a few minutes of reduced quality streaming in their recording rather than a few minutes of nothing)


Yeh that is what I am suggesting use UVerseTV for rain fade backup. However that would DTV customers care about that into Internet bandwidth. Or would they just want an all new Genie with more tuners and features to beat the new Hopper 3 and just use UVerseTV in the FTTN areas? That way they could have higher internet speed with TV off of UVerse Internet. Then would they still use UVerseTV and SatelliteTV in the Gigapower areas?


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## JoeTheDragon (Jul 21, 2008)

CraigerM said:


> Yeh that is what I am suggesting use UVerseTV for rain fade backup. However that would DTV customers care about that into Internet bandwidth. Or would they just want an all new Genie with more tuners and features to beat the new Hopper 3 and just use UVerseTV in the FTTN areas? That way they could have higher internet speed with TV off of UVerse Internet. Then would they still use UVerseTV and SatelliteTV in the Gigapower areas?


There are people with out LOS to sat. Also UVerseTV has more locals and more local ad's. They should also move some FTTN areas to FTTH.


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## fudpucker (Jul 23, 2007)

I moved to Directv from Dish purely for Sunday Ticket. I've been with Directv from 1995 to 2009, and only changed due to a local issue at the time, and switched back to Directv only because of Sunday Ticket.

However, I've been frustrated with the Genie interface since day 1: a To Do list that is pretty weak (enough that most people tell me "Oh, don't look at that, just trust the Genie), a guide that is only 1.5 hours wide with no options to make it 3 hours across, just a lot of issues that make the Genie feel like immature software. I had my Dish and Directv running at the same time during my transition, and I do agree that on SOME channels, looking really closely, there might have been a little better PQ with DTV (though I had a blind test with some of my AV fanatic friends and most couldn't see the difference - 50 inch 1080p Panny plasma.) I also miss things like the USB external HD that I could move at will and is an add on and not replacement for my internal HDD. And my Directv bill keeps creeping higher.

However, I've put up with and learned to live with the Genie just to have my Sunday Ticket. We record shows we like, and we watch TV at the end of the day that's really all we need.

BUT - this Hopper 3 looks amazing in a lot of ways. I think it's time to watch our backlog of DVR shows and investigate a change (honestly, our ton of DVR recordings we always have is one of our biggest hesitations in changing! LOL!)


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

If you still need NFLST you'll have to hope that the new interface/guide that will come with the AT&T gear improves upon the weaknesses, without making anything worse!


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## fudpucker (Jul 23, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> If you still need NFLST you'll have to hope that the new interface/guide that will come with the AT&T gear improves upon the weaknesses, without making anything worse!


Right now I'd really need to see something special from AT&T to not switch to the new Hopper 3 system when my contract runs out. 16 tuners, the PTAT, Netflix integrated, the new state of the art processor (the Broadcom 7445 quad core ARM processor, about 7 times faster than that in the Hopper 2,) the ability to go back to using an external HDD that is portable and doesn't replace the internal HDD, etc. And the HopperGo sounds very cool: you can move up to 100 hours of recorded material to the little device, and it can then send those shows to any device you have (iPad, PC, etc.) with it's own wireless signal (i.e. it doesn't depend on you having wireless access, e.g. you can use it in your carm in an aiprot, on the plane, in a hotel with crappy internet, etc..) No extra fees for using it.

It will be interesting to see how Directv responds, although if they had been on the ball they would have had something for CES to counter this from DIsh.


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

slice1900 said:


> ...Funny how Directv is willing to spend on satellites to have tons of bandwidth but goes cheap on the STBs, while Dish goes cheap on satellites and bandwidth but is willing to spend on STBs. Dish's split arc setup means they probably end up spending almost as much as Directv on satellites but get much less benefit from each dollar since they need to broadcast most channels twice.


I'm not sure I agree that Dish is willing to spend more money on STBs--not until this box is really out. Both companies have spent money on STBs we thought would be released, only have them never arrive. 

I've read some reports that the final capabilities are still in flux. How many simultaneous HD streams, how many 4k, how many outputs. If they use a single hard drive, 16 input HD incoming streams plus upwards of 7 HD output streams (9 if James is correct on the 6 HD) is beyond the limits of hard drives I'm aware of. That is before any 4k streams are counted. (Aside from the manufactured one.)

Now, if Dish has 2 drives in there, it could work. 

(At some point, SDD could likely handle the load, though I don't think any have the read/write longevity yet--though they are getting closer.) 

Peace,
Tom


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

fudpucker said:


> I moved to Directv from Dish purely for Sunday Ticket. I've been with Directv from 1995 to 2009, and only changed due to a local issue at the time, and switched back to Directv only because of Sunday Ticket.


I moved to DIRECTV because I moved--I had Sunday Ticket on Big Ugly Dish before DIRECTV had it on small dish. When I moved, DIRECTV had Sunday Ticket and I found a heck of a closeout on a panasonic generation 2 package. (And installed it myself.) 

Peace,
Tom


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Tom Robertson said:


> I've read some reports that the final capabilities are still in flux.


Congratulations ... you have found the FUD! (Fear, uncertainty, doubt.)

There will be improvements to the Hopper 3 and attached Joeys over time. Hopefully one can say the same for DIRECTV's best equipment. But to say "it won't do what DISH says" sight unseen and imply that it won't be released? That is believing the fear, uncertainty and doubt.

It was only publicly announced on Tuesday but on Sunday it was a failure? Nah.


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## fudpucker (Jul 23, 2007)

Talked to an authorized retailer who was at CES, and he said Dish told him they would be shipping to him mid to late February, and the HopperGo a little later but 1Q. Sounds like they have the feature set pretty locked in and are now in mfg startup mode.

He said what he saw at CES was pretty amazing. He said the main thing they are tweaking is the software interface, but it looked pretty much ready to go.


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

James Long said:


> Congratulations ... you have found the FUD! (Fear, uncertainty, doubt.)
> 
> There will be improvements to the Hopper 3 and attached Joeys over time. Hopefully one can say the same for DIRECTV's best equipment. But to say "it won't do what DISH says" sight unseen and imply that it won't be released? That is believing the fear, uncertainty and doubt.
> 
> It was only publicly announced on Tuesday but on Sunday it was a failure? Nah.


Cognitive disingenuous-ness?

My comments were not nearly so black and white as to declare "failure."

What I attempted was sharing some information I have heard. And I attempted to do some basic analysis of the capabilities of hard disk drives. Did I get my math wrong? I apologize if I did. Lastly, I reminded everyone that CES is a showcase of what might be, not what is. I suppose vaporware is failure, though I didn't say it was--only that capabilities were in flux.

Thus, I wanted to help find reasonable expectations. I even identified ways Dish could have solved the hard disk problems, as an attempt to support the possibility the unit could succeed.

So failure? Nah, I don't think it is. You might, I don't. 

Yet I'm certain it won't do 16 4k streams in and four 4k clients out.  (How many clients do hoppers normally have?)

Peace,
Tom


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Tom Robertson said:


> Yet I'm certain it won't do 16 4k streams in and four 4k clients out.


Nobody is asking to, other than people dooming it to failure. 

What DISH has announced -
Hopper 3: 16 satellite receivers including PTAT (four channels on one transponder). Which means it needs the ability to simultaneously write 19 paired streams of satellite data. Add a 20th stream if one has an OTA module. Add any download from Internet in progress or file transfers to the HopperGo, the external drive or from a Hopper being replaced. That would be the peak usage for writing.

Hopper 3: Up to six Joeys can be connected so count six output streams. I have not seen a limit as to how many can be Joey 4K so worst case scenario one is streaming one 4K feed to the locally attached 4K and six 4K streams to Joey 4Ks. If there is a limit on 4K outputs it has not been announced (so fear the worst on behalf of DISH customers - seven 4K streams).

Hopper 3: The Hopper 3 will have the four HD channel "Sports Bar" mode. This requires four streams and assuming they are buffered (a valid assumption) they would take the place of a 4K stream from the hard drive. As announced on the DISH website but not at CES the Hopper 3 will have a six channel mosaic of HD channels ... which will be six HD streams on one screen at the Hopper 3.

If no 4K is being viewed one has the maximum 20 tuner streams plus downloads/transfers plus a maximum 12 HD playback streams from the hard drive at the same time. If every device can display 4K simultaneously they would need up to seven 4K streams instead of 12 HD streams from the drive.

Vaporware Joey: Add additional streams for PiP. I'll label that vaporware until PiP appears on Joeys.

The actual announced 4K service is VOD and Netflix ... which should be a IP pass through for Netflix on a Joey (no local storage) and limited downloads for VOD (loaded from satellite in advance or over the Internet as the speed of the connection permits). The reality of seven rooms watching 4K at the same time? Probably not a problem.

If you are still concerned about the Hopper 3's hard drive ability to handle all that data (32 read/write HD streams or 20 HD and 7 4K) don't forget that this is DISH with their H.264 and H.265 encoding. Skipping the derogatory terms, DISH has smaller data feeds per channel.

So - does that help your math?


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

James Long said:


> Nobody is asking to, other than people dooming it to failure.


Since you be the one who be talking about failure, why are you asking it to support 16 4k streams? 



James Long said:


> What DISH has announced -
> Hopper 3: 16 satellite receivers including PTAT (four channels on one transponder). Which means it needs the ability to simultaneously write 19 paired streams of satellite data. Add a 20th stream if one has an OTA module. Add any download from Internet in progress or file transfers to the HopperGo, the external drive or from a Hopper being replaced. That would be the peak usage for writing.


Did Dish announce any "provisos, caveats, or quid pro quos" about the 16 tuners or 19 streams? Admittedly I was presuming all were HD in my analysis and that any 4k would reduce the number of simultaneous streams.



James Long said:


> Hopper 3: Up to six Joeys can be connected so count six output streams. I have not seen a limit as to how many can be Joey 4K so worst case scenario one is streaming one 4K feed to the locally attached 4K and six 4K streams to Joey 4Ks. If there is a limit on 4K outputs it has not been announced (so fear the worst on behalf of DISH customers - seven 4K streams).
> 
> Hopper 3: The Hopper 3 will have the four HD channel "Sports Bar" mode. This requires four streams and assuming they are buffered (a valid assumption) they would take the place of a 4K stream from the hard drive. As announced on the DISH website but not at CES the Hopper 3 will have a six channel mosaic of HD channels ... which will be six HD streams on one screen at the Hopper 3.
> 
> ...


Yes, yes it does. Thanks.



James Long said:


> If you are still concerned about the Hopper 3's hard drive ability to handle all that data (32 read/write HD streams or 20 HD and 7 4K) don't forget that this is DISH with their H.264 and H.265 encoding. Skipping the derogatory terms, DISH has smaller data feeds per channel.


How could anyone skip the derogatory terms, especially in trying to fit 32 HD streams thru hard disks that typically are specified to handle 16 HD streams (which is up from last years 10 to 12)? 
Oh, how much would one have to compress the data to fit in a normal hard drive read/write capacity? :rolling:
Or how low could Dish go with picture quality? !rolling

I simply can't resist the opening. The setup is so perfect. 

I am glad to read more evidence this won't be vaporware. I am curious about the hardware costs inside. And, from an engineering perspective, how much heat needs to be dissipated internally. (Ok, at the chip level, I'm curious about how the chips are laid out, advances in foundry technology, etc.) These aren't doubtful curiosities--these are tech geek, what coolness did they achieve to make this happen curiosities. 

