So I finally decided it was time to upgrade to Hopper/Joey system now that the upgrade price dropped and OTA was announced so I contacted Zach with DIRT and he set us up for Wednesday, 11/21/12 for a 8 – 12 window appointment. Zach made it really easy.
I actually began preparing for this upgrade way back when the wiring diagrams for H/J system came out last winter. I ran two new coax lines (high quality quad shielded swept to 3 GHZ) from my distribution panel in my basement back through the house and out to where my existing sat lines came in the house. Prior to upgrade I had a VIP 722 and a VIP 612 serving 3 HDTVs with 2 satellite feed lines coming in the house through my attic from a grounding block on the side of my house under an eave. One feed line went direct to my upper floor master bedroom snaked from the attic down an exterior wall, and one line snaked from the attic down through an inner wall to my basement then across my crawl space and back up to the middle level (tri-level house) closet in back of our family room where all my HT gear resides. A coax line out of 722 for TV 2 went back down to the basement and then up into kitchen where my kitchen HDTV was served by SD satellite, not ideal, but it worked. So with the 2 new lines I ran combined with the line going to the hall closet 722 I had my 3 sat lines in for the H/J system. The line to the 612 would just be killed and not used.
I planned to use the 722 TV 2 out coax line going to the kitchen for the new Joey going to that TV. I pulled the TV 2 line down from the closet and left it hanging at my new panel. I also pulled the sat feed for the 722 back down from the closet and pulled a new coax line back through with it to the panel where it would connect to the duo node and the new coax to the closet would feed the family room hopper. Now in my two kid’s bedrooms I already had run coax for OTA to those rooms previously with the same type of coax I mentioned above and my OTA distribution is right next to where my new panel is. So my plan was for those two bedrooms to get Joeys and use the existing coax to feed them instead of OTA. They had no sat in their bedrooms previously. Then I had to run a coax line to the master bedroom for the second Hopper because the line to the 612 was not usable in the new setup. That was a bit of a challenge due to the blown-in insulation we had put in our attic back in the winter. So I had to run a new coax line from the basement through an inside wall to the opposite side of the room from where my VIP 612 sat, where I put in a keystone jack plate and put a 3 GHZ jack purchased at Lowes in the plate. The barrel had a white center but the packaging was clearly labeled that it was 3 GHZ. My plan was to have the installer run a line from the new plate around my bedroom in back of the dressers and over to my bedroom equipment rack where the MB Hopper would go. So I had my 3 feed lines from Sat to my panel and I had my 5 lines from panel back to the locations where my 2 Hoppers and 3 Joeys would reside. The only wiring left for the installer to run would be (1) a third coax line from the sat dish across my roof and to the grounding block on the side of my house to connect to the lines in the attic, (2) the master bedroom line from the coax jack to the hopper and (3) a short line from my son’s bedroom coax wall jack about 3 feet to the Joey location. I figured I was ready for the installer.
On Tuesday night (11/20) at 7:50 PM I got a call from the install company advising me that my scheduled install would occur the next morning. She asked me to confirm my address and recited it. I explained that the address is correct but town is not due to it being our mailing address, we are actually in the next town over which I gave her. She advised the installer would call me in the morning and I could explain it to him. Now I have had numerous upgrades over the years and have never had trouble with an installer finding us at our rural location so I wasn’t too worried.
On Wednesday morning (11/21) about 8:15 the installer (I’ll call him Ron) called me and told me he was on the way and was about an hour away. I tried to explain to him about our address and how we were the next town over from what’s on the account due to mail. He said he put it in the GPS and would be here in about an hour. I said let me give you just a few directions. He said he didn’t do well with customer directions and would rely on his GPS. I told him let me just tell you if you pass (location x) you have gone too far and needed to turn there. He said OK and see you in an hour. About 9:30 the installer called and said that he was on my road and couldn’t find my house. He asked, “Are you on a dead end road?” I said no. He said he was on (my road) in (next town over). I said, “I told you we are in the next town over.” He said he put both towns in his GPS and it sent him to the same place. I asked him if he was near (main rd in that town). He said he didn’t know where that road was. I gave him a road near my house to put in the GPS and he said he needed a number. I told him to just put 500 (that road) and it would get him on the right road and just go a few more miles and my road would be on his left and I would meet him at the intersection where I went and waited for him. About 15 minutes later my wife called me and told me the sat installer company was on the phone saying that the installer is at the end of (our road) and can’t find me. Now my road is only 1 mile long and my house is on one end and I am sitting at the other end waiting for him so I know it is not true. So I drive back down the road to check that he is not there, which he isn’t and return to my watch location and call the installer only to get his full voicemail box 3 times. So I call the sat install company and speak with the lady who spoke to my wife. She says she can see the (landmark) and I say yes that is where I am and my house is at the end of that road. She tells me that I sent the installer to 500 (that road) and he could not find me there. I told her I sent him to 500 (that road) so he would be going the right way and to keep going and I would be waiting there, which obviously he didn’t. I am having a real bad feeling about this install at this point and I ask her if this guy is new. She says he has been there longer than her and she has been there 3 years. I tell her to send the installer to (house number) across the street from my current location and she says she will. A few minutes later my wife calls me and says the installer called the house and told her he put the new address I gave him into his GPS and he is 12 miles away from us and would meet me at my location. So finally about 10:00 the installer makes it to my location and I point him toward our house and we pull into the driveway. I have steam coming out of my ears at this point.
