# Joey was working... Now is unstable



## tommiet (Dec 29, 2005)

The first month or so, my Joey worked fine. Now I must restart it and/or my Hopper to get it to do basic function.

Problems: 

Lost of connection to the Hopper. In most cases, it will come back in about 15 seconds. Some cases, a network reset or unplug/plug back in the Hopper. Does this almost daily.

DRV Playback - Multiple times the video will freeze and kick me out to live TV. Or it freezes and I have to reset the Joey. In some cases, when it does freeze, I can hit the 30 second fast forward to get it back.

Guide lockup - Selecting the guide and TRY to select a program to view and nothing happens. You can go to all menu's and select anything, but cannot select anything from the guide. Another Joey reset to fix.

My hopper does not have any of these issues and it seems my Joey only started having these issues after an update about 2 weeks ago.

I know its new and I'm being patient..... Just venting...


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## Marlin Guy (Apr 8, 2009)

Do you have just have the one Joey?

Sorry, just saw your sig. Is the other Joey doing OK?
If so, then that helps narrow down the issue.


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## patmurphey (Dec 21, 2006)

Did you call Dish tech support? It's their job to make sure their products are working.


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## [email protected] Network (Jul 21, 2011)

tommiet, please send me a PM with your phone or account number so I can assist you to troubleshoot this issue. Thanks!


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## tommiet (Dec 29, 2005)

Marlin Guy said:


> Do you have just have the one Joey?
> 
> Sorry, just saw your sig. Is the other Joey doing OK?
> If so, then that helps narrow down the issue.


Nope.. I'm actually wrong. I dumped one joey 2 days after due to problems.

I updated my tag...

Dish Hopper and 1 "Works when it want too Joey"


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## tommiet (Dec 29, 2005)

patmurphey said:


> Did you call Dish tech support? It's their job to make sure their products are working.


Techless support tells me to power off/on the Hopper and reset the Joey. Yes, that does fix it, but its a temporary fix.


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## n-spring (Mar 6, 2007)

Have you checked the MoCA strength on the Joey? Press Yellow-9-2 on remote. Look at box 'c'.


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## patmurphey (Dec 21, 2006)

tommiet said:


> Techless support tells me to power off/on the Hopper and reset the Joey. Yes, that does fix it, but its a temporary fix.


What did they say when you told them that? It's their responsibility t get it working right.


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## How/Rad (Jun 14, 2012)

The issue is with the node switch. These switches always had issues. I stopped using them years ago when they installed one of them at my house to run multiple DVRs. instead I had multiple dishs to run them. unfortunitly the hopper joey system doesn't work without the switch, so because you probably like myself are tied into a 2 year contract we have to live with it until our contract is up.


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## n0qcu (Mar 23, 2002)

How/Rad said:


> The issue is with the node switch. These switches always had issues. I stopped using them years ago when they installed one of them at my house to run multiple DVRs. instead I had multiple dishs to run them. unfortunitly the hopper joey system doesn't work without the switch, so because you probably like myself are tied into a 2 year contract we have to live with it until our contract is up.


IMPOSSIBLE, the node has only been available since March,


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## patmurphey (Dec 21, 2006)

tommiet said:


> Techless support tells me to power off/on the Hopper and reset the Joey. Yes, that does fix it, but its a temporary fix.


OK, what did they do when you told them that. It's Dish's responsibility to fix it. Or, have you communicated with Ray from the DIRT team? He did offer to help.


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## How/Rad (Jun 14, 2012)

n0qcu said:


> IMPOSSIBLE, the node has only been available since March,


this particular node has only been available since march, but it is basicly just a technologically advanced switch using the same flawed relay system of the original switchs dish had their techs install on all home that got the DVR 625s in 2006 i think it was. I hear dish stopped using them years ago.


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## Yelobug (Dec 29, 2006)

I've had the exact same issue and after having a tech at the house last week, it's happening again! The tech said it was because there was a 5.9 being used on the other Joey. All hopper / joeys must be on 6.0 wire now that they're talking to each other. After changing other Joey's wire to 6.0 it worked for a few days. Now we're back to same issue, can't find the Hopper (and it has a number instead of 'den' that it was named. This 9 yr Dish customer is sick of this.


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## How/Rad (Jun 14, 2012)

Yelobug said:


> I've had the exact same issue and after having a tech at the house last week, it's happening again! The tech said it was because there was a 5.9 being used on the other Joey. All hopper / joeys must be on 6.0 wire now that they're talking to each other. After changing other Joey's wire to 6.0 it worked for a few days. Now we're back to same issue, can't find the Hopper (and it has a number instead of 'den' that it was named. This 9 yr Dish customer is sick of this.


I'm suprised they used the rg59 wire at all. They have never used that wire as far as I know. it's a cheaper wire, but when I installed my 1st system in 95 I found I had to use the RG6 for it to work even back then.


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## Yelobug (Dec 29, 2006)

Well the 5.9 wire was placed by Dish when we had a 2 room receiver placed several years back. In March when we switched to Hopper/Joey system, Tech left the orange ringed cable to use. Today, Dish is coming to change everything (cables, nodes, switches, Hoppers and Joeys) to overcome this incessant issue we've had.