Peace,
Tom


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Tom Robertson said:


> Yet I'm certain it won't do 16 4k streams in and four 4k clients out.


It won't need to. You are asking for more input than was announced. But you did balance your error by suggesting less 4K outputs than the potential maximum demand.



Tom Robertson said:


> Admittedly I was presuming all were HD in my analysis and that any 4k would reduce the number of simultaneous streams.


Not quite what you wrote (quoted above).



Tom Robertson said:


> Oh, how much would one have to compress the data to fit in a normal hard drive read/write capacity?


DISH is already ahead of that limit. No additional compression or loss of quality should be needed.


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

James Long said:


> DISH is already ahead of that limit. No additional compression or loss of quality should be needed.


We'll see if this is a true statement. 32 streams into 16 would be pretty amazing... If they actually deliver that capability.

And the picture quality on dish must be worse than I recalled. 

Peace,
Tom


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

All I can say is didn't dish announce the original hopper said it was a couple months out then show it again at ces the next year and finally launch it a few months latter? 

DIRECTV has done the same in the past. The pci card for computers it showed and announced and never made it out. I think that's one main reason they stopped announcing public stuff there. Don't get me started on the sd mrv setup that never did appear in that incarnation. They stick to relationships with tech partners there instead these days. 

I expect this hopper 3 will launch at some point and be really really neat. But I wonder if it can truly work just like all other DVRs do today with regard for using all its tuners. That's not necessarily a problem just a question of how it will actually shake out. Can't wait to see what it does. And hope it lights a fire under dtvs cabooses.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

James Long said:


> Congratulations ... you have found the FUD! (Fear, uncertainty, doubt.)
> 
> There will be improvements to the Hopper 3 and attached Joeys over time. Hopefully one can say the same for DIRECTV's best equipment. But to say "it won't do what DISH says" sight unseen and imply that it won't be released? That is believing the fear, uncertainty and doubt.
> 
> It was only publicly announced on Tuesday but on Sunday it was a failure? Nah.


It is silly to worry about. Whatever the capabilities, it is a big step over the previous Hopper, and Directv's current Genie. I haven't seen the FUD you refer to, but if they're really coming out next month it won't take long before people here can put them through their paces and verify exactly what they can do.

If it is all new software it will probably be a little rough at first, but that's always the case with anything using new software. It doesn't sound like Directv's HD interface a smooth transition at first, either.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

The worry here about the hard drive being a limiting factor is laughable. Seagate's spec of "16 HD streams" for their video drives are based on the fact that there isn't any hardware out there that has the capability to ask the hard drive to handle more.

If you look at their specs they're rated for 159 MB/sec of read/write bandwidth. That's probably outer tracks, and typically the inner tracks are a bit more than half as fast so let's call it 80 MB/sec. That's 640 Mb/sec. Even Directv's MPEG4 HD streams average only 6.5 Mb/sec - Dish's are even less. That's over a hundred HD streams on Dish! Of course the disk has to seek around a bit to read/write between the streams, but even at 30 seeks a second we're only cutting that 640 Mb/sec in half.

The Hopper 3 will not be limited by the hard drive, even if it can record 15 HD tuners, 1 PTAT tuner, and 1 OTA tuner and output 1 stream watched on the Hopper and 7 streams watched on clients for a total of 28 streams being read/written. Even if Dish had the ability to double their HD bandwidth it could probably still handle it. I have no way of knowing if the Hopper 3 can actually do all that, or if it is even designed to do so, but if it can't the hard drive won't be the reason why not.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

slice1900 said:


> I haven't seen the FUD you refer to, but if they're really coming out next month it won't take long before people here can put them through their paces and verify exactly what they can do.


The release date is part of the "uncertainty". I am more certain that this one will be released soon instead of "soon". There have been some notable delays in the past but this receiver is far enough along in the process that baring any unfortunate problems it will be released and will do what the press release stated.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

slice1900 said:


> The worry here about the hard drive being a limiting factor is laughable. Seagate's spec of "16 HD streams" for their video drives are based on the fact that there isn't any hardware out there that has the capability to ask the hard drive to handle more.
> 
> If you look at their specs they're rated for 159 MB/sec of read/write bandwidth. That's probably outer tracks, and typically the inner tracks are a bit more than half as fast so let's call it 80 MB/sec. That's 640 Mb/sec. Even Directv's MPEG4 HD streams average only 6.5 Mb/sec - Dish's are even less. That's over a hundred HD streams on Dish! Of course the disk has to seek around a bit to read/write between the streams, but even at 30 seeks a second we're only cutting that 640 Mb/sec in half.
> 
> The Hopper 3 will not be limited by the hard drive, even if it can record 15 HD tuners, 1 PTAT tuner, and 1 OTA tuner and output 1 stream watched on the Hopper and 7 streams watched on clients for a total of 28 streams being read/written. Even if Dish had the ability to double their HD bandwidth it could probably still handle it. I have no way of knowing if the Hopper 3 can actually do all that, or if it is even designed to do so, but if it can't the hard drive won't be the reason why not.


Thank you for the math.

For those that missed the specs:
_Hopper 3 is powered by a Broadcom BCM7445 quad-core ARM application processor at 1.5 GHz, 21K DMIPS. It contains a two TB hard drive for up to 500 hours of high-definition recording (or 2,000 hours of standard definition recording). For 4K viewing, the Hopper 3 can decode and output 60 FPS and 10-bit color. It supports H.264 and H.265 and is compatible with HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2. It is the first DVR to support USB 3.0. Hopper 3 is compatible with HDR10/BDA 2.0 encoded streams._

BCM7445 at Broadcom.com


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

slice1900 said:


> The worry here about the hard drive being a limiting factor is laughable. Seagate's spec of "16 HD streams" for their video drives are based on the fact that there isn't any hardware out there that has the capability to ask the hard drive to handle more.
> 
> If you look at their specs they're rated for 159 MB/sec of read/write bandwidth. That's probably outer tracks, and typically the inner tracks are a bit more than half as fast so let's call it 80 MB/sec. That's 640 Mb/sec. Even Directv's MPEG4 HD streams average only 6.5 Mb/sec - Dish's are even less. That's over a hundred HD streams on Dish! Of course the disk has to seek around a bit to read/write between the streams, but even at 30 seeks a second we're only cutting that 640 Mb/sec in half.
> 
> The Hopper 3 will not be limited by the hard drive, even if it can record 15 HD tuners, 1 PTAT tuner, and 1 OTA tuner and output 1 stream watched on the Hopper and 7 streams watched on clients for a total of 28 streams being read/written. Even if Dish had the ability to double their HD bandwidth it could probably still handle it. I have no way of knowing if the Hopper 3 can actually do all that, or if it is even designed to do so, but if it can't the hard drive won't be the reason why not.


Isn't the Hopper 3 hardware capable of more than 16 HD video streams? So why wouldn't seagate use the real number, which you calculate to be so much higher than seagate or reality? And Seagate and Western Digital are in competition with each other. Normally that means they publish as high benchmark as they legitimately can.

The difference between sequencial reads/writes and random reads/writes is orders of magnitude with all hard disks. Here are the results as listed on http://hdd.userbenchmark.com/WD-Black-6TB-2015/Rating/3519for their fastest ranked disk: 
Sequential
Min Avg Max
146 Read 187 235
180 Write 214 246
109 Mixed 171 221
143% 191 MB/s

Random
Min Avg Max
2.28 4K Read 4.65 7.76
0.55 4K Write 2.24 3.26
0.18 4K Mixed 0.27 0.38
265% 2.39 MB/s

From nearly 200 MB/s sequential to 2.4MB/s random.

So how does a drive manage 16 HD video streams? By doing as many sequential reads/writes between random reads/writes as it can. Buffering and queue analysis as much as possible. The WD Black has a 128MB buffer and dual core CPU internally to organize read/writes as much as possible.

Peace,
Tom


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

How big is a HD stream in Seagate's claim? 6.5 Mb/sec? Or is their claim based on larger streams used on the production end of the spectrum, not the post transmission consumer end of the spectrum?

The userbenchmark site estimates that 25% of disk usage is random. Assuming 191 MB/sec 75% of the time and 2.39 MB/sec 25% of the time one could do 176 6.5 Mb/sec streams. All one needs is an average of ~26 MB/sec to pull off 32 6.5 Mb/sec streams. Or about 72% random disk usage. Much higher random usage than userbenchmark estimates.


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## cpalmer2k (May 24, 2010)

Clearly Dish's Hopper 3 represents a revolutionary development versus the current generations of Genie hardware, just like the "Genie" one upped the Hopper a few years back by adding more actual tuners than the Hopper had (excluding PTAT). Obviously they have tested this thing thoroughly before throwing it into the wild. 

Whether Dish requires more than one tuner for 4K channels remains to be seen also. Remember, with their current PTAT setup it records the entire transponder where the "big 4" locals are situated and separates the stream into channels/recordings internally on the hopper. In theory they could utilize the same system to deliver 4K broadcasts. 

Like others I do want to see how this thing actually works when it hits the mainstream, but when my current promo/agreement ends in July there is a high probability I might consider the switch to Dish.


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## JoeTheDragon (Jul 21, 2008)

cpalmer2k said:


> Clearly Dish's Hopper 3 represents a revolutionary development versus the current generations of Genie hardware, just like the "Genie" one upped the Hopper a few years back by adding more actual tuners than the Hopper had (excluding PTAT). Obviously they have tested this thing thoroughly before throwing it into the wild.
> 
> Whether Dish requires more than one tuner for 4K channels remains to be seen also. Remember, with their current PTAT setup it records the entire transponder where the "big 4" locals are situated and separates the stream into channels/recordings internally on the hopper. In theory they could utilize the same system to deliver 4K broadcasts.
> 
> Like others I do want to see how this thing actually works when it hits the mainstream, but when my current promo/agreement ends in July there is a high probability I might consider the switch to Dish.


maybe the same system. Dtv plans to use 2 transponders to get 3 4k channels over 2 transponders vs only 1 4k per transponder.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

Tom Robertson said:


> From nearly 200 MB/s sequential to 2.4MB/s random.
> 
> So how does a drive manage 16 HD video streams? By doing as many sequential reads/writes between random reads/writes as it can. Buffering and queue analysis as much as possible. The WD Black has a 128MB buffer and dual core CPU internally to organize read/writes as much as possible.


Because video is sequential I/O not random. The ratings for "random I/O" on disk benchmarks are typically 4K or 64K blocks, so the drive reads/writes hardly anything has to seek elsewhere on the disk for the next random I/O. The drive is smart and will order the I/Os in a manner that's most efficient so the seeks are as small as possible but there's no way to speed that up due to the way hard drives operate. That is the sole reason why SSDs are so much faster than hard drives in your PC - they don't have to waste time moving a read/write head all over the drive for random I/O. For sequential I/O, while SSDs made in the last few years are faster for that as well, that makes pretty much zero difference in the performance a typical PC user sees. It has always been about random I/O being slow. Few people do anything with their PC where a sustained sequential I/O rate of 500 MB/sec is noticeable versus a sustained sequential I/O rate of 150 MB/sec.

Now you might think "hey dealing with 16 (or more) HD streams at once sounds like random I/O to me" but it isn't. The drive would read/write several MB at minimum before it seeks to the next several MB chunk. So instead of slowing down by 99% as above it would slow down by maybe 50%, probably less. If you can find some benchmarks that use 4MB chunks for "random" I/O instead of 4K chunks, you'll see what I mean.