When (Ron) gets out of his van he starts saying how he has to do 2 Hoppers & 3 Joeys for me, which will probably take all day, then he has another 2H/3 J at his second stop and then a 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] smaller install and then a trouble call all scheduled for that day and he doesn’t know why his sat company sends him out of state so far away. I can see that he is not a kid so I decide I am going to give him another chance so I say “(Ron) can we start over? Let me just show you where I want the duo node and we can take it from there.” (Ron) says, “Hey you know what a duo node is?” I said yeah. He says most of his customers have no idea what he is talking about when he explains what he is doing. I told him that I am a member of Satellite Guys and have followed the H/J since it was introduced. He had not heard of Sat Guys. So I took him down to my basement and showed him my panel and where all my wiring was waiting for him to just hook it up. At that point (Ron) and I became friends and his eyes lit up when he saw all the wires hanging there labeled. Now he says maybe he will get this done in half a day. I told him that I would help him since he was alone. Then he ran the 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] feed line from the dish to my grounding block on the outside of the house. Then he installed the duo node on my panel and put new terminations on the wires before hooking them up to the node. He was not happy with my use of quad shield. He said that it is too hard to get all the shielding off to make the connections and it tears up his fingers, but he didn’t want to run all new wiring because that would take him all day. I told him that I had wall jacks at all my locations and he said they were fine as long as they had 3 GHZ barrels. I told him that I had 3 GHZ barrels but they had white centers. He said they might say 3 GHZ on the package, but they are probably low voltage. So I changed out all the white barrels with 3 GHZ blue barrels from a package of them I had bought earlier. We went back to his van, he grabbed the equipment and we carried them in and put them in their locations. He hooked up the Hoppers first and got them going to the downloading stage, which I knew from Sat Guys had to be done before hooking up the Joeys. I asked him if he brought a HIC. He said no and I only needed Ethernet to one Hopper and would be all set. I said OK. I told him I didn’t have Ethernet to my Hopper location and my 722 used home plug. I asked him if he had a Sling Link Turbo I could use with my home plug system to hook up the Hopper. He told me that the Sling Link doesn’t work with the Hopper system. I asked how much they go for. He said they don’t charge for them. I asked if he would mind me trying one to see if it would work. He handed me the box and I went and put it in and it worked. So I had Internet to one Hopper.
So he finishes up the rest of the small wiring I described earlier while I unpacked the 3 Joeys and put them in there locations and ran their wires to the TVs. I asked him if he would like a sandwich which he did so my wife made him lunch. He seemed very appreciative. He said he didn’t think he was going to have time to eat that day. By that time the Hoppers were done downloading and he started setting them up. I could see he had done this before as he was going pretty fast. That is until he got to the family room Hopper which he couldn’t get the remote to work on. I asked him to try the 722 remote that was still sitting there. He said the 722 remote won’t work with the Hopper. I said shouldn’t you at least try it. He tried it and it worked. He couldn’t believe it so then everything was working great. Then he connected the Joeys to the node and then he called to activate everything and before you know it we had sat on all 5 TVs. So (Ron) was leaving 3 ½ hours from the time he drove in my driveway. He said when he pulled in and saw my house he never thought he would be done so quickly and he thanked me for having everything so ready for him. I thanked him with a tip and gave him directions to his next stop. He said he was going to be checking out Sat Guys when he gets a chance.
So we're loving the Hopper system. Love the menu system and the colorful look of the guide. Also love being able to access recordings in all rooms. Haven't had a whole lot of time to really play with it yet, but maybe this week. I'll be adding OTA to it soon too. Thanks to my fellow Sat guys for all the info on the system over the last several months and to all the Beta testers who put up with the bugs so the system could be improved.
