# switching a Hopper and Joey



## Snydley

Currently we have a 2 Hopper 3 Joey setup with 1 Hopper in the living room, another Hopper
in bedroom 2, and a Joey in bedroom 1. As it stands now, since you can't link 1 Hopper to another, we can only view 1 Hopper in the living room which is the main viewing area. I got to thinking tonight that if I switched the living room Hopper with the bedroom 1 Joey, connecting the Joey to the living room TV, we could link that Joey to either of the Hoppers thus watching "his" or "her" Hoppers whenever we wanted and have a more versitile living room viewing.
Are there any reasons why I can't just switch them? Will the connections be the same on both? We use HDMI on all the TVs. Will there be any special configurations I have to do once I switch them?
Thanks,
Snyde


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## Stewart Vernon

It isn't quite that simple.

The Hoppers take their feed from a coax that goes back to the node (I assume you got a dual node since you have 2 Hoppers).

The Joeys have their own feed that also goes back to the node BUT the Joey feed can be split to send to different Joeys.

In other words... a Hopper MUST have a feed that goes back to the specific port on a node. A Joey might have a feed that goes back to its specific port on a node BUT if you have another Joey that Joey is probably split from that same coax.

So... it all depends on how the Joeys are chained together since you said you have 3 Joeys.

If you swap a Hopper for a Hopper or a Joey for a Joey, no problem.

But if you swap a Hopper for a Joey, then you might have a lot of rewiring to do since that Hopper line currently goes back to the node Hopper port and would have to be changed to connect somehow to the Joey port.

Similarly, the current Joey line would also have to be moved to connect to the Hopper port instead of the Joey port on the node.

The problem comes in because you have multiple Joeys... and if they are split off from each other at the node it will be possible for you to semi-easily figure things out and change it up... but if the Joeys are split at some other point in your house, swapping the connections at the node would break your other Joeys.

If that doesn't make sense, check the FAQ and other threads here that have sample wiring diagrams and you'll see what I mean.

There are also other ways (including taps) that your Joeys could be connected... so specific answers would require knowledge of how your setup is wired before anyone could give a definitive answer. Basically it could either be really easy or really difficult.


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## Snydley

There is a dual node in my basement that I believe everything is connected to. If I swap the Hopper and Joey, and then go into the basement and swap the Hopper and Joey connections at the node so they are connected the way they originally were will that work? Do you know if it's marked on the node Hopper and Joey? If so that would make it pretty easy.
Thanks,
Snyde


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## domingos35

Snydley said:


> There is a dual node in my basement that I believe everything is connected to. If I swap the Hopper and Joey, and then go into the basement and swap the Hopper and Joey connections at the node so they are connected the way they originally were will that work? Do you know if it's marked on the node Hopper and Joey? If so that would make it pretty easy.
> Thanks,
> Snyde


that will work 
on the node the joey connection says "CLIENT" and "HOST" for the Hopper


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## Snydley

I switched the cables, and Hopper and Joey around and everything is working great now. We're now able to access both Hoppers in the living room by switching what Hopper that Joey is linked too. We can now finally watch either Hopper on the living room in HD, something we couldn't do with our old VIP722K and 622 setup. Thanks for the help!,
Snyde


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## Stewart Vernon

You're welcome... Like I said it could be very easy or complicated depending on if you had Joeys chained together. It sounds like in your case you got lucky with an easy configuration.

It's probably worth nothing... that unless I am wrong, with 3 Joeys one of them must be either split from another OR split from a tap... which means you probably couldn't have just picked any Joey to make that swap with.


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## Snydley

It turns out the cable that the Joey was originally on was connected to a splitter off of the node, but I just unhooked that cable from the splitter, and the Hoppers cable from the node and swapped them, swapped the Hopper and Joey and away we went. It's much more versitile now, I should have hooked it up like that from the beginning, but I was hoping the update was gonna be developed soon that would allow the 2 Hoppers to link to each other, but it hasn't. This works just as well for what we want. We can't watch Hopper "A" in bedroom "B" and vise versa but we don't have a call to do that anyway.
Snyde


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