As for why Seagate doesn't list more streams, keep in mind that Seagate has all sorts of potential bit rates and different hardware that might be generating that I/O. Those specs are mainly intended for consumers, and consumers might buy (for their small business) a video hard drive to put in their 16 camera CCTV PVR. They aren't buying hard drives to put in a Hopper 3, Dish does. If Dish comes to them and says "we have these requirements, can your product meet them?" they will ask Dish what are the bit rates, how much RAM does the product have that it can devote to buffering, what's the maximum number of streams you'd ever have and how many will be write and how many will be read, etc.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

JoeTheDragon said:


> maybe the same system. Dtv plans to use 2 transponders to get 3 4k channels over 2 transponders vs only 1 4k per transponder.


One of the main reasons Directv is doing that is because they plan to use reverse band for 4K, so they can't mix HD channels in those transponders - because if they did everyone who wants to see those HD channels would need to swap LNBs. Since those transponders will effectively be 4K only, they have to use bonding to use them most efficiently. Though of course until they have more 4K channels than they have available reverse band transponders there is no benefit to bonding so I'm skeptical they will use either bonding (OR reverse band) for the early days of 4K broadcast channels - there will be no benefit in doing so and would require swapping all 4K customers' Genie and LNB.

If Directv was using existing bandwidth for 4K, like Dish will be doing, they could mix one 4K channel and a couple HD channels on the same transponder and would get less benefit from bonded transponders. If I had to guess I would say Dish probably won't use bonded transponders for their 4K because they can easily mix 4K and HD channels on one transponders - provided there are stat muxes that allow that (there may not be, I have no idea)


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

JoeTheDragon said:


> maybe the same system. Dtv plans to use 2 transponders to get 3 4k channels over 2 transponders vs only 1 4k per transponder.


Bonding opens up the flexibility to spread channels across transponders but the data needed for one channel is not larger than would fit on one transponder. Using the more efficient H.265 encoding two DIRECTV 4K channels could fit on one transponder. But bonding would make "two on one transponder" an option instead of a necessity, and allow DIRECTV to use H.264.

On the DISH side they will just fit HD and SD channels around the 4K channels. Nearly all transponders on DISH are now 8PSK so they can mix and match HD, SD data and potentially 4K as needed. (Although they generally don't mix HD and SD for historical reasons, there are a couple of transponders with HD and SD muxed.)


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## CTJon (Feb 5, 2007)

I find these topics interesting - what someone needs obviously dictates their choices. We have 1 main tv and 3 others that are used but not often and I can't say more that 2 have ever been used simultaneously. Almost everything we watch is recorded (news and sports not so) and maybe occasionally there might be a need to record 4 shows at once. We watch shows and then delete - don't keep any around long term. I'm sure we'll be into 4K when we replace the next TV which hopefully is 5 or more years down the line. NFL package is ultimate importance to my wife.

So we are obviously on the low end of needs. Genie although not perfect is fine for us. Reading some of these threads it is obvious that many people need a lot more and things such as the new DISH has things that are important. I'm sure that if those are needs or many and assuming (big assumption) that AT&T doesn't screw things up DirecTV will follow on and get those important features - when and exactly what is the future. Easy to do if all DirecTV had to do was double the capability of Genie etc. Integrating with AT&T will slow things down and complicate issues but I'm still hopeful


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

James Long said:


> Bonding opens up the flexibility to spread channels across transponders but the data needed for one channel is not larger than would fit on one transponder. Using the more efficient H.265 encoding two DIRECTV 4K channels could fit on one transponder. But bonding would make "two on one transponder" an option instead of a necessity, and allow DIRECTV to use H.264.
> 
> On the DISH side they will just fit HD and SD channels around the 4K channels. Nearly all transponders on DISH are now 8PSK so they can mix and match HD, SD data and potentially 4K as needed. (Although they generally don't mix HD and SD for historical reasons, there are a couple of transponders with HD and SD muxed.)


Directv is using h.265/HEVC for its 4K channels from day one. Despite that it is still planning to place 3 channels per pair of bonded transponders - around a 30 Mbps rate per 4K channel. Everyone compares with Netflix's 15.6 Mbps for 4K and thinks that's all you need, but Netflix is all 24 fps and 30 fps content versus the 60 fps that 4K sports channels (at least) will use, and it is not being encoded on the fly like broadcast TV is so the encoding can be more efficient.

In a five years when encoders are much better maybe you can fit two 4K broadcast channels into a single transponder, but if you try it today the result will be pretty low quality - and if the whole reason for 4K is _higher_ quality, what's the point of doing it (other than for marketing purposes to claim "we have 4K") if you are going to degrade the quality that badly?

I agree with what you say about how Dish will do it. Since they use Ku for everything they have more flexibility to mix and match different channel types in a single transponder in a way Directv doesn't.


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

slice1900 said:


> Because video is sequential I/O not random. The ratings for "random I/O" on disk benchmarks are typically 4K or 64K blocks, so the drive reads/writes hardly anything has to seek elsewhere on the disk for the next random I/O. The drive is smart and will order the I/Os in a manner that's most efficient so the seeks are as small as possible but there's no way to speed that up due to the way hard drives operate. That is the sole reason why SSDs are so much faster than hard drives in your PC - they don't have to waste time moving a read/write head all over the drive for random I/O. For sequential I/O, while SSDs made in the last few years are faster for that as well, that makes pretty much zero difference in the performance a typical PC user sees. It has always been about random I/O being slow. Few people do anything with their PC where a sustained sequential I/O rate of 500 MB/sec is noticeable versus a sustained sequential I/O rate of 150 MB/sec.
> 
> Now you might think "hey dealing with 16 (or more) HD streams at once sounds like random I/O to me" but it isn't. The drive would read/write several MB at minimum before it seeks to the next several MB chunk. So instead of slowing down by 99% as above it would slow down by maybe 50%, probably less. If you can find some benchmarks that use 4MB chunks for "random" I/O instead of 4K chunks, you'll see what I mean.
> 
> As for why Seagate doesn't list more streams, keep in mind that Seagate has all sorts of potential bit rates and different hardware that might be generating that I/O. Those specs are mainly intended for consumers, and consumers might buy (for their small business) a video hard drive to put in their 16 camera CCTV PVR. They aren't buying hard drives to put in a Hopper 3, Dish does. If Dish comes to them and says "we have these requirements, can your product meet them?" they will ask Dish what are the bit rates, how much RAM does the product have that it can devote to buffering, what's the maximum number of streams you'd ever have and how many will be write and how many will be read, etc.


The incoming streams are sequential, yet they are not stored on disk as sequential blocks on the disk. Each new recording starts a new file. Each new file takes new sections of disk. Overtime, those file creations and deletions, of differing size files, scatter across the disk, leaving few sections of sequential chunks left.

So there are compromises in the design. Operating system, file system, and DVR architects all adjust to maximize the sequential, knowing there will be many randoms as well. By tuning the size of the a chunk to the content (large video streams instead of small document files) they maintain sequential reads and writes for each chunk itself, while randomly moving from chunk to chunk. So within chunks are sequential reads or writes, chunk to chunk are random.

This leads to some overhead as well, plus the normal overhead for maintaining the file system, the guide data, the recording metadata, etc.

As for Seagate and who the specs are for--I disagree with your analysis. Seagate quotes their specs for architects and designers, consumers don't care 16 versus 32--they only get the largest or the cheapest. Seagate and Western Digital don't quote random performance--they only quote the largest, best looking number--sequential rates. All the time knowing that is pretty bogus from a usability standpoint--almost no one is truly sequential. (A few one-time data transfers, backups, etc. might be.)

Lastly, remember each new stream adds a new layer of random reads/writes. Reducing the bitrate of each stream doesn't help much--as it reduces the amount of data that can be sequentially written at a time, while increasing the amount of random reads/writes--a huge penalty as the data shows.

Peace,
Tom


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

Tom Robertson said:


> The incoming streams are sequential, yet they are not stored on disk as sequential blocks on the disk. Each new recording starts a new file. Each new file takes new sections of disk. Overtime, those file creations and deletions, of differing size files, scatter across the disk, leaving few sections of sequential chunks left.
> 
> So there are compromises in the design. Operating system, file system, and DVR architects all adjust to maximize the sequential, knowing there will be many randoms as well. By tuning the size of the a chunk to the content (large video streams instead of small document files) they maintain sequential reads and writes for each chunk itself, while randomly moving from chunk to chunk. So within chunks are sequential reads or writes, chunk to chunk are random.
> 
> ...


Just for the heck of it I wrote a little script to test I/O on an unused 1TB 2.5" drive (less throughput than Seagate's 3.5" "video rated" drives - which are really no different from the regular ones anyway) and I was able to get 25 1MB/sec (8 Mbps) streams reading and writing simultaneously from 2MB buffers before things started going downhill. That's more bandwidth than Dish's HD channels use and a slower drive than the Hopper 3 will use.

While you're right that there will be fragmentation, you're massively overstating it. This isn't like Windows where you are writing little 1K files in the same filesystem as big files. The amount of fragmentation when you are writing and deleting multi gigabyte files is pretty small, and would have little effect on the overall performance unless you kept the DVR at well over 90% full almost all the time.


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

What was the size of the target files? Did you get beyond the drive's memory cache? What size chunks did you write in?

And what was the fragmentation level of this drive? Bald and newly formatted or from some amount of usage?

I'll have to look at some of my drives. I think I can estimate the fragmentation of the files from a 3TB DVR drive. Perhaps another drive as well.

Peace,
Tom


slice1900 said:


> Just for the heck of it I wrote a little script to test I/O on an unused 1TB 2.5" drive (less throughput than Seagate's 3.5" "video rated" drives - which are really no different from the regular ones anyway) and I was able to get 25 1MB/sec (8 Mbps) streams reading and writing simultaneously from 2MB buffers before things started going downhill. That's more bandwidth than Dish's HD channels use and a slower drive than the Hopper 3 will use.
> 
> While you're right that there will be fragmentation, you're massively overstating it. This isn't like Windows where you are writing little 1K files in the same filesystem as big files. The amount of fragmentation when you are writing and deleting multi gigabyte files is pretty small, and would have little effect on the overall performance unless you kept the DVR at well over 90% full almost all the time.


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## carl6 (Nov 16, 2005)

So for sake of discussion, I will assume that the new Hopper 3 will perform as stated, and will show up for customers in this quarter. There is of course no way of knowing if either of those assumptions will be realized, but it doesn't matter for what I'm going to offer.

If there is in fact that "next level" of performance and capability, my question is: How many customers will it really appeal to? How many potential customers are there that would actually make valid use of it? I tend to think the target audience is very small, which makes me question the business decision to proceed with a "super DVR" if you will. And, will this unit become something of a default or standard install, or will production be very limited to only meet the actual demand? Higher production for standard install brings the cost per unit down, but the overall total cost up. Really curious how the pencil pushers have this figured out.

It also appears that AT&T / DirecTV has their plans, but are not yet ready to announce/reveal them. The evolution of technology and capability will continue, by all parties, and a few years from now we'll probably look back on the 2016 technology (by all companies) and chuckle at it's "limited and archaic" capabilities.

If having 16 tuners, or the ability to record 16 shows simultaneously, is important to a customer, then they are a potential Hopper 3 candidate, all other variables being equal (programming offerings, cost, etc.). If not, then it is somewhat of a moot discussion.


