Hopper Quirks - What I wish I knew first

[voripteth]

This thread is to educate new Hopper owners about some of the unusual behavior of the unit. Stuff that wasn't covered by installer.

• Searching for shows in the program guide won't work for the first 24 hours. Type a name and it says "No Matches" no matter what. When working normally, you'll see all shows listed on the right and that list gets filtered as you type in a name. Pretty nifty once it works.
• Show icons do not display thumbnails for the first 24 hours. Initially you only get the network logo and the name of the show beneath it. Afterwards you get a thumbnail snapshot of the actual show making it fairly easy to identify.
• Have shows archived to an external drive? You can only watch them if you currently subscribe to them. For example, I had a few movies I recorded from Epix, a channel that I dropped when it moved to BlockBuster. I could play it on my 722k after I no longer subscribed but the Hopper says I need to subscribe to view it.
• When you stop the playback of a show you no longer have the "Start Over" option. You have to exit to the DVR menu, re-select the show and press Enter to get the "Start Over" option.
• While you are allowed to create folders on an external drive, they do not appear to be displayed or used.
• While you can plug a usb keyboard into the Hopper, the alphabetic keys do not work.
• Auto-Hop doesn't appear to work for all programs. When it does work, you are asked at the start of the program if you want to use it. If you aren't asked, it won't work for that show.

I'm sure there is more. Please keep this list focused on what the Hopper actually does with workarounds.

Hopefully some of these things will get fixed but in the meantime...

 

[Poke]

Hmm this is good to know.. Just got my Hopper and Joey the other day was wondering why they did not have Show Icons but one thing I would like them to Add is when you click on a Movie in the Guide to hit Info and be able to view from there see when the movie will be played again or view upcoming..

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Normally for most DISH DVR's (expecially the 922 and Hopper) they don't work well for the first 24 hours, this is because they must download all the features which can take up to 24 hours in addition there is maintenance done at night which helps index the search engine and so on.

I always tell people for your first 24 hours with a new DISH DVR not everything will work as expected... but after that its usually smooth sailing.

 

[navychop]

Heck, the 721 was notorious for being flakey the first day or two.

 

[voripteth]

I always tell people for your first 24 hours with a new DISH DVR not everything will work as expected... but after that its usually smooth sailing.

The first thing I want to do after an upgrade is recreate all my timers so I don't miss anything recording later that day. Waiting 24 hours for search to work is a bit disconcerting. I ended up using my Dish remote app to search and create a few timers. The biggest annoyance is many of the shows I had timers for aren't in the program guide over the summer so it's hard to set timers for them. I guess I could use "Seek & Record" but I'm concerned I might not get the results I want.

 

[patmurphey]

...Auto-Hop doesn't appear to work for all programs. When it does work, you are asked at the start of the program if you want to use it. If you aren't asked, it won't work for that show...

It is designed that way. It does not work on live broadcasts like news or sports because the signal it uses for the ads is not there. It asks if you want to use it because that is fundamental to their legal argument that it is user triggered. It's a great feature, and except for a small few experiencing bugs, it works great as designed.

 

[voripteth]

Last night we were watching "America's Got Talent" which did not enable auto-hop. I checked the forum postings some of which thought that auto-hop was broken in the latest update.
Later we watched "Trust us with your life" which did auto-hop. I think the comment stands that auto-hop does not work for all programs.
Fortunately my thumb on the 30-sec skip works all the time. ^_^

 

[KRUZNBY]

Last night we were watching "America's Got Talent" which did not enable auto-hop. I checked the forum postings some of which thought that auto-hop was broken in the latest update.
Later we watched "Trust us with your life" which did auto-hop. I think the comment stands that auto-hop does not work for all programs.
Fortunately my thumb on the 30-sec skip works all the time. ^_^

If it was last night's episode, then it won't have autohop until the next day.
Oh and 30 sec skip does not always work. That also another known bug.

 

[voripteth]

If it was last night's episode, then it won't have autohop until the next day.

AGT was still being recorded at the time but we started viewing after it had been on a good hour so there was plenty of buffer to skip ahead. Does autohop not work while programs are being recorded?

 

[Jim S.]

