My Hopper Self Install Story

Scherrman

SatelliteGuys Master
Original poster
Supporting Founder
Mar 14, 2008
15,555
9,951
Eastern Iowa
Being the manager of my business and selling Dish I had the luxury of leaving work early to try and upgrade to the new Hopper system. I have had a 922 and 211k for over a year and have been very happy with it. I have been waiting for the Hopper for a couple years though. I was too excited to wait so I thought I'd do it today. It's been an adventure.

I decided to upgrade to 2 Hoppers and 2 Joeys for the 5 HDTVS I have in the house. I had two coax cables running into my house from the Dish. The Dish is on the opposite side of the house that the cables come in at. Since the duo node needs 3 cables coming from the dish and only two going out I put the node out by the dish. I just had to add a short cable from the dish to the node and then I could use my existing cables that go into the house. It was a little time consuming but was pretty nice on a sunny 79 degree day in Iowa.

Once that was done I just had to find which cables went where in my basement and connect the 2 taps. One tap has a cable from the dish going into it and then has on cable out to the Hopper and one cable to the Joey. The other tap has the second cable from the dish going into it and then one cable to the second Hopper and the other cable out to the second Joey. Very easy to set up since all the cable were already run.

I then hooked up the first Hopper and had it go through the download process. This can take up to 20 minutes. While that was happening I went upsatairs to the second Hopper and did the same. This is where this got tricky for me. The TV in the living room is where I have the 922 and has an EHD on it. My 922 had 390 recording on it and I was trying to transfer them over to the EHD. I started this process yesterday and it still had about 4 hours left. CRAP! Now what was I going to do. I decided I would try unhooking everything from the 922 except the power cord EHD and video cables. I hooked the satellite cable and another video cable up the Hopper and got that downloading while I still had the 922 sitting there transferring. NOTE: Recordings can be transferred to an EHD even though the receiver is not connected to satellite. This may come in handy for some.

So I got everything downloaded except for the Joeys. They are sitting in place waiting their turn. The Hoppers must first be downloaded and activated first before the Joeys can even be plugged in. At this point I'm ready to activate. I call DASH to activate it under a retailer Dish'N It Up and they say I do not have a work order. Hmmm.... I have the work order in my hand. They tell me it was canceled. The call then goes to a higher department and they tell me I need to print another work order. No problem. An hour later I get back home and call again. The same problem happens. They say there is no work order. I tell the helpful fellow, I have two work orders sitting in front of me. So while on the phone with him I get on my laptop and generate a third work order but he is unable to see it at Dish. This is very odd because I do this every week and rarely have issues.

The gentleman at Dish stayed on the phone with me for 47 minutes trying to get me activated. I was actaully sill on the phone with hime when I started writing this. He was able to get me activated as I just checked my Hoppers and they have programming. My next step is to get the Joeys going now. Tomorrow I need to talk to my distributor and make sure I'm going to get paid for this. I haven't seen an upgrade go this crazy in a while.

I'll update soon when I get the Joeys going.
 
Did you check to see if both hoppers show all 3 tuners? 1 hopper shows all 3 tuners and 2nd hopper only shows 2 tuners.. that hopper only has 1 joey connected to it and the other has 2 joeys connected..
 
I finally got everything running. For some reason the 2 Joeys linked with the receiver in the basement. The one in the Living room is on it's own. I was unable to link it to the living room one. I find that odd since one cable goes from the node to a Hopper and Joey and the other cable goes to the other Hopper and Joey. I assumed those Joeys would be linked with the same Hoppers. Maybe I can change this, I'm not sure. I'm tired right now and just want to relax and watch basketball not. Already have my drink made. I've been working on this for 5 1/2 hours. Ugh.
 
You shouldn't have an issue. If you own them you just tell them they are purchased and you are swapping out equipment. It was a little harder for me because I needed to make sure they knew I was doing a retailer DIU so we get paid. Otherwise I would have just said they were purchased and did it. If I'm going to take off all afternoon to install this I might as well get paid to do it.
 
Do you have a 20.0/21.0 remote around? Do the colored buttons work in IR mode with Joey/Hopper? Reports there are issues with 922 and the colored buttons. This could impact how many additional 40.0 remotes I would need. Thanks...
 
I was unable to link any of my 922 remotes. It worked on our showroom account but that was still BETA software. The colored buttons worked fine on our showroom account.
 
I was unable to link any of my 922 remotes. It worked on our showroom account but that was still BETA software. The colored buttons worked fine on our showroom account.

For clarity - I think this is a response to my query - I wasn't asking about 32.0 (922) remotes. I was asking about 20.0/21.0 (722K) remotes in IR mode - specifically the color buttons. Some reports for the 922 in IR mode claim the the 20/21 color buttons don't map correctly. I'm wondering if Hopper inherited this discrepency.
 