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## RAD (Aug 5, 2002)

carl6 said:


> So for sake of discussion, I will assume that the new Hopper 3 will perform as stated, and will show up for customers in this quarter. There is of course no way of knowing if either of those assumptions will be realized, but it doesn't matter for what I'm going to offer.
> 
> If there is in fact that "next level" of performance and capability, my question is: How many customers will it really appeal to? How many potential customers are there that would actually make valid use of it? I tend to think the target audience is very small, which makes me question the business decision to proceed with a "super DVR" if you will. And, will this unit become something of a default or standard install, or will production be very limited to only meet the actual demand? Higher production for standard install brings the cost per unit down, but the overall total cost up. Really curious how the pencil pushers have this figured out.
> 
> ...


This is America, Supersize me! People will see tha ad's saying we have this Super DVR that nobody else comes close to and people will want it.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

carl6 said:


> If there is in fact that "next level" of performance and capability, my question is: How many customers will it really appeal to? How many potential customers are there that would actually make valid use of it? I tend to think the target audience is very small, which makes me question the business decision to proceed with a "super DVR" if you will. And, will this unit become something of a default or standard install, or will production be very limited to only meet the actual demand? Higher production for standard install brings the cost per unit down, but the overall total cost up. Really curious how the pencil pushers have this figured out.


DISH is marketing this receiver as "conflict free". If people are having a hard time figuring out why they would need 16 tuners then DISH has met that goal. DISH could have built a lesser receiver ... perhaps 8 tuners ... and satisfied most people's conflict avoidance. But they looked at what they could do, counted the beans and came up with a workable number. The potential is there for DISH to have made this a 24 tuner receiver ... but 16 is a nice compromise. Cost vs function.

DISH's current offer is the Hopper w/sling. They do not ask if you want sling or not, they give you the best receiver that they have. I expect they will do the same with the Hopper 3.

There may be situations that are better handled with a Hopper w/sling or Hopper w/sling and a Super Joey (creating a five tuner system). Perhaps the lesser deals will be offered to the lower creditworthy customers as a fall back. But I expect their primary offer will be their best receiver.

That is my opinion. Conflict free TV will be their promise ... and the promise will not be impossible to break, but as you note: seven rooms recording 16 programs at the same time (15 plus up to four major broadcast networks) is not a small system. But I believe that it can be an affordable one to offer.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

carl6 said:


> If having 16 tuners, or the ability to record 16 shows simultaneously, is important to a customer, then they are a potential Hopper 3 candidate, all other variables being equal (programming offerings, cost, etc.). If not, then it is somewhat of a moot discussion.


Dish obviously has to get further use out of their existing Hoppers so they can't use the Hopper 3 for every new customer or they will have a lot of Hopper 2s they have to junk before they've fully depreciated them. I don't know how Dish differentiates Hoppers or if they would treat it like Directv's "a Genie is a Genie" philosophy. Maybe they will only allow Hopper 3s for customers with a 4K TV, or charge them a few bucks more for it or something.

Ignoring that, I think Dish's long term strategy is to use this as their one and only offering and phase everything else out. What further improvements are really possible or necessary in its capabilities? 120 fps 4K is all I can think of, and Dish may never jump on that bandwagon even if it becomes a thing because they don't have the bandwidth anyway.

I think the "one Hopper 3 per account" thing is important because AFAIK that restriction doesn't exist for previous generation Hoppers. Going to one Hopper 3 and up to 7 clients takes care of 99% of potential customers, and whatever they lost by not being able to that last 1% with more than 8 TVs is probably more than made up for by eliminating all account sharing for Hopper 3 customers.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

slice1900 said:


> I don't know how Dish differentiates Hoppers or if they would treat it like Directv's "a Genie is a Genie" philosophy.


DISH knows the difference between Hoppers ... and since there is a feature difference (beyond newer design specs) between the Hopper and Hopper w/sling they don't mix and match replacing HR44s with HR34s with the customer not always knowing what will come off the truck.



slice1900 said:


> I think the "one Hopper 3 per account" thing is important because AFAIK that restriction doesn't exist for previous generation Hoppers.


There is a limit of two leased Hoppers ... and if one has a Hopper and SuperJoey one cannot have a second hopper. There are people with more than two hoppers, but they have to buy the additional receivers.

There are technical reasons to limit a system to one Hopper if there is a SuperJoey. Likewise there are technical reasons to limit a system to one Hopper 3 ... although I expect that somewhere down the road a second Hopper 3 will be allowed (using the second output on the new LNB).

For most users a single Hopper 3 and Joeys should be the easiest to control solution. Multiple Hoppers leave people wondering where their recordings are and which Hopper their Joey is tied to when it needs a tuner. The Hopper+SuperJoey is better integrated, basically expanding the Hopper to five tuners. The Hopper 3 expands that to 16 tuners.

There are valid reasons to want a second Hopper 3 but the need is less than with previous Hoppers.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

slice1900 said:


> Directv is using h.265/HEVC for its 4K channels from day one. Despite that it is still planning to place 3 channels per pair of bonded transponders - around a 30 Mbps rate per 4K channel. Everyone compares with Netflix's 15.6 Mbps for 4K and thinks that's all you need, but Netflix is all 24 fps and 30 fps content versus the 60 fps that 4K sports channels (at least) will use, and it is not being encoded on the fly like broadcast TV is so the encoding can be more efficient.
> 
> In a five years when encoders are much better maybe you can fit two 4K broadcast channels into a single transponder, but if you try it today the result will be pretty low quality - and if the whole reason for 4K is _higher_ quality, what's the point of doing it (other than for marketing purposes to claim "we have 4K") if you are going to degrade the quality that badly?
> 
> I agree with what you say about how Dish will do it. Since they use Ku for everything they have more flexibility to mix and match different channel types in a single transponder in a way Directv doesn't.


Ah I think we will see other things on the bss satelites. Namely the stuff from 95 and I expect that as soon as the lnb is in wide use. If not sooner. But who knows. I just can't imagine them not wanting to stop installing two dishes all over the place in a few markets.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

inkahauts said:


> Ah I think we will see other things on the bss satelites. Namely the stuff from 95 and I expect that as soon as the lnb is in wide use. If not sooner. But who knows. I just can't imagine them not wanting to stop installing two dishes all over the place in a few markets.


I agree, I think the chance of that is pretty much 100%. Why would all the H2x and HR2x receivers be able to see 99cr/103cr with a reverse band LNB if they didn't intend to put non-4K channels there? They never added 99/103 to the D1x/R1x, because they never intended to put MPEG2 SD channels there.


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## fudpucker (Jul 23, 2007)

In terms of features and who it will appeal to, it's not just 16 tuners (though that will appeal to people, even those who may not "need" it; they are also claiming it is 7 times faster than the Genie (and the Hopper.) I've already heard people talking about how cool the integrated Netflix is, being able to search for something and the search also look in Netflix and give you that in the same way it will find something on the satellite. 

I.e. This is the "cutting edge" of sat receiver technology and makes everything else look previous generation. And they will advertise the heck out of it. I think Directv is going to feel some pain from this.

Oh, and for the person asking if Dish will guarantee you the model your request, unlike Directv, the answer is yes. I have a lot of experience with that. In fact, I was very surprised when I switched to Directv when they told me they had no guarantees whether I would get a current gen or last gen Genie. For Dish, I could even be as specific as a 722k vs a 722.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

If you had a single non-4K TV, would Dish honor a request for a Hopper 3? Charge the same as they'd charge for older Hoppers? If so, I guess they rely on new customers to not all know about the Hopper 3, because who would get one of the older ones if they know about the new one?


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

slice1900 said:


> If you had a single non-4K TV, would Dish honor a request for a Hopper 3? Charge the same as they'd charge for older Hoppers? If so, I guess they rely on new customers to not all know about the Hopper 3, because who would get one of the older ones if they know about the new one?


I believe nobody with good credit will get anything less than the Hopper 3 as a new customer.
People with low credit may be offered a Hopper for one price and a Hopper 3 for a higher price.

The current offer from DISH charges people with "building credit" (as opposed to "no credit") $300 for a Hopper or lets them have a ViP622 (2006 technology). "Average credit" gets one a Hopper w/Sling (today's top model) for $50. Installation is also charged for "Average Credit" and below customers.

I believe the only people who will get a Hopper or Hopper w/Sling once the Hopper 3 is released will be those who seek one out or somehow miss the credit qualifications. Hopper 3 will be DISH's receiver.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

So what will Dish do with all the older Hoppers returned from customers who are leaving? Do they have enough customers with poor credit to use them up, or do they operate on a depreciation cycle much shorter than Directv's 5 years?


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

fudpucker said:


> In terms of features and who it will appeal to, it's not just 16 tuners (though that will appeal to people, even those who may not "need" it; they are also claiming it is 7 times faster than the Genie (and the Hopper.) I've already heard people talking about how cool the integrated Netflix is, being able to search for something and the search also look in Netflix and give you that in the same way it will find something on the satellite.
> 
> I.e. This is the "cutting edge" of sat receiver technology and makes everything else look previous generation. And they will advertise the heck out of it. I think Directv is going to feel some pain from this.
> 
> Oh, and for the person asking if Dish will guarantee you the model your request, unlike Directv, the answer is yes. I have a lot of experience with that. In fact, I was very surprised when I switched to Directv when they told me they had no guarantees whether I would get a current gen or last gen Genie. For Dish, I could even be as specific as a 722k vs a 722.


You mean they are using a processor that claims its seven times faster right? Not that it actually is. And on some things, frankly, you cant perceptibly make them seem faster than a genie, just not possible. Same with the hopper I am sure as well. But Id bet the interactive stuff, like accessing netflix is faster than directvs tv apps and such... Those are the newer things that are helped a lot more by better processors.


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## fudpucker (Jul 23, 2007)

In terms of being faster than the Genie: my HR44 is pretty sluggish compared to the Dish equipement I had when I switched. Like, hitting the exit button, and it pausing a second or two before it exits - I will hit it a second time sometimes because it looks like it didn't recognize the press the first time. I'm in front of it right now, watching something live - pressed the Guide button and there a one, two before the guide screen is all the way on. It's not a lot, I just tend to get 1,2 count when I hit the keys and the Genie completes execution.

A faster unit that brought them up immediately (as my Dish did) would feel much quicker. My Genie feels sluggish.


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## peds48 (Jan 11, 2008)

We are really spoiled when we can't wait a second for a guide to load..... Just saying....


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## fudpucker (Jul 23, 2007)

peds48 said:


> We are really spoiled when we can't wait a second for a guide to load..... Just saying....


Oh I agree, it's not a deal breaker. But I was replying to the comment that you can't really get faster than the Genie. It's something you get used to, but it's like when you go from a slow computer to a fast one - you weren't necessarily unhappy with the old one, but when you get used to how fast and snappy everything is on the new one, it's really noticeable when you go back to the old one.

Having had both Dish and Directv (Directv for about 15 years, then Dish for 6 years, then back to DTV for a couple of years) neither is perfect. While I read some people talking about the difference in PQ (a good post talking about that today in the Dish forums) and I saw a difference in my 54" 1080p Panny plasma, it didn't seem as noticeable as some talk about (and I'm an anal retentive on this stuff - ask my wife - I even calibrate my own TVs with my own colorimeters and software, I'm never happy with the fine details of the colors with regular calibration.) But no doubt Directv wins on that. I'd miss the PQ.