I actually began preparing for this upgrade way back when the wiring diagrams for H/J system came out last winter. I ran two new coax lines (high quality quad shielded swept to 3 GHZ) from my distribution panel in my basement back through the house and out to where my existing sat lines came in the house. Prior to upgrade I had a VIP 722 and a VIP 612 serving 3 HDTVs with 2 satellite feed lines coming in the house through my attic from a grounding block on the side of my house under an eave. One feed line went direct to my upper floor master bedroom snaked from the attic down an exterior wall, and one line snaked from the attic down through an inner wall to my basement then across my crawl space and back up to the middle level (tri-level house) closet in back of our family room where all my HT gear resides. A coax line out of 722 for TV 2 went back down to the basement and then up into kitchen where my kitchen HDTV was served by SD satellite, not ideal, but it worked. So with the 2 new lines I ran combined with the line going to the hall closet 722 I had my 3 sat lines in for the H/J system. The line to the 612 would just be killed and not used.
I planned to use the 722 TV 2 out coax line going to the kitchen for the new Joey going to that TV. I pulled the TV 2 line down from the closet and left it hanging at my new panel. I also pulled the sat feed for the 722 back down from the closet and pulled a new coax line back through with it to the panel where it would connect to the duo node and the new coax to the closet would feed the family room hopper. Now in my two kid’s bedrooms I already had run coax for OTA to those rooms previously with the same type of coax I mentioned above and my OTA distribution is right next to where my new panel is. So my plan was for those two bedrooms to get Joeys and use the existing coax to feed them instead of OTA. They had no sat in their bedrooms previously. Then I had to run a coax line to the master bedroom for the second Hopper because the line to the 612 was not usable in the new setup. That was a bit of a challenge due to the blown-in insulation we had put in our attic back in the winter. So I had to run a new coax line from the basement through an inside wall to the opposite side of the room from where my VIP 612 sat, where I put in a keystone jack plate and put a 3 GHZ jack purchased at Lowes in the plate. The barrel had a white center but the packaging was clearly labeled that it was 3 GHZ. My plan was to have the installer run a line from the new plate around my bedroom in back of the dressers and over to my bedroom equipment rack where the MB Hopper would go. So I had my 3 feed lines from Sat to my panel and I had my 5 lines from panel back to the locations where my 2 Hoppers and 3 Joeys would reside. The only wiring left for the installer to run would be (1) a third coax line from the sat dish across my roof and to the grounding block on the side of my house to connect to the lines in the attic, (2) the master bedroom line from the coax jack to the hopper and (3) a short line from my son’s bedroom coax wall jack about 3 feet to the Joey location. I figured I was ready for the installer.
On Tuesday night (11/20) at 7:50 PM I got a call from the install company advising me that my scheduled install would occur the next morning. She asked me to confirm my address and recited it. I explained that the address is correct but town is not due to it being our mailing address, we are actually in the next town over which I gave her. She advised the installer would call me in the morning and I could explain it to him. Now I have had numerous upgrades over the years and have never had trouble with an installer finding us at our rural location so I wasn’t too worried.
On Wednesday morning (11/21) about 8:15 the installer (I’ll call him Ron) called me and told me he was on the way and was about an hour away. I tried to explain to him about our address and how we were the next town over from what’s on the account due to mail. He said he put it in the GPS and would be here in about an hour. I said let me give you just a few directions. He said he didn’t do well with customer directions and would rely on his GPS. I told him let me just tell you if you pass (location x) you have gone too far and needed to turn there. He said OK and see you in an hour. About 9:30 the installer called and said that he was on my road and couldn’t find my house. He asked, “Are you on a dead end road?” I said no. He said he was on (my road) in (next town over). I said, “I told you we are in the next town over.” He said he put both towns in his GPS and it sent him to the same place. I asked him if he was near (main rd in that town). He said he didn’t know where that road was. I gave him a road near my house to put in the GPS and he said he needed a number. I told him to just put 500 (that road) and it would get him on the right road and just go a few more miles and my road would be on his left and I would meet him at the intersection where I went and waited for him. About 15 minutes later my wife called me and told me the sat installer company was on the phone saying that the installer is at the end of (our road) and can’t find me. Now my road is only 1 mile long and my house is on one end and I am sitting at the other end waiting for him so I know it is not true. So I drive back down the road to check that he is not there, which he isn’t and return to my watch location and call the installer only to get his full voicemail box 3 times. So I call the sat install company and speak with the lady who spoke to my wife. She says she can see the (landmark) and I say yes that is where I am and my house is at the end of that road. She tells me that I sent the installer to 500 (that road) and he could not find me there. I told her I sent him to 500 (that road) so he would be going the right way and to keep going and I would be waiting there, which obviously he didn’t. I am having a real bad feeling about this install at this point and I ask her if this guy is new. She says he has been there longer than her and she has been there 3 years. I tell her to send the installer to (house number) across the street from my current location and she says she will. A few minutes later my wife calls me and says the installer called the house and told her he put the new address I gave him into his GPS and he is 12 miles away from us and would meet me at my location. So finally about 10:00 the installer makes it to my location and I point him toward our house and we pull into the driveway. I have steam coming out of my ears at this point.
