Looking at getting a two hopper system. How well do they communicate with each other?

[jmb18]

I have Dish now and trying to decide between a hopper and the home media center with directv. My parents have a 1 hopper 2 joey setup and I've messed around with theirs and I like it pretty good. I think I need two hoppers due to needing more than the three tuners. I understand they recently allowed two hoppers to communicate with each other, but haven't read a lot about how well that works. So that is my question. Are there any quirks that make it a pain? Like having conflicts on one hopper and having to switch as recording to the other hopper? Do you have to go to the other hopper to do that or can you do that from either hopper? Do you have to swithc which hopper the joey is assigned to if a recording is on the other hopper? Any other things?

Just curios how the system works. Thanks.

 

[satjay]

Basically right now what a two hooper system will let you do will watch recordings from other hoopers. One of the perks with that for me is with Prime Time Anytime, I have it set on one tv and not the other, thus frees up the three tuners on one and when I want to watch shows off of PTAT I connect to the other Hoper. Very seamless to access other recordings, with two hoppers you library of accessed recordings on what hopper/joey want to watch comes in handy as well

 

[ChairBound]

I have a two Hopper, no Joey system. I have had it for about two weeks. You can easily watch shows on either Hopper from one location. You cannot set up all your timers from one location. Hopper 1 must have its timers set up on it, and Hopper 2 must have its timers set up while sitting in front of it. I have not run into any overt issues with this set up....but I THINK that Hopper 1's periodic freezing has occurred only when I have accessed the second Hopper from Hopper 1. It acts like the connection in memory on Hopper 1 is not completely released when I end viewing on Hopper 2. I have not observed this freezing behavior more than three times, so I am still not certain about this issue. Other than that, nothing difficult about the two Hopper set up.

 

[Ronnie-]

I also have two plus a Joey, and pretty much what they have said. The Joey can watch recorded content off of either easily.

Great system and hopefully more integration coming as well.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

 

[duke02]

It's definitely nice that you can see both sets of recordings on each hopper but it would be better if you could view them all as one big list. Also, It would be awesome if each hopper could allocate tuners amongst each other. In other words, if Hopper 1 is scheduled to record 4 things and Hopper 2 has an extra tuner available, then Hopper 2 would take the 4th recording from Hopper 1. Then you'd have 6 tuners fully at your disposal at each box

 

[ChairBound]

It's definitely nice that you can see both sets of recordings on each hopper but it would be better if you could view them all as one big list. Also, It would be awesome if each hopper could allocate tuners amongst each other. In other words, if Hopper 1 is scheduled to record 4 things and Hopper 2 has an extra tuner available, then Hopper 2 would take the 4th recording from Hopper 1. Then you'd have 6 tuners fully at your disposal at each box

See...now you are talking a whole new level of sophistication in the programming. I think I would be happy with just the basics. That is a great idea though.

 

[duke02]

I often wind having a too-complicated setup because of my ideas. I don't think it would be too difficult for Dish to program this though as long as each receiver has the ability to interrogate the other as to tuner status. The receivers already do that I believe and also have the ability to accept a record command (think remote access), so I think it's doable.

 

[rglore]

Hoppers and Joeys can see each Hopper's recordings in the DVR menu. You have to assign each Joey to a Hopper for the location of the Joey's recordings and live TV watching but it's easily changed at the Joey. Also, you connect your home network to any Hopper or to the coax with the HIC adapter.

 

[3HaloODST]

The Joeys can access all Hoppers' DVR recordings and can set timers on any of them. The Hoppers can see each others' recordings but cannot set timers on each other (yet?)

If you've got the dough, you can even get 3 Hoppers for 9 tuners.

 

[cditty]

I am about to buy a second Hopper for the extra tuners. I think dynamic allocation of tuners is coming soon. A DIRT member told me that timers would go to whichever Hopper had a free tuner in this setup. Of course, he may be on a higher version of software than we are.

Can anyone verify (or not) that extra timer events automatically go to the free tuners?

 

[3HaloODST]

I am about to buy a second Hopper for the extra tuners. I think dynamic allocation of tuners is coming soon. A DIRT member told me that timers would go to whichever Hopper had a free tuner in this setup. Of course, he may be on a higher version of software than we are.

Can anyone verify (or not) that extra timer events automatically go to the free tuners?

As of now, no. Which DIRT member told you this and when?

 

[cditty]

As of now, no. Which DIRT member told you this and when?

PM'd you a copy.

 

[rglore]

It automatically goes to a free tuner of the Hopper that the Joey is linked to.

 

[satnewb]

The HIC is a must for hopper integration. Bridging also needs to be enabled on both hoppers in order for them to "see" each other. Unfortunately most of the techs don't know how to do this nor are we trained or made aware of the new features as they roll out.

 

[rogerpl]

The HIC is a must for hopper integration. Bridging also needs to be enabled on both hoppers in order for them to "see" each other. Unfortunately most of the techs don't know how to do this nor are we trained or made aware of the new features as they roll out.

My installer had hic but didn't use it. My two hopper one joey have been working fine. One hopper is ethernet connected other hopper is wireless. I have bridging enabled on one hopper, other hopper no.

 

[rglore]

The HIC is a must for hopper integration. Bridging also needs to be enabled on both hoppers in order for them to "see" each other. Unfortunately most of the techs don't know how to do this nor are we trained or made aware of the new features as they roll out.

The Hoppers will "see" each other over the coax using MoCA with bridging turned off, mine do just fine. Bridging does the same as the HIC, it puts Ethernet on the MoCA (coax) network. There should only be one Ethernet connection to MoCA, an HIC or a Hopper bridge. If all Hoppers and Joeys are on Ethernet or wireless, no bridging or HIC is needed.

 

[ChairBound]

I often wind having a too-complicated setup because of my ideas. I don't think it would be too difficult for Dish to program this though as long as each receiver has the ability to interrogate the other as to tuner status. The receivers already do that I believe and also have the ability to accept a record command (think remote access), so I think it's doable.

Teehee! Totally agree it is doable. I was not meaning to poke fun at your idea. I was being VERY tongue in cheek about Dish and their programming ability though. I am so astounded at the bugs that I have had to put up with in my use of both the 922 and now the Hopper. Simple things that should not even be an issue. I am worried that if they try to program in any feature with any sophistication to it, the entire thing will stop working completely. As it is, the new update has screwed the pooch on my show thumbnails. For Pete's sake!!! There just freakin' thumbnails! But now they are ALL missing after the update. Sigh.

 

[3HaloODST]

The Hoppers will "see" each other over the coax using MoCA with bridging turned off, mine do just fine. Bridging does the same as the HIC, it puts Ethernet on the MoCA (coax) network. There should only be one Ethernet connection to MoCA, an HIC or a Hopper bridge. If all Hoppers and Joeys are on Ethernet or wireless, no bridging or HIC is needed.

This. With Hopper bridging, the HIC is only useful if you can't get any of your Hoppers Ethernet-connected. Otherwise, bridging (which they finally got working right for me on S221) does everything HIC can do.

 

[steelhead76]

Required the RED BUTTON RESET on my 2 H setup to get the bridging working after setting both H's to bridging ON.

 

[rglore]

There's no reason to turn on bridging on two Hoppers, that would be like hooking up two HICs. It caused problems with previous firmware versions, haven't tried with S221.