The Genie hardware and software frustrates me and has since day one. The To Do list is broken and most recommend not relying on it, the lack of options on Guide width, the audio dropout issues (I know, people will post they've never had that, but I have, and there have been numerous threads on it,) the way you can't have an external drive without disabling your internal drive and if you lose your receiver for some reason you lose all your recordings, etc. etc. etc. Full disclosure, I've not lived with the current Hopper UI, but when I left Dish the UI was much more user friendly in many ways than the Genie. I also have seen that to keep my bill from climbing dramatically, and it seems the only way to avoid that is to call Directv and try to get a customer service rep that you can convince to give you discounts to keep you from canceling.

That said, Directv certainly has the better PQ and that will become more obvious as TVs get better and better. And they are certainly better in sports content.

At the end of the day, I could be happy with either (and have been.)


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

fudpucker said:


> Oh I agree, it's not a deal breaker. But I was replying to the comment that you can't really get faster than the Genie. It's something you get used to, but it's like when you go from a slow computer to a fast one - you weren't necessarily unhappy with the old one, but when you get used to how fast and snappy everything is on the new one, it's really noticeable when you go back to the old one.


I guess I'm impatient by nature, but I want everything to have an instantaneous reaction. There's no reason to accept less - rendering the GUI of a STB takes very little computing power (we had GUIs on Macs and PCs in the 80s on hardware vastly inferior to that of the HR44) There have been studies on human reaction to perception delays in GUIs and demonstrating human reactions to three orders of magnitude of response times:

Anything that takes place in less than 1/20th of a second is seen as "instantaneous". If you click on something and the expected result occurs in 50 milliseconds making it any faster won't be noticeable to the user (talking normal use here, not concentrating on simultaneously watching your finger hit the button and feedback appearing on the screen to see if they happen in the same instant)

Anything that takes place in less than 1/2 second allows us to preserve our train of thought while completing steps in a larger task. For example, if you were taking a test and clicking boxes with your answer, you would notice a quarter second delay between clicking the mouse and the answer box showing a checkmark on the screen, but it wouldn't disrupt your concentration. Get that delay longer than about a half second and it will cause problems for you because you'll have to 'wait' for positive feedback that your answer was accepted before going on to the next question.

Anything that takes place in over five seconds will not only disrupt the user's train of thought but cause their attention to wander. That's where people might start checking their phone, clicking to another browser tab, thinking about what they're going to have for dinner tonight, etc.

In my experience, the H2x/HR2x series are 100% over 1/2 second and sometimes exceeding five seconds. When you combine that with the fact that sometimes they are so out to lunch they simply ignore the first remote button or two they are incredibly frustrating to use. There is no excuse for how abysmally slow those are.

I have limited experience with the HR44 but it certainly doesn't feel "instantaneous" to me, I can always notice it takes time for stuff to happen. Sometimes it would take a second or two for stuff like pulling up the guide. That's annoying, and there's no excuse when the data is in RAM. Browsers on a several year old smartphone do better than that with data dynamically loaded from thousands of miles away! I can see why HR44 owners think they're fast, but that's because the bar was set so awfully low in their minds from previous experience with the H2x/HR2x that they don't realize how much room for improvement still remains.


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## fudpucker (Jul 23, 2007)

slice1900 (someone else in Iowa I see!) that was an excellent post. Back years ago, in a different role, I was part of a team that was doing R&D on user interfaces and the data I recall was similar to yours.

The Dish equipment I had before switching to Directv gave pretty much instantaneous responses. The Genie, to me, just feels like it's an immature system. As I have said before, the To Do list being broken is an example; when I first switched I saw all kinds of problems, asked here, and was told over and over the solution was to not use the To Do list on the Genie, to ignore it, "just trust the Genie to record things correctly." I don't want to go over the issues I've gone over ad nauseum.

Yeah, first world problems when your sattelite box has delays when you try to execute commands.  But sheesh, most of us are paying over a $1000 per year to Directv for their service which includes the hardware. I don't think it is too much to want state of the art performance for that.


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## peds48 (Jan 11, 2008)

slice1900 said:


> Anything that takes place in less than 1/2 second allows us to preserve our train of thought while completing steps in a larger task. For example, if you were taking a test and clicking boxes with your answer, you would notice a quarter second delay between clicking the mouse and the answer box showing a checkmark on the screen, but it wouldn't disrupt your concentration. Get that delay longer than about a half second and it will cause problems for you because you'll have to 'wait' for positive feedback that your answer was accepted before going on to the next question.
> 
> *Anything that takes place in over five seconds will not only disrupt the user's train of thought but cause their attention to wander*. That's where people might start checking their phone, clicking to another browser tab, thinking about what they're going to have for dinner tonight, etc.


And while reading your long post I was checking my checking my phone..... !rolling
While I understand your post, I really still think that a second or two for a channel change or calling the guide is still normal. I mean, this boxes are doing a million things at one time. I guess I understand the we came from, where it took me 5 to 10 minutes to load a game on my original NES. Blowing the cartridge, sitting it right at the edge, rinse wash and repeat until it worked.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Progress is important after commanding the receiver. Coming from analog cable there is an adjustment to the "satellite delay". But if there is progress on the screen I know the channel change is coming soon enough. And if it is a case of flipping back and forth between two channels I "swap" channels "instantly".

On a normal channel change (DISH Hopper) I type the new number and the receiver changes channel. The digits come up close enough to instant so I know that the receiver WILL change channels. I agree that it is when the response slows and one doesn't know if the receiver will change or not that it gets frustrating.

On a channel change through the guide I have seen more delays. The first is when pressing the guide button - but progress softens the annoyance. The guide does not "immediately" appear but the screen changes to a blank guide quick enough that I know the receiver WILL display a guide. Scrolling is quick enough. Jumping to a channel in the guide is sometimes slow - and sometimes digits are missed and the guide jumps to the miskeyed number. Not often enough to complain.

Pulling up apps (such as checking the weather) can be slow but DISH has a spinner on screen so at least you know the receiver is working on displaying the app menu. And knowing that the receiver WILL work is a big part of making the UI acceptable.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

peds48 said:


> And while reading your long post I was checking my checking my phone..... !rolling
> While I understand your post, I really still think that a second or two for a channel change or calling the guide is still normal. I mean, this boxes are doing a million things at one time. I guess I understand the we came from, where it took me 5 to 10 minutes to load a game on my original NES. Blowing the cartridge, sitting it right at the edge, rinse wash and repeat until it worked.


And channel changes used to be slower as it involved actual travel. And possibly adjusting the ring around the channel selector.


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## carl6 (Nov 16, 2005)

dpeters11 said:


> And channel changes used to be slower as it involved actual travel. And possibly adjusting the ring around the channel selector.


Yes, but on the other hand, you had the incredible choice of 2 or 3 channels to rotate that knob to! And don't forget adjusting the rabbit ears for a minute or two until you got a clear enough picture to watch.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

That was something I never really experienced. Though growing up in the 80s I did watch scrambled Disney.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

dpeters11 said:


> And channel changes used to be slower as it involved actual travel. And possibly adjusting the ring around the channel selector.


My parents had a voice operated remote control (me).

I had a clicker (which has been replaced by an IR and a digital UHF remote). Perhaps I'll get a voice operated remote (the modern kind) some day.


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## HoTat2 (Nov 16, 2005)

carl6 said:


> Yes, but on the other hand, you had the incredible choice of 2 or 3 channels to rotate that knob to! And don't forget adjusting the rabbit ears for a minute or two until you got a clear enough picture to watch.


Yep, and even a lot of times that was until the channel knob eventually broke from the torque stress of turning those old mechanical tuners.

Then it was get out the old pair of pliers to change the channels for a while ... lol 

Sent from my SGH-M819N using Tapatalk


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## 242424 (Mar 22, 2012)

Our channel knob never broke.....One channel is all we had.


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## fudpucker (Jul 23, 2007)

Yeah, all we had was sticks and mud. Glad to have 'em, too.


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## Brad00111 (Dec 30, 2007)

What I still cannot believe, with all this advancement, is that they cannot migrate my list of shows to record from one dvr to another. This is the single greatest pain point and I cannot for the life me understand why they don't have a solution for this. This is why I am still putting up with a painfully slow and fairly unresponsive HR34, I am not willing to go through the trouble in migrating everything over.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

Since Directv has announced they will be using new hardware/software for the combined Directv/Uverse solution, there's a chance that will change in the future.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Brad00111 said:


> What I still cannot believe, with all this advancement, is that they cannot migrate my list of shows to record from one dvr to another. This is the single greatest pain point and I cannot for the life me understand why they don't have a solution for this. This is why I am still putting up with a painfully slow and fairly unresponsive HR34, I am not willing to go through the trouble in migrating everything over.


To be honest, it's short term pain for long term gain. I've been through the process a few times myself.


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## Brad00111 (Dec 30, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> Since Directv has announced they will be using new hardware/software for the combined Directv/Uverse solution, there's a chance that will change in the future.


That's what I'm hoping for. Gonna save my upgrade and see if a new version comes out this year.


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## CTJon (Feb 5, 2007)

You can't do it because they don't want you to, for some reason. Maybe they think if security wasn't built upon the received someone would crack it and then distribute shows etc.

Back to old days and knobs - I lived in NYC and I think we had 5 stations so it was a lot more work. Today it is so bad that I can't stand when traveling having TV without real guides and having to figure out what I want to watch separately and then find the channel.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

CTJon said:


> You can't do it because they don't want you to, for some reason. Maybe they think if security wasn't built upon the received someone would crack it and then distribute shows etc.
> 
> Back to old days and knobs - I lived in NYC and I think we had 5 stations so it was a lot more work. Today it is so bad that I can't stand when traveling having TV without real guides and having to figure out what I want to watch separately and then find the channel.


Recordings and list of shows are different. Backup of series links is very doable, so security issues. Technically satellite recordings are tied to the access card.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

CTJon said:


> You can't do it because they don't want you to, for some reason. Maybe they think if security wasn't built upon the received someone would crack it and then distribute shows etc.


I don't think it matters whether the encryption is based on the receiver ID or the account ID. Either can be equally secure, but once they designed a solution where it was based on receiver ID there's no way to change that in a software update without erasing every single recording as part of that upgrade. I suppose they could have done it differently for the Genie, but that probably forked from the HR2x software base so they would have had to make a conscious decision to change that.

The current H/HR hardware/software is a dead end, if the new stuff is a clean sheet redesign maybe it is done differently this time. If they take the Genie software as a starting point then I doubt they have reason to make the change since there is unlikely to be much customer demand for it (versus all the other stuff customers might rather have)


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## peds48 (Jan 11, 2008)

slice1900 said:


> I don't think it matters whether the encryption is based on the receiver ID or the account ID. Either can be equally secure, but once they designed a solution where it was based on receiver ID t*here's no way to change that in a software update without erasing every single recording as part of that upgrade.* I suppose they could have done it differently for the Genie, but that probably forked from the HR2x software base so they would have had to make a conscious decision to change that.
> 
> The current H/HR hardware/software is a dead end, if the new stuff is a clean sheet redesign maybe it is done differently this time. If they take the Genie software as a starting point then I doubt they have reason to make the change since there is unlikely to be much customer demand for it (versus all the other stuff customers might rather have)


That has been my belief all along. Changing to a different method now will cause too much destruction. While we all go through HDD failures from time to time, is easier to deal with this it was the receiver that DECIDED to quit, not DIRECTV "purposely" erasing 20 million plus customers at one shot.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

We have a local provider that's going to be doing a software update that requires a full reformat of the DVR. Of course they are no where near the size.

