H3 Upgrade - My Story

[sklunk]

Hello all.

I am a longtime lurker of SatelliteGuys but finally joined last month. I have gained a lot from these forums and hope to give back! I thought I would share my upgrade story and maybe some of it will help others. I apologize for this being a long post but will try to break it up. I am also sorry if this is old news to some of you but if somebody can get at least 1 helpful thing out of this post it was worth it.

First the thanks:
-- To this forum for all the Dish info!
-- To DIRT. MattG was great and I probably would not have agreed to the upgrade without his help!!


So I had a HWS, SuperJoey, and Joey 1.0 setup. We needed to add another TV so I decided to take the plunge to the H3 with 3 Joeys (standard not 4K since my family lives on Netflix). I won't bore everybody with the details but here are some important points that may help others:

• My HWS had been updated to Carbon. All of the following experiences are based on that so YMMV if you are still on the old UI.
• Because of the Carbon update I could not get my HWS to recognize an external drive. I had used the exact drive previously on both a 722ViP and the same HWS with the old UI without any problems. I decided to take my chances with the ethernet transfer process for my DVR recording.
• I was able to back up my timers to my 40.0 remote from the HWS.

The Tech showed up Saturday afternoon and did the install. If you are eliminating a SuperJoey your node and wiring are reduced! There is a new dish, LNB that only uses 1 feed instead of 3, and smaller node. He did not have any problems with the equipment install. Now for the issues (mainly software related):

• The H3 would not allow me to pair my 40.0 remote so I could not restore my timers.
• The ethernet transfer would not work initially. The Tech agreed to leave the HWS with me and have Dish send a return shipping box so I could experiment with getting my recordings restored.
• Some of the Joeys would randomly lose connection with the H3 even though the Tech and I had them all working correctly with strong signal earlier in the day.

All of the above happened within a few hours of the Tech leaving. I was pretty disappointed and called Tier 2 Tech Support but they were no help. I decided to sleep on it and let the system do an overnight update.

On Sunday morning I decided to try again and EVERYTHING WORKED!! I was able to pair the 40.0 to the H3 and restore my timers. Next I connected the HWS to the H3 through an ethernet cable and was able to transfer my recordings but take note it is .....S.....L.....O.....W..... I only had around 30 hours of recordings but it took over 3 hours to transfer.

For the past 2 days everything has been working fine so I am a happy camper. The Joey2's are MUCH faster than the Joey1's were (and IMO about the same as my previous SuperJoey). DIRT was also able to get me the 2-year price lock so even with adding a TV I end up about the same price and once the Protection Plan expires I'll actually save around $8/month and get more channels than I did before!


Hope this can help somebody .....

 

[dare2be]

yep, it's no joke when people say to give the hopper 24-48 hours to "settle"

so, the EHD works now as well?

 

[sklunk]

Haven't tried it yet. Since I got all my recordings transferred and my drive is only about 12% full I didn't need the EHD. I may just wait until I see posts on here that the feature is working again and then give it a try.

 

[JS_racer]

Plug it in, it will either works or it won't, no harm trying

 

[sklunk]

Well I spoke too soon. For the last 2 days one of my Joeys keeps losing connection to the Hopper. They tried to troubleshoot it through Tech Support (I actually got a pretty good Tech) but no luck. I will be getting a visit from a Tech on Saturday to check the wiring and Joey.

 

[JS_racer]

Could try swapping locations of your joeys that would tell you if it's the box or wiring.

 

[KAB]

Could try swapping locations of your joeys that would tell you if it's the box or wiring.

Good idea!

 

[sklunk]

Could try swapping locations of your joeys that would tell you if it's the box or wiring.

That is exactly what I tried when I got home last night. Of course now both Joeys are working fine so I need to keep an eye on it for the next day or 2 to see if either one acts up. Before I moved them I also tried switching them at the splitter to see if one of the splitter taps was bad. We'll see!

Last night I also attached the EHD that I had used before. Still no dice. My H3 is running U334 which the Tech tells me is the latest stable version. Guess I'll have the site visit Tech check that as well on Saturday.

 

[JSheridan]

That is exactly what I tried when I got home last night. Of course now both Joeys are working fine so I need to keep an eye on it for the next day or 2 to see if either one acts up. Before I moved them I also tried switching them at the splitter to see if one of the splitter taps was bad. We'll see!

Last night I also attached the EHD that I had used before. Still no dice. My H3 is running U334 which the Tech tells me is the latest stable version. Guess I'll have the site visit Tech check that as well on Saturday.

And when your visiting tech has no clue about any of it just check back here for the real story.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Last night I also attached the EHD that I had used before. Still no dice. My H3 is running U334 which the Tech tells me is the latest stable version. Guess I'll have the site visit Tech check that as well on Saturday.

If you wanted to you could update to 336 which fixes the EHD issue, or you can wait as I understand there is another update scheduled to go out before the Super Bowl. And that will have the fix in it as well.

 

[JS_racer]

So are the taps still switched?? Hard to isolate with 2 changes

 

[sklunk]

And when your visiting tech has no clue about any of it just check back here for the real story.

No kidding!

If you wanted to you could update to 336 which fixes the EHD issue, or you can wait as I understand there is another update scheduled to go out before the Super Bowl. And that will have the fix in it as well.

I thought of that but based on posts here it sounds like 336 may still be buggy. I don't need the EHD right now so I'll just wait it out.

So are the taps still switched?? Hard to isolate with 2 changes

No. I tried that first then switched them back when it didn't make a difference. After that is when I switched the 2 Joeys between 2 rooms (and they both have identical wiring, TVs, etc.).

 

[JS_racer]

Good luck!!
Possibly fixed by a hard boot, if not hope something sorts out.

 

[sklunk]

Well the Tech came out Saturday. He replaced ends on the in-home cables, replaced the splitter, and replaced the hybrid node. That seemed to take care of the "losing MoCA" problem. We did lots of other troubleshooting throughout the process but think the node may have been the culprit. That would make sense since the Joeys were a little flaky no matter which rooms/splits/etc. I tried them on.


Another question -- has anybody seen increased WiFi traffic with the H3? When they did the initial install last week my internet crashed when we tried to connect the Hopper to it. I reset my modem and router and everything seemed good but my kids were complaining about the internet speed this week. When I did some troubleshooting this past weekend it looks like I am only getting around 3Mbps download (it is supposed to be 10Mbps). I will be calling my ISP tonight to check for issues with their hardware but it seems weird that it started happening around the same time the H3 was installed.

Of course my kids didn't tell me about the speed issues until AFTER the Tech had left ...