Hopper Feature I Didn't Know About

[oldengineer]

We're getting a bad series of storms today in Eastern PA. They're bad enough to disrupt the sat signals on 61.5 and 72. I just noticed that when an HD signal is lost the Hopper will automatically look for the SD equivalent and switch to that channel. Nice feature. Problem is that the rain is so bad the SD channels are also lost.

 

[gadgtfreek]

I ran into that a few weeks ago, thought it was VERY cool.

 

[Scherrman]

This has been a feature for a while and it's not exclusive to the Hopper. Also happens on VIP receivers.

 

[MikeD-C05]

I have all the Sd channels with HD equivalents blocked on my hoppers so it wouldn't work for me.

 

[Hall]

I think it overrides that block. I saw it happen this morning, except I missed the "switch to SD" on-screen message as it already switched. When that didn't work, it said it was going to try the HD version, so it cycles back and forth.

How beneficial is this if one's SD and HD channels come from the same satellite though ? If you get SD channels off of 110º or 119º and HD off of 129º, I could see the odds of it working would be better. My SD and HD channels are on 129º though....

 

[gadgtfreek]

It does. I hide SD as well. Thats what I thought as so cool about when it happened.

 

[Hall]

I hide SD as well.

That's actually the default, out-of-the-box setting, as I recall.

 

[gadgtfreek]

I think you are right.

 

[david_jr]

I noticed this a couple weeks ago too. Never thought about it being a new feature, but I had never noticed it before. I do like the idea as it did help me stay with the sow a bit longer than I would have.

 

[DWS44]

That is kinda neat. Out of curiosity, does it monitor the HD channel's signal and change you back when the signal returns, or just a one-way dump to the SD?

 

[gadgtfreek]

IIRC it did, It actually allowed me to keep watching until the signal came back on HD, worked great.

 

[Hall]

does it monitor the HD channel's signal and change you back when the signal returns, or just a one-way dump to the SD?

Something tells me that once it switches, it has to stay there, unless it detects a loss on the current channel as well. It's not a smart system, i.e. no monitoring, because when I saw it happen today, it switched from SD to HD (or vis-versa - doesn't matter) and the channel it switched to was out as well. It switched back ... to the other channel that was still out.

In order to "monitor" it, that would require using a tuner, would it not ?

 

[thomasjk]

Previously discussed here http://www.satelliteguys.us/threads/312257-Auto-switch-to-SD-when-signal-drops-out

 

[lucky86]

Hall is right, it does NOT automatically flip back to the HD version.

 

[gadgtfreek]

Sorry, I thought it did.

 

[broeddog]

To get it to go back to the HD version of the channel I have to key the channel number on the remote.

 

[Tampa8]

The VIP series that does the same thing. (Though I lose the signal so infrequently I have not had a lot of use of that feature)

 

[sourdough]

The VIP series that does the same thing. (Though I lose the signal so infrequently I have not had a lot of use of that feature)

Never saw that work on the 922... Common occurrence in Alaska particularly when they start putting things on Freeview. Since a number of HD channels only appear on high transponder numbers on 129, the freeview unlocks the HD version, and then the receiver goes into lost signal fits trying to lock to a transponder with a signal strength of 10 or so. Since I knew what was going on I could manually work around it by selecting an SD version or finding the proper 4 digit channel number.

The hopper is actually smart enough to outright remove channels on these unusable transponders from the guide. Even better.

 

[hdqboss]

Wow another thing I learned at Sat Guys! I had this happen to me the other day - I looked up and noticed I had a SD signal on the NBC channel I was watching. I went into the guide to see if I was on the right channel (my wife sometimes tunes into the wrong one!) and when I exited the guide I was back to HD and went "hmmm" and never thought about it until I just read this thread. Nice feature!

 

[KKlare]

Not so neat if you are making an archive or delayed copy and could have recorded it later on the same or a different repeat channel and don't know about it until you go to view the ugly SD. Maybe a marker in the SD wing zones to warn you or better in the description? For those shows not repeated, I guess this is the best you can do.

-Ken