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## ttthoon (Jul 13, 2012)

rg-59 cable is ok for the joeys unless more than 1 tap is installed (according to DISH Quality of Installation standards). As a DISH Tech, we have been told its a software issue so changing everything might end up being of waste of everyone's time. Keep us posted. I would like to know since I install this stuff


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## ttthoon (Jul 13, 2012)

How/Rad said:


> I'm suprised they used the rg59 wire at all. They have never used that wire as far as I know. it's a cheaper wire, but when I installed my 1st system in 95 I found I had to use the RG6 for it to work even back then.


We don't install rg-59 anymore but we are allowed to use it for tv2 and for joeys.


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## Yelobug (Dec 29, 2006)

Well, Tech left an hour ago. He replaced the two RG6.0 cables from outside to each of the Hoppers. He said Hoppers need RG 6.0 but at the 3 GGHrtz vs the 2.25 GGHrtz that we had. No other equip was changed out. System was acting very whacky about 30 mins ago and one of the Joeys was going to a blank screen. Although I am not techt, I do remember that things can be unstable for at least 24 hrs. So, I'm reserving any judgement for today's call and whether issue is resolved. Have a feeling we may be seeing another tech next week. At what point does a super-problem solver get sent to the home to fix things?


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## Yelobug (Dec 29, 2006)

Oh, one more thing, the March Hopper/Joey installer had some sort of switched used behind my Hopper with the wire going back to outside to connect somewhere....anyway, Tech removed that setup to be correct now


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## ttthoon (Jul 13, 2012)

Yelobug said:


> Well, Tech left an hour ago. He replaced the two RG6.0 cables from outside to each of the Hoppers. He said Hoppers need RG 6.0 but at the 3 GGHrtz vs the 2.25 GGHrtz that we had. No other equip was changed out. System was acting very whacky about 30 mins ago and one of the Joeys was going to a blank screen. Although I am not techt, I do remember that things can be unstable for at least 24 hrs. So, I'm reserving any judgement for today's call and whether issue is resolved. Have a feeling we may be seeing another tech next week. At what point does a super-problem solver get sent to the home to fix things?


Replacing the rg59 cable with rg6 to the hoppers is the most obvious fix. If you still have problems generally what we do as techs is replace the 1 or 2 most likely causes. With hopper and joey issues this is difficult as we dont have a solid flow chart for troubleshooting yet so its likely you may need a couple of visits to fully resolve the issue. Eventually everything will get replaced which should solve the issue unless its a wierd electrical or software problem.

The switch you refer to may have been a tap with a hopper internet connecter for connectivity. I dont see any thing else being conncected behind a hopper.


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## Yelobug (Dec 29, 2006)

Thanks, it's nice to have an installer's point of view. Just wanted to clarify that we did have RG6 however at a lower Gigahertz than what the Hopper demands. So he replaced with 3Ghrz RG6. We did not have 'looking for Hopper' message this morning. Now we'll see if screen freezes and picture goes black as it did after installer left yesterday. Thanks again for your reply.


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## ttthoon (Jul 13, 2012)

Yelobug said:


> Thanks, it's nice to have an installer's point of view. Just wanted to clarify that we did have RG6 however at a lower Gigahertz than what the Hopper demands. So he replaced with 3Ghrz RG6. We did not have 'looking for Hopper' message this morning. Now we'll see if screen freezes and picture goes black as it did after installer left yesterday. Thanks again for your reply.


The black screen from what we've noticed is usually due to the hopper using 1 of the tuners to update the program guide, and that 1 tuner was probably the joey. If you get the black screen again try pressing the red button to bring up the tv viewing status screen and see if you can join into one of the other tuners.

When we first started installing the hopper/joey we noticed that if the hopper didn't initially download the joey software correctly (or was interupted), when the joey "grabs" the software from the hopper it resulted in perma-black screen. But i believe this isn't happening anymore.

Like I mentioned in an earlier post there is a software issue curently effecting some joeys that causes them to unlink. If that happens the current solution is to brigde the connection through a super complicated series of steps that I can't begin to type out lol.


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## tommiet (Dec 29, 2005)

tommiet said:


> The first month or so, my Joey worked fine. Now I must restart it and/or my Hopper to get it to do basic function.
> 
> Problems:
> 
> ...


*After 3 new Joey's DISH gave me (no cost) another Hopper for the same monthly cost.
*

ALL IS WELL NOW... with the dvr sharing working.


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## Yelobug (Dec 29, 2006)

All the changes that I needed was to replace the RG6.0 cable with a 3 gigaherz RG6.0 wire. Haven't had ANY issues all week long. Life is good. Didn't realize that RG6 came in different gigaherz. But was told the Hopper was the only receiver that requires the higher gigaherz (technician's words, not mine).


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## RasputinAXP (Jan 23, 2008)

That is correct. RG59 is fine for the Joey but thew Hopper uses everything up to 3GHz.


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