Alot of the times if you don't say upfront it's a RETDIU the agent is going to have problems. And even if you do sometimes you still will, the problem with RETDIU is the agent won't see it as a "workorder" it is just built to the specifications you tell us then you have the claim #. So I'm thinking they were thinking you were doing a normal DIU and looking for an open w/o. (on a RETDIU agents don't see an open w/o)
 
I'm replacing a vip722. I bought the hopper w/ sling, a solo node and a joey. I have rg6 running from the dish to the vip722. So if I run the two cables from the lnb to the solo node, and the rg6 from the host port and to the hopper, client port to the joey, is that it? They are so adamant that I can't do this myself but from the research I've done it seems pretty simple. I've read enough to know to set the hopper up and leave the joey alone until I have a picture on the hopper.

What am I missing?

Thanks in advance.
 
You can most definitely do it yourself. Looks like you got everything right with the possible exception of the type of LNB. If you are running TWO cables from your dish to a single 722, that suggests to me that it's a legacy or DP LNB and not a DP LNB w/integrated DPP switch. The nodes require DPP input; 2 for a solo node and 3 for a dual node.
 
You can most definitely do it yourself. Looks like you got everything right with the possible exception of the type of LNB. If you are running TWO cables from your dish to a single 722, that suggests to me that it's a legacy or DP LNB and not a DP LNB w/integrated DPP switch. The nodes require DPP input; 2 for a solo node and 3 for a dual node.

Actually currently running one cable to the 722. Haven't taken the cover off but it has 3 lnb's and says dp plus so I'm pretty sure it has the 3 out and one incoming port on there so I was going to run the 2nd cable myself to the #2 port on the solo node. Dish was installed about 3 years ago.

Thanks for the input! I'm out of town and gonna tackle this Monday and wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something. :)
 
I'm replacing a vip722. I bought the hopper w/ sling, a solo node and a joey. I have rg6 running from the dish to the vip722. So if I run the two cables from the lnb to the solo node, and the rg6 from the host port and to the hopper, client port to the joey, is that it? They are so adamant that I can't do this myself but from the research I've done it seems pretty simple. I've read enough to know to set the hopper up and leave the joey alone until I have a picture on the hopper.

What am I missing?

Thanks in advance.

You'd probably be better off starting your own thread, or a mod could split this one

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IMHO Shart's post works fine in this thread. It's very close to being on topic, and he's already bucked up his confidence (with our help) and done with this thread. Except perhaps to come back and declare success. If he does, it's always good to hear of a happy self-install Dish customer. ;)
 
Not being a jerk was just saying it throws people off reading the OP that's nearly two years old then having to search for the post that bumped the thread. Just saying more eyes would see his post if he just started his own topic. It is good that he got the help he needs though.

Sent from my iPhone 4S using Forum Runner
 
Just going to update... I saw this thread about self install which attracted me to this site so I figured I'd just chime in on this thread instead of making a new one...

Anyway, for anyone that reads or is told by Dish "you can't install a hopper yourself", that is completely false. It IS that easy, especially if you are upgrading from a fairly new Dish DVR like the VIP722K. My dish was fairly new (3 years) with the 4 ports, and my cable that is running from the dish to my VIP722K is RG6 (not sure if it was swept to 3GHz, but it works). My 722 was using a cable off of port 1 on the dish. I connected that to port 1 on the solo node. I unscrewed 2 screws and pulled out the LNB's and attached a 2nd cable that runs to port 2 on the solo node. The cable running into the house connects to the Host port on the solo node. Connect the RG6 cable from the Host port on the Solo node to the Hopper w/ Sling, fire it up, and wait for it to do the setup. The hardware part took me less than 20 minutes (roof on single story house). The Hopper w/ Sling update/setup takes longer of course but whole thing was around 1 hour.

Joey is coming this afternoon and I anticipate that being ever bit as simple.

YMMV. I was fortunate that all of the equipment was functioning properly. If the solo node, for example, had been defective I would have had no way of knowing that and probably would have called in a tech. Anyways, thanks for the help on here!!! :)

Final note: I contacted Dish through their online chat and was quoted along the lines of $450 for a hopper and two Joeys. So I began traveling down the road of buying my own equipment and ended up with Hopper w/ Sling and a Joey for about $200 plus about $15 for a solo node. Had I known about contacting a DIRT member on here, then I would have known I had the option of upgrading to Hopper w/ Sling and a Joey for $100 and two year commitment, which would have included free installation. Had I known that, then that would have been the route I'd have taken...
 

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