When (Ron) gets out of his van he starts saying how he has to do 2 Hoppers & 3 Joeys for me, which will probably take all day, then he has another 2H/3 J at his second stop and then a 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] smaller install and then a trouble call all scheduled for that day and he doesn’t know why his sat company sends him out of state so far away. I can see that he is not a kid so I decide I am going to give him another chance so I say “(Ron) can we start over? Let me just show you where I want the duo node and we can take it from there.” (Ron) says, “Hey you know what a duo node is?” I said yeah. He says most of his customers have no idea what he is talking about when he explains what he is doing. I told him that I am a member of Satellite Guys and have followed the H/J since it was introduced. He had not heard of Sat Guys. So I took him down to my basement and showed him my panel and where all my wiring was waiting for him to just hook it up. At that point (Ron) and I became friends and his eyes lit up when he saw all the wires hanging there labeled. Now he says maybe he will get this done in half a day. I told him that I would help him since he was alone. Then he ran the 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] feed line from the dish to my grounding block on the outside of the house. Then he installed the duo node on my panel and put new terminations on the wires before hooking them up to the node. He was not happy with my use of quad shield. He said that it is too hard to get all the shielding off to make the connections and it tears up his fingers, but he didn’t want to run all new wiring because that would take him all day. I told him that I had wall jacks at all my locations and he said they were fine as long as they had 3 GHZ barrels. I told him that I had 3 GHZ barrels but they had white centers. He said they might say 3 GHZ on the package, but they are probably low voltage. So I changed out all the white barrels with 3 GHZ blue barrels from a package of them I had bought earlier. We went back to his van, he grabbed the equipment and we carried them in and put them in their locations. He hooked up the Hoppers first and got them going to the downloading stage, which I knew from Sat Guys had to be done before hooking up the Joeys. I asked him if he brought a HIC. He said no and I only needed Ethernet to one Hopper and would be all set. I said OK. I told him I didn’t have Ethernet to my Hopper location and my 722 used home plug. I asked him if he had a Sling Link Turbo I could use with my home plug system to hook up the Hopper. He told me that the Sling Link doesn’t work with the Hopper system. I asked how much they go for. He said they don’t charge for them. I asked if he would mind me trying one to see if it would work. He handed me the box and I went and put it in and it worked. So I had Internet to one Hopper.
So he finishes up the rest of the small wiring I described earlier while I unpacked the 3 Joeys and put them in there locations and ran their wires to the TVs. I asked him if he would like a sandwich which he did so my wife made him lunch. He seemed very appreciative. He said he didn’t think he was going to have time to eat that day. By that time the Hoppers were done downloading and he started setting them up. I could see he had done this before as he was going pretty fast. That is until he got to the family room Hopper which he couldn’t get the remote to work on. I asked him to try the 722 remote that was still sitting there. He said the 722 remote won’t work with the Hopper. I said shouldn’t you at least try it. He tried it and it worked. He couldn’t believe it so then everything was working great. Then he connected the Joeys to the node and then he called to activate everything and before you know it we had sat on all 5 TVs. So (Ron) was leaving 3 ½ hours from the time he drove in my driveway. He said when he pulled in and saw my house he never thought he would be done so quickly and he thanked me for having everything so ready for him. I thanked him with a tip and gave him directions to his next stop. He said he was going to be checking out Sat Guys when he gets a chance.
So we're loving the Hopper system. Love the menu system and the colorful look of the guide. Also love being able to access recordings in all rooms. Haven't had a whole lot of time to really play with it yet, but maybe this week. I'll be adding OTA to it soon too. Thanks to my fellow Sat guys for all the info on the system over the last several months and to all the Beta testers who put up with the bugs so the system could be improved.
