I've had a Hopper for a few months, and a 722 for many years prior. I used to have a gen1 Slingbox "back in the day" so I decided to buy a Sling Adapter (SA) for the new system. I've always had my receivers wired to the internet, so it would pretty much be PnP, right?
Not exactly; as I find, many people have issues with SA's. Of course I've scoured the interwebz to find solutions and the best I can come up with is correlations.
First, and this has always been the case, even though my receivers have always been connected to the internet, it seems that whenever I login to manage them, my locals are initially absent (in their place are a series of "K" stations, e.g. KOMU), and after a few refreshes will show properly. The site or app will complain about how the receiver isn't powered on (nonsense) so it seems the receivers need a virtual "poke" to wake up and communicate.
Initially the SA didn't work at all - plug in, no lights. I had to plug it in a few times for the light to come on and the system (Hopper) to realize it was plugged in. After that, I could see the SA in dishonline, but not in the app. The video never worked, constantly giving me error #33.
Then I hit the internet. I gave the receiver a static IP and forwarded a few ports to it (from forums). Now I could get some manner of communication, but no video.
Then I noticed something - if I press the red button on the Hopper to view tuners, whenever I tried to use the SA, it would show up as "Sling_SSA" (or something like that) and more importantly, it would be "tuned" to a Cinemax channel, which I wasn't subscribed to! This gives an error if you try to tune to a nonsubscribed channel in a receiver, but my guess is that the SA and app are not equipped to do this, thus throwing a nondescript error. (Why doesn't it default to a channel that every subscriber has, like 101?)
The SA would work occasionally, but I'd say less than 10% of the time, and unfortunately where functionality counts is when I'm away from home and can't watch the tuner screen to debug.
Coincidentally, when Dish had a recent free HBO/Cinemax event, the SA worked flawlessly - including DVR functionality. This cannot be a coincidence.
Has Dish addressed any of this? When the system works, it works well, but if you need to be subscribed to every channel to get around a software quirk, it loses its appeal.
Not exactly; as I find, many people have issues with SA's. Of course I've scoured the interwebz to find solutions and the best I can come up with is correlations.
First, and this has always been the case, even though my receivers have always been connected to the internet, it seems that whenever I login to manage them, my locals are initially absent (in their place are a series of "K" stations, e.g. KOMU), and after a few refreshes will show properly. The site or app will complain about how the receiver isn't powered on (nonsense) so it seems the receivers need a virtual "poke" to wake up and communicate.
Initially the SA didn't work at all - plug in, no lights. I had to plug it in a few times for the light to come on and the system (Hopper) to realize it was plugged in. After that, I could see the SA in dishonline, but not in the app. The video never worked, constantly giving me error #33.
Then I hit the internet. I gave the receiver a static IP and forwarded a few ports to it (from forums). Now I could get some manner of communication, but no video.
Then I noticed something - if I press the red button on the Hopper to view tuners, whenever I tried to use the SA, it would show up as "Sling_SSA" (or something like that) and more importantly, it would be "tuned" to a Cinemax channel, which I wasn't subscribed to! This gives an error if you try to tune to a nonsubscribed channel in a receiver, but my guess is that the SA and app are not equipped to do this, thus throwing a nondescript error. (Why doesn't it default to a channel that every subscriber has, like 101?)
The SA would work occasionally, but I'd say less than 10% of the time, and unfortunately where functionality counts is when I'm away from home and can't watch the tuner screen to debug.
Coincidentally, when Dish had a recent free HBO/Cinemax event, the SA worked flawlessly - including DVR functionality. This cannot be a coincidence.
Has Dish addressed any of this? When the system works, it works well, but if you need to be subscribed to every channel to get around a software quirk, it loses its appeal.