But why couldn't they have a phased switch? Current recordings are tied to the access card, but anything recorded afterward once the new software is installed is portable.

Might be too confusing for end users, some things working and other things not.


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## CraigerM (Apr 15, 2014)

Could they come with with an all new guide that supports both SatelliteTV and IPTV but keep a customers settings and not get rid of their current recordings? What if they kept the current Genie's and UVerseTV DVR's and receivers and just updated them with that all new guide? If a UVerseTV's hardware broke AT&T would just be able then easily replace it with the DTV hardware.

If they did do an all new hardware and software structure would those be able to be integrated into the current hardware and just update the current hardware with an all new guide that like I said that supports both SatelliteTV and IPTV?

I did a little research and Ericsson is starting from scratch and revamping Mediaroom into an all new product called MediaFirst a cloud based service. Found this video interesting.

http://www.v-net.tv/what-ericsson-mediafirst-means-for-platform-operators-and-how-mediaroom-is-also-evolving


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## HoTat2 (Nov 16, 2005)

peds48 said:


> That has been my belief all along. Changing to a different method now will cause too much destruction. While we all go through HDD failures from time to time, is easier to deal with this it was the receiver that DECIDED to quit, not DIRECTV "purposely" erasing 20 million plus customers at one shot.


Yeah, but it's still nevertheless frustrating as to why such inexplicably poor decisions were made to begin with.

Why didn't DIRECTV simply extend the WH recording process they designed for the non-DVR HD receivers to the HD DVRs from the beginning?

Why stop short this way at providing this capability only on the non-DVR receivers and now the design is long locked in and can't be changed?

Sent from my SGH-M819N using Tapatalk


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## peds48 (Jan 11, 2008)

HoTat2 said:


> Yeah, but it's still nevertheless frustrating as to why such inexplicably poor decisions were made to begin with.
> 
> Why didn't DIRECTV simply extend the WH recording process they designed for the non-DVR HD receivers to the HD DVRs from the beginning?
> 
> ...


Which capability are you referring to?

Sent from my iPad Pro using Tapatalk


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## HoTat2 (Nov 16, 2005)

peds48 said:


> Which capability are you referring to?
> 
> Sent from my iPad Pro using Tapatalk


Sorry, my bad, ... didn't read it well;

Thought the original poster on this point was complaining about the lack the DVR's ability to set or schedule recordings on other DVRs over WH the way the non-DVR receivers can.

http://dbstalk.com/index.php?/topic/220436-Dish-ups-the-ante-and-now-I'm-considering-a-switch#entry3406081

But after reading it again I see he's referring to migrating recorded shows and schedules to other DVRs to allow for DVR replacements.

Sent from my SGH-M819N using Tapatalk


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

HoTat2 said:


> Sorry, my bad, ... didn't read it well;
> 
> Thought the original poster on this point was complaining about the lack the DVR's ability to set or schedule recordings on other DVRs over WH the way the non-DVR receivers can.
> 
> ...


An interesting thing on the H44, without a hard drive it can set recordings on a DVR. Plug in a hard drive kit, and the function goes away.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

dpeters11 said:


> But why couldn't they have a phased switch? Current recordings are tied to the access card, but anything recorded afterward once the new software is installed is portable.


Well obviously none of us know how Directv's encryption works even at a high level, but it is probably safe to assume the hardware that handles the encryption is of recordings is the same hardware that interfaces with the access to decrypt the content when received from Directv. Thus a two step process: removing Directv's encryption (same key for all receivers / all access cards) and adding different encryption (based at least in part on the RID) to recordings.

It may not even be possible to change the encryption key on recordings - that could be built into the receiver hardware itself. They could have decided to change it at some point with new hardware models or hardware built after date X, but how much demand does anyone really believe there is for this, compared to all the other things a typical subscriber could come up with if they were making a list of things they'd like to see Directv change?

They don't want customers opening up receivers and swapping drives, so it would only be useful for 'power users' who connect external drives. Is that even officially supported by Directv, or just something that is known to work? To make it truly useful they'd have to build in a way to copy recordings from one DVR to another, but when they go to the gateway model hardly any customers will have more than one - so then where's the incentive to add such a feature?


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Well, with the H44 at least it is certainly officially supported. For others it's more than it just works. I think it's more unsupported because the drive and dock aren't theirs but the coding to make it functional is deliberate.

But really all I want is backup of series links and such. But it would be nice if my H44 goes bad that the recordings would still be playable. On the flip side of that, with an external power supply and external hard drive, there's not a lot of commonly failing hardware left.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

slice1900 said:


> - so then where's the incentive to add such a feature?


Considering the thread you are asking in ... because it is a feature their competition offers and has offered for a decade. Not being able to transfer content between working receivers is a drawback.

When current DISH customers get their new Hopper 3 receivers they will be able to keep their recordings. They do not have to make the choice of staying with old tech until it fails and they lose their recordings. Upgrading from a 622 (and other ViP DVRs) to the Hopper could be done via the external USB. Upgrading from a Hopper to a Hopper 3 can be done via external drive or ethernet (return the old receiver when the copy is complete).

It is a good feature. DIRECTV choosing not to implement it does not diminish the feature's value. While DIRECTV customers moving to DISH for the Hopper 3 will not be able to keep their recordings going forward they will have the ability to add external storage (supported) that does not turn off internal storage and have a better chance of keeping what they keep as long as they remain a DISH customer.


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## CTJon (Feb 5, 2007)

certainly setting should be able to saved somewhere so they don't have be reproduced. I also think you should be able to share setting like favorites across your connected network so I can change favorites on one machine and they show up on all - need to be an option not a rule.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

I just had my Hopper swapped out yesterday and it was so nice to be able to get all my timers, series links and favorites back from the remote. Only thing I had to do was edit the names of the favorite guides.
Lost a few recordings because the tech was coming too quickly, but the ones I lost are ones I can get via one of the streamers I subscribe to.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

James Long said:


> Considering the thread you are asking in ... because it is a feature their competition offers and has offered for a decade. Not being able to transfer content between working receivers is a drawback.
> 
> When current DISH customers get their new Hopper 3 receivers they will be able to keep their recordings. They do not have to make the choice of staying with old tech until it fails and they lose their recordings. Upgrading from a 622 (and other ViP DVRs) to the Hopper could be done via the external USB. Upgrading from a Hopper to a Hopper 3 can be done via external drive or ethernet (return the old receiver when the copy is complete).
> 
> It is a good feature. DIRECTV choosing not to implement it does not diminish the feature's value. While DIRECTV customers moving to DISH for the Hopper 3 will not be able to keep their recordings going forward they will have the ability to add external storage (supported) that does not turn off internal storage and have a better chance of keeping what they keep as long as they remain a DISH customer.


Consider that the ability to do this has been around since replaytv did it before anyone else and DIRECTV owns replaytv so.... It's a head scratcher no matter how you look at it.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

"Because the competition does it" isn't a reason to do something. "Because the competition does it and a sufficient number of customers or potential customers consider that a factor important enough to swing their decision on provider to make up the cost of changing the way we do things" is.

16 tuners is a differentiating factor with the Hopper 3, but because Dish has a 16 tuner DVR doesn't mean that's a good reason for Directv to offer one.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

Except when you call yourself the leader with the best equipment at some point if you can't compete with avast majority of the other guys features you lose...


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

And it's not like they haven't had little used features before. I know it's long gone, but did Game Lounge generate an actual profit? Media Share might be another one.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

Not saying there aren't little used features, just that copying them simply because a competitor has them only makes sense if it is worth the cost of adding it. That depends not on whether the competitor has the feature, but whether enough customers care about it enough to cause them to make a different decision on providers. It is like adding channels - if you don't carry ESPN or AMC you will feel it in your bottom line. If you don't care a Philly RSN or RFD-TV the impact is far smaller.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

I agree, and probably the majority of users of either sat provider get as 'into' all these features as do we here.
That said, right now Dish is way ahead in the technology and the UI that is visible to the user. Add the better EHD support and use, and the backup/restore of timers and preferences, not to mention the broader internet access to our DVRs and online.
Direct's big plus is full time RSN's and Sunday Ticket. It certainly isn't the tech.


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## HoTat2 (Nov 16, 2005)

BTW, somebody update me; 

I know I'm likely way out of date on this ...

But didn't you have to manually initiate a transfer of shows to an EHD on Dish receivers, or at least some time ago?

That is, while the EHD's capacity would be added to the internal drive's, it wouldn't do it seamlessly. But you had to manually move recorded shows you wanted saved long term from the internal to the external for archiving and clear that space on the internal drive.

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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Correct and that is still the way it is. But you can play directly from the EHD, you don't have to copy back to the internal on. And you can do bulk transfers.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Why do I get the feeling that if DIRECTV had independent external drives (instead of the external replacing the internal when connected) that could be moved between receivers for replacements, upgrades or day to day use the feature would be an excellent idea - but because DIRECTV doesn't have it the idea is worthless? :sure:


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

I haven't heard anyone say the idea is worthless, have you? All I'm saying is that whether Directv does it depends on how they feel it will affect their bottom line, not 'keeping up with the Joneses'.

Dish is ahead of Directv in some ways, Directv is ahead of Dish in other ways. The Hopper 3 is clearly far ahead of the Genie, Dish's OTA support is superior. Directv has superior video quality and a better selection of sports.

Over time some advantages will go away, like Directv's SWM has long been an advantage over Dish's archiac scheme with the crazy quilt collection of many types of dish, of LNB, of nodes with certain combinations of hardware only working with certain receivers, etc. With the hybrid LNB they'll leave all that behind (eventually) since it supports channel stacking - i.e. what Directv calls SWM - though the older stuff may never be compatible with that...hence the LNB being 'hybrid' since it can support both modes of operation.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Of all the things mentioned, only those things actually viewable by the end users mean much IMO. The more techie stuff is pretty much hidden from them anyway. Type of dish, lnbs, switches and so forth certainaly affect the bottom line because of costs involved, but from the end user POV, it doesn't matter at all since they won't actually directly deal with any of it.

Direct's advantage of somewhat better HD and more sports is certainly there, but of the two I suspect the more sports is of a bigger concern to the vast majority of users, especially sports fans. I know that because my perception of the PQ differences between the two is rather minimal, it isn't one of the criteria I use when determining which to be with. I often wonder if D* lost NFLST which is a great marketing tool even if one doesn't actually want it, if the numbers of subs would be closer.

I think that Dish is making some very good moves in a product that is on a downward spiral (ie; cable/sat). New products that actually are different in clearly visible ways from the previous product line would tend to say to the end user, "here's a company that's trying". To keep essentially selling the same old thing over and over again makes one wonder why. Essentially the HR line from the 20 through the Genie appears to the end user as exactly the same thing because to them the only difference is more tuners.

When Direct brought out the Genie I thought then and now, that it was the ideal time to introduce a new UI to differentiate the Genie line from the previous HR serires. Instead they just patched up the same old software. From a marketing/sales perspective that wasn't a good move imo.

With the H3 introduction, Dish will again change the UI. It is essentially the same as the current Hopper UI though with enough changes that it will appear as mostly new or at least progressing. That same UI will appear on the current Hoppers too at some point. This says to the end user "we are working on improvements", and those improvements are ones that are visible to the end user.