Normally for most DISH DVR's (expecially the 922 and Hopper) they don't work well for the first 24 hours, this is because they must download all the features which can take up to 24 hours in addition there is maintenance done at night which helps index the search engine and so on.

I still say that there should be enough bandwidth available on the satellite that it shouldn't take so long to update. I mean, it's not like if a million receivers want to update simultaneously, the server has to provide a million streams.

 

[JM42]

AGT was still being recorded at the time but we started viewing after it had been on a good hour so there was plenty of buffer to skip ahead. Does autohop not work while programs are being recorded?

Autohop is not available until approximately 1am.

 

[JM42]

I still say that there should be enough bandwidth available on the satellite that it shouldn't take so long to update. I mean, it's not like if a million receivers want to update simultaneously, the server has to provide a million streams.

There is a timing issue here, maybe the amount of time the box is left in standby at install or something.

I had full logos and guide by the time I got my hands on the remote the day it was installed.

 

[voripteth]

Autohop is not available until approximately 1am.

I can confirm that the show that did not autohop while recording does autohop now. What is this magic 1am number? Is there some sort of extra information that has to download hours after the original program for autohop to work?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I still say that there should be enough bandwidth available on the satellite that it shouldn't take so long to update. I mean, it's not like if a million receivers want to update simultaneously, the server has to provide a million streams.

Nope certain things are only streamed a few times a day, in addition the receiver itself only does certain housekeeping tasks late at night early in the morning.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I can confirm that the show that did not autohop while recording does autohop now. What is this magic 1am number? Is there some sort of extra information that has to download hours after the original program for autohop to work?

Yes at 1am the autohop info is downloaded to the receivers.

 

[Dishman1978]

This thread is to educate new Hopper owners about some of the unusual behavior of the unit. Stuff that wasn't covered by installer.


[*]Searching for shows in the program guide won't work for the first 24 hours. Type a name and it says "No Matches" no matter what. When working normally, you'll see all shows listed on the right and that list gets filtered as you type in a name. Pretty nifty once it works.
[*]Show icons do not display thumbnails for the first 24 hours. Initially you only get the network logo and the name of the show beneath it. Afterwards you get a thumbnail snapshot of the actual show making it fairly easy to identify.
[*]Have shows archived to an external drive? You can only watch them if you currently subscribe to them. For example, I had a few movies I recorded from Epix, a channel that I dropped when it moved to BlockBuster. I could play it on my 722k after I no longer subscribed but the Hopper says I need to subscribe to view it.
[*]When you stop the playback of a show you no longer have the "Start Over" option. You have to exit to the DVR menu, re-select the show and press Enter to get the "Start Over" option.
[*]While you are allowed to create folders on an external drive, they do not appear to be displayed or used.
[*]While you can plug a usb keyboard into the Hopper, the alphabetic keys do not work.
[*]Auto-Hop doesn't appear to work for all programs. When it does work, you are asked at the start of the program if you want to use it. If you aren't asked, it won't work for that show.


I'm sure there is more. Please keep this list focused on what the Hopper actually does with workarounds.

Hopefully some of these things will get fixed but in the meantime...

Very informative. However the way You word it sounds as tough you feel the installer should have informed you of these things.

In reality, its not part of the customer education process, exspecially since we aren't given this info.

 

[Dishman1978]

I can confirm that the show that did not autohop while recording does autohop now. What is this magic 1am number? Is there some sort of extra information that has to download hours after the original program for autohop to work?

The mini kangaroo inside your hopper rests until this time, at which point he wakes up.and starts modifying your recordings......

 

[voripteth]

Very informative. However the way You word it sounds as tough you feel the installer should have informed you of these things. In reality, its not part of the customer education process, exspecially since we aren't given this info.

My installer seemed very knowledgeable and was a Hopper owner himself so he covered quite a few things. I asked him if there was anything special I should know about the Hopper and "wait 24-hours for search to work" was omitted. The first thing I do on an upgrade is recreate all my timers which is hard to do without search.

It would have prevented some frustration if this information were provided by the installer or at least the manual. Fortunately this forum did hold the answers after some searches. I felt the information wasn't obvious enough so I created this thread so other new Hopper users could benefit.