Since my "leap day" prediction crashed and burned, let me say that I hope the OTA is a dual-tuner, giving the Hopper a total of 5 SAT+OTA tuners. Then the release day could be for Cinco de Mayo.
DISH HOPPER SPEC SHEETS
- Thread starter Scott Greczkowski
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Since Scott said it will use OTC USB OTA modules, my guess is it will be single-tuner, as I didn't see any dual-tuner sticks. But, I suppose it's possible it will be able to use two sticks.Since my "leap day" prediction crashed and burned, let me say that I hope the OTA is a dual-tuner, giving the Hopper a total of 5 SAT+OTA tuners. Then the release day could be for Cinco de Mayo.
But, remember, just because it has 5 tuners doesn't mean it can record 5 streams at the same time.
As has been said, dual tuners was not standard, and $50 is not a bad price for the functionality.
Reasonable does not mean "cheapest."
The WiFi dongle at $25 - about the only better price on that model is ebay refurbs.
The Slinglink Turbo at $30 - in line with the lower end pricing of similar products.
Remotes at $20 - again in line with similar learning remotes. You could spend less but also much more.
Powerline Phone adapter at $40 - at the upper-mid end of the price range, but works without the box at the receiver side, and they may want to steer folks to IP.
The remote antenna at $10 - I'll give you that one, but it was "free" for a long time. I think they over compensated when setting a price.
That was exactly my concern. And, if it is a commercial available usb tuner will you be able to control it with the Dish remote.
I truly wish I was as patient as you are, you are absolutely correct, but you won't have the new stuff till later. I want all the new stuff and I want it now, I just wish I could afford it.
Dish hasn't ever crippled its receivers like Direct has using OTA receivers. I doubt they'll start now. If they do, the Hopper is even more limited that any of us thought. If the Hopper is like the other Dish receivers, the chip/software is already on board for integrating the OTA tuner into the mix.
I think this is where the onboard software comes in. How standard is the command set to the USB tuners?
I wouldn't worry about that too much. After all, a ViP722K can handle 2 satellite streams, 2 OTA streams, and a DVR'd program playing. Doubtful, but possible, that Dish would go backwards on that kind of bandwidth. As you say, time will tell and I expect we'll know- OH, about March 16th if some of our guys are prompt.
There is Windows Media Center and several third party DVR software choices out there in different OSs in the marketplace. The tuners have to be able to work in all those environments.
I've always assumed that with the PC tuners, the remote commands were processed by the host PC, not the tuner module itself. Do you know differently?
You have to load software to the PC. That makes me think that Dish would have to settle on a single usb tuner. It would be a nightmare for tech if everyone could chose which tuner to use.
Which is where the command set commonality comes in. Modems seem to have condensed to a rather small pool of instructions- why not tuners?
DISH will have all the necessary drivers installed for whatever model or models of USB tuners the decide to use. It most likely will only be just a few if its more than one.
Just like they installed the necessary drivers for the WNDA3100 V2 USB wifi
This is called "BDA", for Broadcast Driver Architecture. Pretty standard among tuner drivers. I have it on my PC sat tuner, as well as on my PC ATSC tuner.
I think that count is low.
I think you can be recording 4 things at once while playing back 2 more, archiving to the EHD, and downloading from DishOnline.The 921 had 2 satellite tuners and 1 OTA tuner, but could only record from any 2. Every DVR with OTA since has been able to record from all the available tuners at once. I anticipate Hopper will continue that trend.
If memory serves me right the 921 could not record from OTA period. Seems like it only had an analog tuner and would have needed a convert to digital to record. The 622 and later has a digital tuner and can record the digital stream directly. I'm not making any excuses for the 921 though, it was a hunk of junk. My 722 has been good though.
The 921 could indeed record from its ATSC tuner (probably wouldn't have gotten one if it didn't), but when doing so only 1 of the satellite tuners was available for recording. IIRC, I could watch OTA live while the sat tuners were both recording.