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## carl6 (Nov 16, 2005)

lparsons21 said:


> Of all the things mentioned, only those things actually viewable by the end users mean much IMO. The more techie stuff is pretty much hidden from them anyway. Type of dish, lnbs, switches and so forth certainaly affect the bottom line because of costs involved, but from the end user POV, it doesn't matter at all since they won't actually directly deal with any of it.


I do not agree with this. Those things actually viewable by the end user are very important, no argument at all. But "the more techie stuff" is critical to the function and long term operation of the system. Some of the key features discussed above are important (swappable hard drives with content, GUI, etc.), and are of direct and immediate importance to the end user. But having the better satellite system, LNB and dish equipment, is also critical. Dish has the lead in one arena, DirecTV in the other.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

You may not agree but to the end user, those things don't matter. For them if it works as it is supposed to, how it does it is if little to no concern. Note that I said from the end user POV.


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## Barry in Conyers (Jan 14, 2008)

James Long said:


> Why do I get the feeling that if DIRECTV had independent external drives (instead of the external replacing the internal when connected) that could be moved between receivers for replacements, upgrades or day to day use the feature would be an excellent idea - but because DIRECTV doesn't have it the idea is worthless? :sure:


To paraphrase GEICO:

Because D*fenders gotta D*fend; it's what they do.


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## RAD (Aug 5, 2002)

lparsons21 said:


> Of all the things mentioned, only those things actually viewable by the end users mean much IMO. The more techie stuff is pretty much hidden from them anyway. Type of dish, lnbs, switches and so forth certainaly affect the bottom line because of costs involved, but from the end user POV, it doesn't matter at all since they won't actually directly deal with any of it.
> 
> Direct's advantage of somewhat better HD and more sports is certainly there, but of the two I suspect the more sports is of a bigger concern to the vast majority of users, especially sports fans. I know that because my perception of the PQ differences between the two is rather minimal, it isn't one of the criteria I use when determining which to be with. I often wonder if D* lost NFLST which is a great marketing tool even if one doesn't actually want it, if the numbers of subs would be closer.
> 
> ...


On your user interface comment, you have to remember DIRECTV made a decision long ago the they wanted to present a consistent user interface across all their STB's.

I do agree with your comment about the changes that the customer sees are very small. They have added some new functions such as 72 hour rewind, auto play of the next episode, the DIRECTV app for portable devices. But I think DIRECTV has decided to spend most of their time on changes that reduce their costs. Look at SWiM, one line from the LNB and then use simple/inexpensive splitters for distribution. Cuts down on install time/costs and a simpler system to keep going. Compare that to Dish with all the different setup's they have for wiring.

I think Dish might have said we have two ways to fight back, costs (which once you get past promotions are almost the same) and what the user sees so that's why you see the Hopper series. So they've decided to spend the dollars on a STB that has tons of features that make DIRECTV boxes look old and tired.

What I think is going to really cause problems for Dish is if customers want 4K programming. If content providers start providing live 4K channels how will Dish be able to compete? DIRECT has space in the Ka band plus tons in the RDBS band to add live 4K programming, where will DISH come up with the bandwidth to provide those 4K services?


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Yeah, D* did make the decision to have a consistent UI regardless of how dated it would be. I think it was a mistake and one that could have been addressed when they made the big hoorah about the Genie. It was the ideal time. But I think that D* was more interested in not spending money to develop a new UI for the Genie as they positioned themselves to be sold.

4K will be interesting going forward, one I'm very interested in as my new 4K TV will be here soon. I'm not convinced yet that much in the way of cable/sat delivery of live channels will be a big thing since I suspect that it will be at the lower end of what 4K can provide. It could be very well received IF the channels offered are more than just 'gee whiz' shows to show off what 4K is all about. For the relatively near future, I think the bulk of 4K will be from streaming of one sort or another, and soon some 4K BD players will show up.

Dish may very well have a problem sending 4K live channels, but there is still some time left before it really is an issue. So far there is little in the way of 4K stuff out there. If Dish sees it as something they really need to get onboard with, I'm sure some satellite space can be gotten. But I'm also remembering how Dish almost totally ignored 3D and it didn't seem to matter.

We'll know more going forward of course.


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## Mikej0530 (Dec 23, 2008)

I must admit I left directv a year ago and went with dish. I loved the hopper. I wish I could have kept the hopper when I paid the etf and went back with Directv. If only the system was compatible. My problem is that I have a 65 inch tv and the picture quality was horrible with dish network. That was my deciding factor to come back to Directv.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

Didn't Directv have a lot of growing pains with the HD interface? Maybe those problems were fresh in their mind and they didn't want to go through that again when they introduced the Genie? They probably will with the new AT&T branded equipment that is coming, since the public statements Directv & AT&T sure don't sound like they will simply be porting the existing UI.

I'm not sure customers care whether the UI is constantly updated and 'fresh' (despite what Microsoft thinks - consider the consumer reception of Windows 8) but they do want to see innovations as far as what you can do with it. Whether that's an improved guide, unified playlist, 'sports bar mode', better integration with your smartphone or PC, or whatever. Unfortunately marketing deals seem to drive a lot of this - the "improvements" seen in guides on STBs from anyone in the past decade have included ads, which no one wants except the beancounters, and waste screen real estate. While I'm not sure anyone really needs yet another device to play Netflix, whether it is added to a STB has more to do with whether the provider does good business in VOD/PPV than it does with what consumers want.

I really hope the FCC ends up mandating Vidipath, or something like it, so consumers can choose their own devices with their own UI. Then anyone who really cares about the UI won't care about Hopper or Genie's UI because they won't see either, but will see the one from their Tivo, Apple TV, Roku, Android TV or whatever and the only Dish or Directv/AT&T branded equipment they'll need is a gateway with no video output capability.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Mikej0530 said:


> I must admit I left directv a year ago and went with dish. I loved the hopper. I wish I could have kept the hopper when I paid the etf and went back with Directv. If only the system was compatible. My problem is that I have a 65 inch tv and the picture quality was horrible with dish network. That was my deciding factor to come back to Directv.


I'm one of those in the apparent majority that think the difference between the two is slight when it comes to HDPQ, and I'm viewing on a 73" DLP HDTV and will soon be viewing on a 70" 4K tv. I can see the difference, but it isn't enough for me to make it one of the considerations when choosing a provider.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

slice1900 said:


> Didn't Directv have a lot of growing pains with the HD interface? Maybe those problems were fresh in their mind and they didn't want to go through that again when they introduced the Genie? They probably will with the new AT&T branded equipment that is coming, since the public statements Directv & AT&T sure don't sound like they will simply be porting the existing UI.
> 
> I really hope the FCC ends up mandating Vidipath, or something like it, so consumers can choose their own devices with their own UI. Then anyone who really cares about the UI won't care about Hopper or Genie's UI because they won't see either, but will see the one from their Tivo, Apple TV, Roku, Android TV or whatever and the only Dish or Directv/AT&T branded equipment they'll need is a gateway with no video output capability.


<< a little snippage>> 
D* did have some early issues with the HDUI, but most were fairly minor. And I'm convinced most were trying to make a blanket out of a sow's ear, IOW working from a very old codebase and just trying to 'improve' it. I think a rewrite was long overdue and still is.

I'm with you on the Vidpath idea, but the providers are giving lots of push back to the proposal so the future of it is very uncertain. I'd love the idea that I could use a Hopper-alike and/or my Tivo Roamio with whichever provider I happened to be on.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

lparsons21 said:


> I'm with you on the Vidpath idea, but the providers are giving lots of push back to the proposal so the future of it is very uncertain. I'd love the idea that I could use a Hopper-alike and/or my Tivo Roamio with whichever provider I happened to be on.


Yes, it is interesting to see their objections. The main ones appear to be related to branding and channel placement. i.e. they don't want people to be able to watch Directv or Comcast or whatever without their logo appearing in the guide - which they can solve via ad insertion or on-screen bugs that appear from time to time (not that I like them, but just an obvious way around that) I think the real objection is that they would lose the revenue from ad insertions in the guide. Yes, they also are claiming there will be 'extra boxes required' but they haven't been able to provide any concrete examples that apply to typical consumers, this is just them whining about losing STB rental revenue and the FCC's response indicates they know this (and that is the whole point of this exercise anyway)

The channel placement one is even dumber. Most providers have stupid channel layout scheme, and different numbers for SD and HD channels. Anything that lets consumers clean up the provider's mess and group channels by genre (or however they damn well please) is a positive. If they accept money from certain channels for special placement then I invite them raise my rates by the 5 cents a month or whatever pittance they collect on that!

Based on the net neutrality ruling, this seems like the most pro-consumer FCC we've had in a long time. If there was ever a time for the consumer to win and providers to "lose" (and they are coming up with pretty minor objections, so I think this is more about wanting to protect their cozy relationship with government regulators rather than actually caring about this issue all that much), this is it. After the next election the makeup of the FCC may change, so hopefully they can make a decision this year instead of letting it wait.


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## CraigerM (Apr 15, 2014)

According to one of AT&T's graphs it said in 2016 they are supposed to a new interface.

https://marketrealist.imgix.net/uploads/2015/08/Tel-ATT-timeline.jpg?w=660&fit=max&auto=format


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## CTJon (Feb 5, 2007)

Honestly I care a lot more about what a UI does than what it looks like


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

CTJon said:


> Honestly I care a lot more about what a UI does than what it looks like


To an extent I agree, but there are issues with the current D* UI and software that need work, here's the ones I remember:
1. 3 hour wide guide instead of the ridiculous 1.5 hour one
2. Channels I Get that actually does work. We were told long ago that they were embarrassed by it and that it would be fixed. Not sure just how many years it hasn't worked, but it has been a very long time.
3. To-do list you can depend on. Just read here for the many that complain about that. Of course it is good that the actual scheduling really does get done, but it is disconcerting to see something that should be listed to-do isn't.


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## peds48 (Jan 11, 2008)

lparsons21 said:


> To an extent I agree, but there are issues with the current D* UI and software that need work, here's the ones I remember:
> *1. 3 hour wide guide instead of the ridiculous 1.5 hour one*
> 2. Channels I Get that actually does work. We were told long ago that they were embarrassed by it and that it would be fixed. Not sure just how many years it hasn't worked, but it has been a very long time.
> 3. To-do list you can depend on. Just read here for the many that complain about that. Of course it is good that the actual scheduling really does get done, but it is disconcerting to see something that should be listed to-do isn't.


I have never understood that point. All I need to see is what is currently playing and what is coming up next.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

I use the 3 hour width to see all of prime time. Makes seeing new shows I might want to record. Of course, other than during the day when tv is just noise in the house, I always watch recorded stuff.


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## peds48 (Jan 11, 2008)

lparsons21 said:


> I use the 3 hour width to see all of prime time.* Makes seeing new shows I might want to record*. Of course, other than during the day when tv is just noise in the house, I always watch recorded stuff.
> 
> Sent from my iPad Pro using Tapatalk


I don't find new shows by looking at the guide, I find new shows by their adverts. If it catches my attention a set up a SL. I spent most of the time on the LIST than on the GUIDE. When I run out to item to watch on my LIST then I skim the guide for whatever to watch, at this time what matters is what is currently playing


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## carl6 (Nov 16, 2005)

I would like to see both a wider guide (2 to 3 hours), and I would absolutely love to be able to scroll back an hour or two (not to watch or record, just for reference).


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

peds48 said:


> I have never understood that point. All I need to see is what is currently playing and what is coming up next.


When I look at the guide I usually want to see what is playing the whole evening. There's no difference as far as I'm concerned between a 1.5 hour and 3 hour guide on Directv and Dish DVRs, they both suck and are an unreadable useless mess to me.

I use the "Live Guide" option on my Tivo that shows the next 8 programs on the selected channel. I can surf through the channels for the ones I normally watch and see if there is anything good on I want to watch/record that evening. I'd rather be forced to live with 20 hours of recording capacity than the awful grid guide on Directv, Dish and cable DVRs.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

carl6 said:


> I would like to see both a wider guide (2 to 3 hours), and I would absolutely love to be able to scroll back an hour or two (not to watch or record, just for reference).


The TiVo Roamio has a 2.5 hour guide and you can scroll backwards to see what was on earlier. Don't remember how far as I don't use it.

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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

There are times that I wanted to scroll back in the guide beyond the programs still in progress. Generally to see what was there when a program didn't record. (Was the wrong program in the guide? Was there a program change? Did I miss setting a timer for something new?)

I can scroll back through the "To Do" list (for lack of a better term) and see a timer history with notes left by the receiver why a program recorded or didn't record. But it does not show full details. For example , I'll see "Skipped, not a new episode." It will not show me the episode information in the guide.

I'd need a 24 hour rollback for most of these checks ... and I'm not sure how that would affect other customers who don't want to see a previous day in their guide. They may not want to know what they missed.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

With the TiVo you don't see the previous unless you actually scroll to the left.


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## carl6 (Nov 16, 2005)

It is possible with the DirecTV guide to get the list view - move the highlight to the left so it is on the channel number/name, then press Info. You'll get a list of 5 shows just for that channel. That optional view has always been available, but very few use it or mention it.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

lparsons21 said:


> With the TiVo you don't see the previous unless you actually scroll to the left.


Scroll to the right a little and then scroll to the left to get back to the current time. On a receiver without previous programming the scrolling will stop at the current time. With the 24 hour look back I suggested the scrolling would go "a day too far".

As usual every feature added would be hated by someone else. Perhaps the majority would not hate the addition, but at least a vocal minority would.

People who changed from a DIRECTV or DISH interface to a Tivo interface would accept that it was their decision. Yes, the UI changed but they chose that change. The same for people coming from a Tivo interface who miss scrolling back. Changing the UI for millions who did not ask for the change? Good luck with that blowback.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

James Long said:


> People who changed from a DIRECTV or DISH interface to a Tivo interface would accept that it was their decision. Yes, the UI changed but they chose that change. The same for people coming from a Tivo interface who miss scrolling back. Changing the UI for millions who did not ask for the change? Good luck with that blowback.


Which is why it is nice that Tivo provides both the 'Live Guide' I showed in the picture, as well as the grid guide that is similar to what people are used to from cable/satellite boxes. You hit 'A' and you can select between them, and it remembers your change. What peds48 said about hitting info to see the next five programs is pretty useless, as it would hardly be convenient to hit info on every channel if you wanted to scroll through a bunch of channels and see what is coming up on all of them.

As for scrollback, the Tivo will let you go back at least two days. You can select the shows in the past and while you obviously can't record something in the past you can learn if it is has future showings (at least in the next 12 days or so) and set them to record. It will also tell you if it is available on Netflix, Hulu, etc. Tivo doesn't integrate with the cable company's VOD, since that wasn't a FCC requirement for cable card so of course they keep that proprietary, but if it did that option would be there as well.


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## CTJon (Feb 5, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> To an extent I agree, but there are issues with the current D* UI and software that need work, here's the ones I remember:
> 1. 3 hour wide guide instead of the ridiculous 1.5 hour one
> 2. Channels I Get that actually does work. We were told long ago that they were embarrassed by it and that it would be fixed. Not sure just how many years it hasn't worked, but it has been a very long time.
> 3. To-do list you can depend on. Just read here for the many that complain about that. Of course it is good that the actual scheduling really does get done, but it is disconcerting to see something that should be listed to-do isn't.


Other than item 1 - I don't think those are UI issues - and I agree with 2 and 3. That is what I meant I want things that work and not things that look good but don't really work.


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## peds48 (Jan 11, 2008)

slice1900 said:


> When I look at the guide I usually want to see what is playing the whole evening. There's no difference as far as I'm concerned between a 1.5 hour and 3 hour guide on Directv and Dish DVRs, they both suck and are an unreadable useless mess to me.
> 
> I use the "Live Guide" option on my Tivo that shows the next 8 programs on the selected channel. I can surf through the channels for the ones I normally watch and see if there is anything good on I want to watch/record that evening. I'd rather be forced to live with 20 hours of recording capacity than the awful grid guide on Directv, Dish and cable DVRs.


You get ALMOST the same thing on DIRECTV, just press INFO on the channel name while on the GUIDE

Click for large view - Uploaded with Skitch


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## peds48 (Jan 11, 2008)

slice1900 said:


> When I look at the guide I usually want to see what is playing the whole evening.* There's no difference as far as I'm concerned between a 1.5 hour and 3 hour guide on Directv and Dish DVRs, t*hey both suck and are an unreadable useless mess to me.
> 
> I use the "Live Guide" option on my Tivo that shows the next 8 programs on the selected channel. I can surf through the channels for the ones I normally watch and see if there is anything good on I want to watch/record that evening. I'd rather be forced to live with 20 hours of recording capacity than the awful grid guide on Directv, Dish and cable DVRs.


That we can agree on!


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## GekkoDBS (Dec 5, 2015)

carl6 said:


> It is possible with the DirecTV guide to get the list view - move the highlight to the left so it is on the channel number/name, then press Info. You'll get a list of 5 shows just for that channel. That optional view has always been available, but very few use it or mention it.


But you can go into the future as far as possible in list view or is it only the next 5 shows?


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## HoTat2 (Nov 16, 2005)

GordonGekko said:


> But you can go into the future as far as possible in list view or is it only the next 5 shows?


As far into the future as it will go. Which is about 12 days for the APG.

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## CTJon (Feb 5, 2007)

I don't want to see the next shows on the same channel most of the time - I want to see the choices that are now. Sometimes with the 3 across you don't see the whole title - with 5 or 6, etc. the font would have to be so small that I'm sure I couldn't read it.


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## fudpucker (Jul 23, 2007)

100% agree on the 3 issues mentioned. And in terms of the 3 hour vs 1.5 hour wide guide - yeah, I can see why people on Directv say they don't use the guide. But for a lot of us who were using Dish and used to the 3 hour guide, it's sorely missed. And I don't get the unreadable mess comment - I used it for years and it was very readable and the main way we browsed to see what was on prime time in the evening. 

But Dish gave you options: if you wanted the 3 hour guide, you could select it, if you preferred something different you could choose that. That's good UI design: don't try to decide what the customer should like and make them use that, give them choices as much as possible. 

The Channels I Get and To Do list being broken are, to me, just more examples of sloppy technical design and implementation and the fact that they haven't me won't fix them is a bit of a "screw you" to customers. 


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

Yeah there should be three guides. One line. Full page with 1.5 hours and full page with 3 hours.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

A choice would be best. I have become accustomed to a three hour guide, which would be better on a large TV but not everyone has an 80" screen. On the clients a choice is even more important. A three hour guide on a SD TV is more guesswork than readable text. Satellite service is expensive enough without needing to buy new TVs just to read the guide.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

The new UI on the HWS and H3 is either 2.5 or 2.0 depending on whether you select large or default text in the guide. 2.5 isn't quite as handy, but it is better than 2 or less IMO.


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## fudpucker (Jul 23, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> The new UI on the HWS and H3 is either 2.5 or 2.0 depending on whether you select large or default text in the guide. 2.5 isn't quite as handy, but it is better than 2 or less IMO.
> 
> Sent from my iPad Pro using Tapatalk


Well, that would be disappointing (though still much better than the odd 1.5 hour Genie guide.) I thought I'd seen a demo with 7-10 PM on the guide?


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

That's the way it is now with the current UI, but the H3 and all other Hoppers will be changing to a new one that is as I described.


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## Riverpilot (Aug 13, 2010)

I certainly hope AT&T/Direct comes out with something new this year. Hopper 3 looks to be pretty incredible. I realize some of the features are disabled at the moment, but I would love to have the 16 tuners and the ability to get 4k without needing two boxes.


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## RAD (Aug 5, 2002)

Riverpilot said:


> I certainly hope AT&T/Direct comes out with something new this year. Hopper 3 looks to be pretty incredible. I realize some of the features are disabled at the moment, but I would love to have the 16 tuners and the ability to get 4k without needing two boxes.


Well since they're just now rolling out the HR54, which is their live 4K STB without the ability to display 4K on the TV it's connected to, I'm thinking it's going to be awhile before you see an box that you want.


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## fudpucker (Jul 23, 2007)

Something else that I like, which is one of those nice to have (rather than must have) but you hate to give up once you get used to it, is integrated Netflix. Integrated searches, no need to switch to another box, etc. Again, seems like a little thing, and since I usually access Netfix from my iPhone to my home theater system via Plex and Chromecast, no unmet need. But for a lot of people (like my wife) it would be so much easier to go back and forth in an evening between a live show on the satellite and then a Netfix show then back to something on the DVR if it was all one box.

I haven't seen if you can record something from Netflix on the new Hopper; I would bet against that, but it would be very cool if so.


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## sigma1914 (Sep 5, 2006)

Is pressing right on the remote seriously that difficult?


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## fudpucker (Jul 23, 2007)

sigma1914 said:


> Is pressing right on the remote seriously that difficult?


For checking on what's on primetime in an evening? No, it's not "difficult." Neither is getting on your computer and going to TVGuide and looking at the listings.

But when you're used to a 3 hour wide guide, and you want to see what's on primetime, you hit the Guide button, scan quickly what's on the chunk of channels, hit the page down button, scan, page down, etc.

With 1,5 hours, it's Guide, scan, right click, right click, scan, left click, left click, to go back to 7:00 PM, page down, look, right click, right click, look, left click, left click, page down, etc. (yeah, you can cut part of that out by going two clicks right, page down, look, two clicks left, look, page down, look, etc,)

It's like any user interface. There are ways to do what you want (most of the time,) and some ways are better designed and more user friendly and elegant than others. For example, if you didn't have page down you could just click click click down. It wouldn't kill you to do it. But it sure is nicer to have a page down function.


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## mdavej (Jan 31, 2007)

Remember back when PCs were 640x480? Going from Dish or WMC or whatever back to the 1.5 hr DirecTV guide is like going from a 1920x1080 computer screen to 640x480. If you're used to it, probably no big deal. But if you've seen the alternatives, it's almost impossible to go back. I know I'll probably never entertain the thought of getting DirecTV again unless the interface gets improved.


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## fudpucker (Jul 23, 2007)

mdavej said:


> Remember back when PCs were 640x480? Going from Dish or WMC or whatever back to the 1.5 hr DirecTV guide is like going from a 1920x1080 computer screen to 640x480. If you're used to it, probably no big deal. But if you've seen the alternatives, it's almost impossible to go back. I know I'll probably never entertain the thought of getting DirecTV again unless the interface gets improved.


That's a great way to put it. I've got a 1920X1080 laptop, and I recently had to borrow a laptop (while mine was being repaired) that had a lower resolution. It was painful navigating web sites, etc. using that. Of course my friend, who loaned it to me, didn't know any better and was quite happy with it.


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